Romance Under Duress

Plummeting real estate values, diminished retirement funds and career insecurity have taken a terrible toll on relationships. Experts offer some simple advice
on how to cope.

February 1, 2009
By John Buchanan

Plummeting real estate values, diminished retirement funds and career insecurity have taken a terrible toll on relationships. Experts offer some simple advice on how to cope.

The economic mayhem buffeting America has hit South Florida with a particular vengeance—and in an unprecedented twist of fate, the affluent have been more devastated, relatively speaking, than mere working stiffs. That’s because bad real estate investments, upside down mortgages, ravaged 401Ks and short-circuited careers have reduced a lot of assets to rubble. As a result, romantic relationships have been stressed like never before.

“Over the last six months I have seen more couples than in the entire 10 years that I have been in practice,” says Tania Paredes, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Miami. “The affluent have bigger issues with money,” she says, “because they’ve invested in real estate or the stock market and those investments have done very poorly and their wealth has decreased significantly.”

That jolting new reality rattles romance to its core, says Diana Kirschner, a New York-based former psychologist and author of Love in 90 Days: The Essential Guide to Finding Your Own True Love (Center Street, 2009). “It’s a very big shock to people who are used to living a lifestyle that they consider a given element of their lives that no one can ever touch. So, in a situation like we’re in now, affluent people can actually go into a sort of shock if the lifestyle they are accustomed to is suddenly threatened in an economic climate like we’re seeing now. If you’ve seen your 401K take a big hit, or you’re losing an expensive home you bought when times were good but you can no longer afford, you lose your sense of security, and that creates tremendous anxiety and stress. And that is guaranteed to cause problems in your relationship.”

The great majority of couples who break up do so because they have lost their bond of deep and enduring friendship, says Kirschner, whose PBS special, Finding Your Own True Love, will air in March. “And when you’re fighting and angry over issues of money and lifestyle, people get alienated from each other and they lose that feeling of being close. It’s easy to wind up divorced or ending a long-term relationship if you’re not married.”

In order to weather the current financial tsunami and the stress on your relationship, it is important not to look backwards and fix blame on a spouse or partner who convinced you to move up to the bigger house or invest in a particular stock when times were good—decisions that have now come back to haunt you, says Debbie Mandel, a Lawrence, NY-based stress management specialist and author of Addicted to Stress: A Woman’s Seven-Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). “It’s not about the past, it’s about the present,” she says. “It’s about addressing the question, ‘What can we do now?’”

Dr. Juan Carlos Paredes, M.D., a psychiatrist at the South Beach Clinic at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, knows that all too well. Not only has he recently observed affluent patients struggling with financial and psychological crises, he has experienced them himself as a result of real estate investments gone bad and a significantly reduced retirement fund. Yet his marriage of 17 years has survived intact, because he practices what he preaches. “You can look at the issue from different perspectives,” says Dr. Paredes. “One is the effect of financial stress on the quality of your relationship. The other is that the relationship can be a tool to overcome times of stress.”

Remedial action 101

The good news is that some simple steps can help you and your partner negotiate today’s troubled waters without drowning. “The most powerful thing you can do in your relationship at a time like this is to have 10-minute ‘listening sessions’ with each other,” says Kirschner. “One person or the other plays ‘therapist’ and the other person gets to talk for 10 minutes about whatever is on their mind. And their partner just listens. If you can do that every day or every other day, that is a fantastic way to deal with the stress in your relationship. The other thing is to plan for and have sexual contact, no matter what you are feeling, no matter what is going on. Get yourself in the mood and share intimate time together. And the third thing you can do is go for walks or exercise together. What happens is that you will release stress and tension and at the same time, you will talk more.”

Dr. Paredes advises that you should adopt what he calls “selfish psychology,” which is the exact opposite of what pop culture has taught us. “We have to be our own top priority,” he says. “We have to think of ourselves first. If you don’t do the things that are good to your body, your mind, your spirit, your relationship and your environment, you are not actually going to be able to help anyone—including yourself.”

As self-therapy, he recommends a simple regimen. “The first thing is to get proper sleep,” he says. “That is very important. Number two is to eat a healthy, balanced diet. Number three is to exercise on a regular basis. But sometimes, we forget, because we are busy and successful, to do those things. You can have any amount of money, but that doesn’t really matter if you are not taking proper care of yourself. If you do that, you are going to be much more able to handle stress.”

Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist and advice columnist, explains that the typical price of affluence is time not spent together. “When I see couples, I do an inventory of what their life is like,” he says. “And one thing I usually find is that they don’t even have any time together because they’re so busy. So, it’s important to carve out some time—even if it’s just 20 minutes a day—to just sit together and be together, without TV or your BlackBerry or any other distractions. And that’s a good time to listen and to show your support and concern for the other person. That is how you can connect.”

A peculiar paradox of the present turmoil is sex, says Kirschner. “If you have sexual contact at a time like this, that is a great stress reliever,” she says. “The paradox is that on one hand that’s the last thing you feel like doing when you’re under duress, but if you set aside time for sexual interaction, that is one of the best things you can do to lower stress, create endorphins and contribute to your ­psychological health.”

Mandel advocates exercise. “As a couple, there is nothing better you can do than exercise together,” she says. “It creates endorphins and it also helps you bond. Then you can take that into the bedroom.”

She also recommends visualization and breathing exercises. “It’s a form of self-hypnosis,” she says. “You have to go inside and get in touch with your deeper self and let things go. In your mind, you take yourself to a secret place that makes you happy, whether it’s a beach or a mountain top. Everybody has one. Then you give yourself a positive message that you need to hear, like ‘I am going to restore myself to a state of serenity.’”

Tania Paredes suggests another simple but important step. “Get back to basics in your relationship,” she says. “Take a walk on the beach. Or rent a movie and just cuddle on the couch.”