This was written in April 2020 in New Zealand during the height of the COVID-19 restrictions.

For most newlyweds, the most common question in the first year is “how is married life?”. That can be a slightly weird question to try to answer, but we’ve mostly avoided being asked it. Instead, the question we are asked by someone most weeks is “are you bored of each other yet” or “how long until you get sick of each other”.

Many people, often lightheartedly but sometimes seriously, asked us whether we thought it was a problem to go away and spend a year without any space from each other.

After a year in which we have spent almost every moment together, the answer is confidently ‘no’. We aren’t bored of each other and there is no sign that we would be if we continued for longer. This experience has undoubtedly made us closer and stronger (not that we thought we could get any closer), and as the prospect of returning to work looms on the horizon, we are both distressed by the thought of not being together for every moment.

There have been moments when we have been apart this year. Occasionally when shopping we will divide the list, and due to injuries sometimes one of us might go out for some exercise without the other. On our skydive I was hurtling away from Ness at terminal velocity as I was first and she was last out of the aircraft. By far our longest time apart, and our only night apart, was on the meditation retreat when they insisted that males and females sleep apart, Buddhist monks can be strict that way! Other than that we have been right beside each other all day every day and night since we left, often in quite tight conditions.

This is all in stark contrast to our normal lifestyle. Since Ness works 9-5 and I work shifts, we often go long periods without seeing much of each other, and when I’m working night shifts during the week we miss each other by minutes, meaning several days of not seeing each other.

The experience of sharing our lives so literally and unreservedly has reinforced how well suited we are to each other. There have been ‘challenges’ –  predominantly because when your experiences of the world are identical you have less to talk about… saying ‘how was your day honey’ is still meaningful but is a very different question; also trying to organise birthday presents and such becomes difficult, but there are worse challenges to have in life.

We both have strong personalities, but have never raised our voices at each other, and never been unable to resolve an issue thanks to our willingness to compromise and value the other’s views and wishes. Neither of us are prone to expressions of anger, and we communicate early if we have concerns so that they never snowball. It has worked for us.

We have a strong set of shared values and ideals, yet very different ways of thinking about situations. This means that the need to compromise always seems to result in a better outcome, and if ever something is getting one person down then the other is likely to be in a better place and so able to support them.

This post comes amidst the lockdown, which has caused another barrage of that question “are you bored of each other yet?”, but for us the omnipresence of each other’s company is nothing new, only that our activities have been restricted. This brings our relationship to bear most effectively as we support each other through a tendancy towards boredom, reminding each other that there is still plenty to do.

This year has taught us many things, which leads to a lot of reflection about the way in which we live our lives. We will share some of these going forward, but the single biggest lesson is the value we place on our shared time. Upon our return to the ‘real world’, and accepting the short term necessity of differing work patterns, in the long term we will be considering how we change our life to spend as much of it together as is possible.