How did COVID change your relationships?

Plus: New behind-the-scenes videos, navigating conversation interruptors, and hosting parties for friend groups.

Myles Irving holds his wife Emily's hand as the Springfield couple have a romantic lunch framed through a partition window at Friendly's in Florence.

By Meredith Goldstein

January 27, 2025

5 minutes to read

Note from Meredith: We’re out of the office this week. Today you’ll get our recent newsletter – which includes a callout for your help for a story. Then you’ll get a nice podcast episode. Then a letter or two – and then a long weekend.

Please take the COVID story request seriously, and feel free to send long answers. Looking for feedback. See the callout below – and have a good week.

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I hope you enjoyed episode one of the podcast.

Even if you haven’t listened, know this: you can now find the new Love Letters episodes on YouTube (if that’s your thing), AND there are bonus videos featuring behind-the-scenes takes on what we learned.

The first one features Christine Ahanotu, who produced this season of the Love Letters podcast.

Find them here.

Where are we now?

A week or so ago, I was sitting in a Zoom with Boston Globe people talking about the 5-year anniversary of the COVID lockdown.

It’s in a few months, which feels … weird.

In some ways I’ve aged 40 years since then, but it also feels like March 2020 was yesterday.

Reporters in our newsroom will be writing about how the pandemic affected businesses, education, the perception of vaccines, etc. It’ll be a look back – and forward.

Meanwhile, I’ll be diving deep into our relationships.

Did everybody get divorced? Married? Have babies? Decide … no more babies?

In April of 2020, I did a story with the headline: “Will Divorce Rates Spike After COVID-19?”

The most important expert in the story, to me, was Catherine L. Cohan, a research professor at Penn State, who had studied how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks affected marriages and how 1989’s Hurricane Hugo impacted relationships.

This part of the story, where we talk about what might happen after the pandemic, is something I’ve been thinking about for the last five years.

When it comes to decision-making and how couples might change their paths after COVID-19, Cohan points to her 2002 study about the effect of 1989′s Hurricane Hugo on relationships — whether people affected by the disaster chose to get married, divorced, or have children. Her research showed that within a year after [Hurricane Hugo] the natural disaster, there were more big decisions made in general. It wasn’t just that people wanted to get divorced; they wanted to get married, have babies, make changes. “When we consider that all three outcomes increased, the pattern of results suggests a fourth perspective, that a natural disaster mobilized people to take action,” she wrote when she published her research in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Basically, her take was that disasters (or pandemics, or other scary things) inspire people to change their whole lives – to do the things they’ve been waiting on.

In my community, this was true. My friend Stacie, who was on an episode of the podcast, decided, with her husband, to go get that beach house that was supposed to be for retirement.

I have loved ones who divorced.

By the end of 2020, I jumped on a dating app for the first time. Because … why not?

A lot of people made moves.

Empty streets in Boston in March of 2020, during lockdown. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff/file

Your take, please.

This is where I need your help: I want to know how your relationship lives changed because of the pandemic, and what you saw in your communities.

I also want to know what you’d like to see in this story. Are you curious about divorce rates? How wedding celebrations changed? Whether people deprioritized romantic relationships?

Please tell me what’s on your mind.

My guess is that even if you went to the office throughout the lockdown and didn’t feel much of a difference in your routine, you’ve probably been around people who changed their relationship values based on their own COVID experiences.

Let me know what you think about all of it. Fill out the form below, or email me directly at [email protected].

Pardon the interruption

Earlier this month, I wrote a story about how I’ve become a terrible conversation interruptor. I interrupt too much – with good intentions – and I wanted to know why and how to stop.

The story seemed to resonate; I got a lot of emails from people who are chronic interrupters.

I did get this note from one person who seems to have a very specific issue with a friend.

So wonderful to see an article about the bane of my existence! I always feel like I am being interrupted when I speak in all realms of my life. So frustrating.

My biggest issue is with a friend that constantly interrupts when you are talking about an upcoming trip, an experience, etc. She always has to insert her experience with the topic into the conversation before I even have half of what I want to say said. How do I combat this? I have tried being silent, but that doesn’t prompt her to realize that my side of the conversation wasn’t completed, she just moves onto another topic of conversation.

Any suggestions for squishing the “I have a better, more interesting experience interrupter, even though you are talking about yours right now? I’m not the only one suffering at her hands, she has been called out on it, but it didn’t resonate and change the behavior. “

I’ll probably write this woman back with some advice. If you have any thoughts, let me know. (I know some will say, “End this friendship.”)

Some things to read

I was interested in this recent Refinery 29 story about parties. When a former Globe writer, Sarah, moved to another state, our friend group’s parties dried up. She’d been the hostess with the mostess. No one had the drive to take her place. Now very few people I know host regular gatherings. Maybe it’s age, but I do think it’s also real estate, COVID/illness, distance, and being out of practice. Maybe we could all commit to hosting one get together per year, even if it’s small. Then the parties would add up.
I love a Dinner With Cupid where the daters are like, “There was no chemistry. We got a free tuna bowl out of it. Now let’s go our separate ways without being weird.”
I liked this recent, nuanced letter from someone who was searching for an un-Googleable former crush … for friendship. Or something else? How hard should we be looking for people who aren’t looking for us?

You can send your own letter to Love Letters here. Yes, it’s anonymous.

WRITE A LETTER TO MEREDITH

I’m leaving you with a picture I took at the Museum of Fine Arts. I went to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition (flowers being vaginas, etc.). I wound up interested in a modern room that had something that I thought was Andy Warhol, but was actually Deborah Cass. This one is Cass’s “Double Blue Barbra (The Jewish Jackie Series).”

I think that if my sister had the motivation to steal art, Gardner Museum-style, she would take this one.

– Meredith

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How did COVID change your relationships?