Renovating Your Home Could Ruin Your Relationship ... But It Doesn't Have To

Renovating Your Home Could Ruin Your Relationship ... But It Doesn't Have To
As we head into spring and summer, the most popular seasons for home improvement, it’s important for couples to set ground rules before breaking ground. (Shutterstock) 

Many Canadians have turned to home renovations to find space — both literally and metaphorically — after a year of working, learning, exercising and doing just about everything else from home. As we head into spring and summer, the most popular seasons for home improvement, it’s important for couples to set ground rules before breaking ground.

While more living space, a dedicated home office or upgraded kitchen might ease the strain the pandemic has put on homes and families, the renovation process, which tests relationships at the best of times, could put more stress on partnerships already cracking under the weight of the past year.

Contractors and architects say the recent surge in renovation work has them fielding up to five times as many calls per day than they were pre-pandemic. And according to a recent Abacus Data survey, 44 per cent of Canadian households have done or are planning to do renovations this year. Most say they are doing the work so they can feel more relaxed in their homes.

At the same time, phones are also ringing at couples counselling and family law offices as more seek professional help to either preserve or dissolve their relationships.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

“Couples are experiencing a whole variety of stresses — childcare, household management, personal challenges, strains in the relationship — and the temperature has gone up during the pandemic,” says New York City therapist Matt Lundquist. He believes that while the stresses of the pandemic may not be the cause of marriage problems, they are revealing cracks that were already there.

Relationship cracks on full display

Renovations can widen relationship cracks as couples find themselves navigating financial stresses, extended disruptions and making thousands of decisions — from how much they can afford to spend to lower a basement to selecting drawer pulls for new kitchen cabinets.

The process can amplify conflicting approaches to decision-making, unhealthy communication habits and latent tensions in relationships.

These strains are on display on Reddit’s r/relationship_advice where desperate users seek advice for resolving renovation conflicts with their partners.

From “I’m an INTP, he’s an ENTJ, we’re renovating and fighting so badly I fear our relationship will never recover” to “renovation taking way longer than expected, BF taking it personally when I try to speed the process along. We’re at a breaking point” and “renovation frustration with me (29f) and him (31m) — is this understandable or abuse?”

Gloria Apostolu, principal architect at Post Architecture in Toronto, pauses for a moment when asked how couples handle the demands of making so many decisions during a renovation. “Every client has their Achilles heel,” she says. “And it’s never where or what I expected.”

Home renovations are on the rise during the pandemic, but so are their repercussions.Home renovations are on the rise during the pandemic, but so are their repercussions. (Shutterstock)

Different breaking points

Some of Apostolu’s clients can’t make sense of tiles. Others balk at the price of a front door or are overwhelmed by having to settle on a faucet type for the main-floor powder room all before the contractor even arrives to tear the place apart.

Making high-stakes decisions as a couple, Lundquist explains, requires advanced skills, such as weighing pros and cons, gauging the level of acceptable risk and being decisive under pressure, or “pulling the trigger” in contractor parlance. It also requires what he calls relationality — listening and curiosity, taking turns, empathy and working to understand your partner’s point of view, even if you don’t see its logic or agree with it.

“It tremendously taxes our skills not to react when our partner says something we disagree with, or isn’t what we expected,” says Lundquist. What really feeds a relationship, he adds, is trying to be curious about where your partner is coming from and resisting the temptation to shut them down or make a counter-argument before fully understanding their point of view.

On the other hand, he often encounters partners who, in trying to keep the peace, are not assertive enough about what they want, which can lead to lingering dissatisfaction and resentment.

The last thing a relationship needs, Lundquist jokes, is a big, expensive, fixed piece of resentment that a couple is forced to stare at as they sit next to each other on the couch every evening.

Honesty and a smooth renovation

Apostolou echoes the need for openness as a foundation for a smooth renovation.

She suggests devising a system at the start for resolving the inevitable conflicts that will arise. This could mean taking turns, or giving veto rights to the person who is most dedicated to that part of the home. For example, the person who does most of the cooking gets the final say on kitchen details.

She advises it is most important to work it all out in drawings before you get started. “Don’t rush the design process. You don’t want to be making decisions that are more costly than they would have been if they were planned out in advance.”

Apostolu’s no-surprises approach has garnered effusive five-star reviews from clients on home design and improvement website Houzz.

One is from Stephanie Nickson, a financial services consultant, and her partner David Raniga, who now runs his massage therapy practice in the light-filled basement of their recently renovated home in Toronto’s Wychwood neighbourhood.

Raniga jokes that the hardest part of the process was dealing with his wife’s inability to make decisions. But because they remained open to each other’s needs throughout the process and stuck with the vision and budget they set at the beginning, they say they actually miss the process now that it is over. And they are almost giddy with the result.

“I literally say I love this house every day. We were so lucky,” Nickson says.

About the AuthorThe Conversation

Emily Waugh, Dalla Lana Fellow, University of Toronto

books_home

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 09:40

To “cry poor mouth” is an expression used to habitually complain about a lack of money. A literal poor mouth, however, represents one of the most widespread global diseases: tooth decay.

Saturday, 08 May 2021 08:43

Humanity has always had a rocky relationship with wasps. They are one of those insects that we love to hate. We value bees (which also sting) because they pollinate our crops and make honey

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 07:23

Whether it’s your arthritic relative who knows rain is on the way when their knees ache or your lifelong pal who gets a headache when a storm is approaching, we all know somebody who claims they...

Thursday, 27 July 2023 22:59

Loneliness can profoundly impact our physical and emotional health, and a new study from Tulane University has shed light on its significant role in the development of cardiovascular disease among...

Tuesday, 25 July 2023 16:09

Volunteering in late life may be more than just a noble act of giving back to the community; it could be a critical factor in safeguarding the brain against cognitive decline and dementia.

Sunday, 16 May 2021 14:24

The human body is an amazing thing, full of systems, organs, nerves, and vessels that work together in harmony. You’ve seen the body described as a machine, as a city, or even as a factory....

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.