Member-only story
When There is No Shelter at Home
Being a better lover in bed, being a better partner by sharing emotional and house-hold labor, learning how to better communicate, being able to ask for what you want and need, and to listen to what your partner wants and needs — all of these go into being a better man as it relates to having a significant other.
But those behaviors and manners of being are luxuries compared to the bare bones, black and white, lowest bar on the ladder of being any kind of man deserving of respect and of being with: not abusing your partner.
Life during COVID-19 is heavy. There is shock, anger, fear, anxiety and more levels of varieties of grief than I’ve ever seen collectively experienced. All that was fragile yet still holding us in place is fraying and deteriorating before your eyes, some things perhaps to never return.
Yet as we worry about how far away we are from the person approaching us on the walking path, as we deliberate about the meals we’ll be having two weeks from now, while feeling too overwhelmed about dinner tonight, and our concerns about rent, our jobs, and our families’ health stick to us like bruises freshly inflicted on us each time we read the news, there is the sad, sobering reality that in the place where they should be seeking shelter and safety like all of us, many women will suffer actual bruises and worse from their partners.
