9 Tips For Avoiding Divorce and Murder During Quarantine
None of us are ready to spend every waking and non-waking moment with our significant other, but these tips will help ensure you don’t immediately leave quarantine and file for divorce. Additionally, they will help keep the quar murder rate down.
1. Spice up your marriage.
How many jars in your spice drawer have gone unused since your mother-in-law stayed with you in 2015? Time to crack them open. Use a new spice every night, maybe start with turmeric. Woah! It makes your food bright orange and permanently stains everything it touches, fun! Tarragon? What’s that? There’s no way of knowing. Better dump half the bottle on some rice and see what happens. Make a sauce with habanero and create your very own version of Hot Wings. You’ll be crying hot spicy pain tears, but you’ll temporarily forget that you glanced at a pair of beard trimming scissors and wondered if they could be used to, you know, stab someone.
2. Buy a plunger.
After having brutal diarrea post-Hot-Ones, you decided to eat only buttered pasta and now you’ve been constipated for three days. Your next bowel movement will be quite voluminous. And when you’re on quarantine day ten, a simple clogged toilet could spark divorce or an “accidental” tumble down the basement stairs. Good thing you sprung for a high-quality plunger instead of a $40 bottle of Purell.
3. Introduce a Third to your relationship.
Download Thrinder. Scroll through prospective Thirds with your spouse. Agree on a person you like — Aleksander! He looks fun, down-to-earth and healthy. Now find a balloon. Inflate it. Draw a face on it. Name it Aleksander. You have your Third.
4. Role play.
Imagine you’re in a quaint Italian villa. The sun gloriously cascades through the rustic window panes. You’re a doctor. Your spouse is an elderly, lifelong smoker. There’s only one ventilator left, but two patients are in need of the life-saving device. (Aleksander can play patient #2). Who lives? Who dies? How do you decide? This is too much pressure! In the end, you choose Aleksander because he never yelled at you for squeezing the toothpaste wrong in a way that felt like it wasn’t about toothpaste.
5. Build a fort.
On second thought, build two forts, preferably constructed on the farthest corners of the house. Fill it with snacks, alcohol and a weighted blanket. Settle in with a craft cocktail and list the reasons you fell in love with your spouse since lately it’s been nearly impossible to remember even one of them.
6. Experiment with drugs.
Do you have Cough syrup from 2006? How about an old bottle of tranquilizers your grandmother gave you? Expired DayQuil? That’s the ticket. Take the recommended dosage, drink plenty of fluids, and please please please hide the knives.
7. Read a book.
One book. Actually, you know what? You don’t even have to read it. Just hold a book in front of your face to give the illusion of reading, that way you don’t have to look your beloved in the eye. You don’t know what you might be capable of if you have to look at them for one second longer.
8. Get in your car and go “vroom vroom!”
Buckle up but don’t turn on the engine, this is your time to pretend you’re a racecar driver, an Ice Road Trucker, or someone escaping a kidnapping. It’s much more doable than meditation. You’ll find it cathartic to “vroom vroom!” past an imaginary Porsche or “beep beep!” at a methed-up truck driver who nearly runs you off the road. Fake driving not your thing? You could also hop into the passenger seat with one of the throw pillows your spouse hates and scream into it. This is the perfect escape for whenever you find yourself contemplating what household products are poisonous yet tasteless and odorless.
9. Casually start digging a hole in the backyard.
There’s a rusty shovel in the garage that was there when you moved in. Go get it. Hold it over your shoulder, emotionless, as you saunter out the back door. Dig a vaguely rectangular, six-foot deep hole. When your partner asks what you’re doing, laugh and say “it’s an art piece I’m working on.” You’ll find their demeanor ever-so-accommodating for the remainder of the quar.
