The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Stress Levels of Homosexual and Heterosexual Couples

The rise of COVID-19 and the increasing social isolation has caused a cascade of changes for individuals in partnered relationships, in which a large number of couples were either around one another for a more extended period of time than their baseline or where apart from each other for a more extended period of time than their baseline. Relationship Science has been used to predict how such shifts in dynamics could impact the relationship during this stressful time. According to the vulnerability-stress-adaptation model (Karney & Bradbury, 1995) stressful situations tend to amplify underlying hardships of the relationship, leading researchers to predict that COVID-19 serving as a stressor would increase the problems between partners. As LGBTQ individuals in relationships have a set of underlying stressors that differs from their heterosexual counterparts (Meyer, 2013), our research question was: Is the added stress of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic affecting these couples differently? The research has indicated that there is a considerable possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the quality, sanctity, cohesiveness, and functionality of LGBT relationships more so than that of heterosexual couples. The goal of this research is to examine the situation on whether LGBT people are faring worse than their “straight” counterparts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study is comprised of mainly college-age individuals surveyed through an online source. The survey consists of two parts that focus on the relationship satisfaction pre-COVID (December 2019 – February 2020) and now (March 2020 – present).