Meluleki Ncube

Therese and Steven are a young couple that’s been happily married for three and a half years, but the past six months have been quite difficult. Therese’s job has steadily required more from her, especially as her company had to downsize during the pandemic and they aren’t able to hire new people just yet. She’s often home quite late, and leaves early to get her day started. When she’s home, she feels tired and finds it hard to go out and have fun like she and Steven used to. Steven is in graduate school, and his studies consume much of his time. He struggles to maintain boundaries, so he often finds himself helping others in his cohort with their work. The effect of that is that he sometimes falls behind and has to work extra hard to meet deadlines, and that puts pressure on any plans he may have made with Therese. The last few months, it feels like they’ve been living alongside one another, and they both feel disconnected - emotionally, mentally, and physically. They had a big fight the other day because Steven had to cancel their date to submit an overdue assignment. What angered Therese even more was that when she tried to talk to Steven about it, he was distracted and wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. In that way, what started as a tiff about the canceled date escalated and became a bigger conversation about their relationship and how they had lost their intimacy as a couple. Situations like that of Steven and Therese are quite common, even if the particulars differ somewhat. Couples and friends can find themselves feeling disconnected, and it’s not necessarily because they don’t care about one another. When life gets busy and you find yourself under pressure, [...]