Opinion: Why my marriage sabbatical from Piers Morgan worked wonders

When a computer becomes painfully slow without any discernible cause, you "switch off and restart". That's what a marital sabbatical does. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

I've just come to the end of a six-week marriage sabbatical - as in, six weeks away from my husband and marriage. It's the longest we've spent apart since the start of the pandemic. In fact, I don't think we've spent more than a couple of nights apart for over two years, and he'll agree with me when I say: every married couple (who has lived through three lockdowns) should do this.

You know when your computer becomes painfully slow without any discernible cause and the answer is always to "switch it off at the mains and restart"? That's what a marriage sabbatical does.

There was nothing wrong. We weren't glitching. It wasn't like the little rainbow wheel known as 'Satan's beachball' had started turning in my head every time he spoke (although I can't speak for him). But when you consider how unnatural it was to spend every waking hour in your other half's company for all those long months, it's a miracle that any couple – married or not – made it through unscathed.

Plenty of couples I know did not. There's a reason five couple friends either split up at the peak of the pandemic or are experiencing some form of delayed post-traumatic marital disorder now. If you were on the edge, Covid tipped you over.

As an acid-tongued French friend put it circa September 2020: "I promised to love, cherish and obey. But nobody said anything about having breakfast, lunch and bloody dinner with my husband, day after day." She had a point. When relative chewing volumes become a focal point of your day, you find yourself telling an anecdote (that wasn't great the first time) twice, and every evening involves the box-set death march, you're spending too much time together.

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In the US, marital summer sabbaticals are A Thing – particularly in New York. When I was living there, a particular breed of Manhattanite would go their separate ways in early June and see one another only at weekends for the rest of the summer. One – usually the husband, I'm afraid – would stay in the city "for work reasons" and enjoy a vigorous affair with his PA, while the other – usually the wife – would head off to the Hamptons and strike up a summer romance with her tennis instructor. Remember The Seven Year Itch? That was the basic premise.

This is not, however, what either I or therapists would advocate. There's a surprising amount of detail online on how to conduct your marital sabbatical "safely". Shrinks caution about the importance of "your relationship being strong and supportive" before you so much as entertain the thought. Certainly, there cannot be any suggestion "that the relationship is at risk of breaking down and the sabbatical becoming permanent."

Otherwise, the marriage guidance counsellors seem to be very much in favour. The benefits of "taking time away from your daily routines to nurture your own creative, intellectual or spiritual strengths," are huge, apparently, with the ultimate aim to become, once again, "fully expressed human beings."

I have no idea what that means, but if it's what I'm feeling now that my husband and I are back in the same country and house, I'm all for it.