By Heather Drabinsky

How do you love your spouse if they have the coronavirus? Here are some practical ways you could assist them during that situation.

Home should be a safe place where families can stay put during the COVID-19 pandemic. For many married couples, this means spending much more time together while avoiding contact with others to remain as healthy as possible. In other cases, however, a spouse may actually have contracted the virus and must stay at home with the other spouse to recover. 

If your spouse is ill with the coronavirus, Psychiatrist Dr. Karl Benzio, Medical Director at Honey Lake Clinic in Greenville, Florida, notes there are many ways you can help them. He suggests that you do your best to provide them with “service and communication, bringing hope, perspective and helping keep a positive, thankful, grateful and conqueror attitude.”

Here are some practical suggestions to love your spouse if he or she has, or has symptoms of, the coronavirus. 

Offer encouragement

When you speak words of life to your spouse, you are refreshing their mind and body without even knowing. If your spouse is ill, maybe use this time to encourage them and tell them all the characteristics you love about them.

Take their load

If your spouse has the coronavirus, now would be a prime time to serve them in love. This may look like taking on their normal household cleaning duties or cooking meals they would usually make themselves. As children are home from closed schools, there may be a higher demand to care for their needs and attention. If your spouse is ill with the virus, this may mean taking responsibility of caring for the children. 

Take care of yourself

Make sure throughout this time that you also prioritise caring for your own health. The last thing you need is to become sick as well. While our knowledge of the coronavirus is constantly evolving, Dr. Daniel Hinthorn, division director of Infectious Diseases at the University of Kansas Medical Center, notes that it’s probably not just exposure to an infected person that will determine whether someone will become infected themselves. One factor that may influence whether a person develops COVID-19 is the overall amount of viral particles that a person encounters. He suggests that you avoid close contact with your spouse, should he or she be ill:

Repeated contacts or very close contact and exposure are more likely to result in transmitting higher loads of the virus so that the spouse also may have an increased risk of developing the illness.

With that in mind, remember that so many other options are in front of you to love your spouse. Dr. Benzio reminds us that “physical isolation doesn’t mean relational, emotional, or psychological isolation.” 

© 2020 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Originally published at focusonthefamily.com.