COUPLES' THERAPY
Harper's Bazaar Australia|June/July 2020
Brooke Le Poer Trench ruminates on the trials and tribulations of too much time together
Brooke Le Poer Trench
COUPLES' THERAPY

RIGHT NOW, I am sitting in my office (aka bedroom), dressed in my work clothes (aka pyjamas), ruminating on a fight I just had with my husband about coconut butter. This is already an obnoxious thing to bicker about: luxury health foods. He observed (aloud) that I had not picked any up from the supermarket following his text message (sent from the backyard) yesterday. I responded (passive-aggressively) that he might be able to find some at the wholefoods grocery shop around the corner (see what I did there?) from our house. And so it went on for 10 minutes (with wide-eyed children watching), until I left for work, which used to involve a nice dress, a few coats of mascara and a 20-minute bus ride … and now consists of 18 steps and one lunge (to get up on the bed, you see).

This is our new normal. We are both lucky enough to be able to work from home. We are spending 24-7 together. And I hope I’m not alone when I wonder, Are we going to make it to the other side of this thing? The fact is that PP (pre-pandemic), my husband was a rock in times of crisis. Of course, when I say ‘crisis’ I’m talking about fairly pedestrian things that seemed stressful at the time: kids with broken arms, lost passports and house renovations. He is a port in a stormy sea. And that’s in part because we are so very different, which means that when I feel out of control, his pragmatic way of dealing with things is often welcome.

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