Are ‘big’ personal decisions back on the agenda after two long years?

The following things have happened recently: a friend's partner broke up with him, another bought a house with his girlfriend, a third is engaged and expecting a baby, and another broke up with his partner. I also moved in with my girlfriend.

So far, so normal. Except all of this happened in the space of about a month or so, specifically it happened in March 2022, two years after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It seems, as the gears of normal life begin to spin again, that all the forced introspection and collective hurt has made us re-evaluate our lives and begin to make big decisions. Not that I thought about it that way when my girlfriend and I decided to move in together. In fact it seemed natural, a mix of timing (my flat's contract was up) and money (shared rent). Oh, and of course we wanted to be together. But it occurred to me that something else was at play – after all we’ve had two years of serious thinking and the result had to be big decisions, didn't it?

During the Covid-19 pandemic many of us were struck with decision fatigue. Especially younger people. According to a US study, Millennials, of which I am one, were more likely to struggle with day-to-day decisions than any other group. Apparently I wasn’t the only one eating the same pasta dish seven nights in a row in the middle of lockdown while endlessly re-watching Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, therefore relieving myself of the decisions of what to eat for dinner and what to watch in the evening.

Faced with stress, uncertainty, anxiety and fear (at least in the early days of the pandemic), Many of my generation essentially shut down systems, turned onto auto-pilot and got through it. We hunkered down with our partners, or by ourselves, and therefore were put into a situation where you got to know the other person and your own mind pretty well – for better and worse.

Knowing yourself is the key to the good life, it seems. The Buddha said it, and Confucius, and Socrates. It is perhaps the greatest mystery a person faces, but also the most easily ignored. Who has the time between work and exercise and cooking and going to the pub and being with friends and scrolling on our phones and drinking oat flat whites and tweeting our expert opinions on absolutely everything? Until suddenly we did have the time, and we sat with our minds and saw the mess they were in.

The other key to a good life, as professed by the Stoics, is to understand what is in your control and what is not. Reading Julian Barnes’s wonderful new novel, Elizabeth Finch, where the titular philosophy teacher inspires Barnes's student protagonist to see the world in another way, I am reminded of Epictetus: “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.” After accepting that the pandemic took many things out of our control, we are now embracing those things in our control.

Two of my friends, the ones whose relationships came to an end, both said the same thing to me. They realised during this time that they were just friends with their partners, the romance was gone. Spending 24 hours a day with someone for an extended period is likely to bring out the real nature of a relationship. Whether or not the way your partner loudly sneezes, or the way they slurp their spaghetti, or cut their toenails in the living room bothered you or not became intensified. One person may be perfectly happy on the sofa watching movies every night, while the other was pining to go out and party at the first opportunity – stripped back they realised they weren’t a match after all

Likewise, the opposite is true. I was alone for most of the last two years, in my flat in east London, but wished I was with my now partner – fortunately she thought the same. We both came to the realisation that we were, to put it in an easily understood cliche, missing something in our lives. It was a lonely time in which I spent much of it in my room away from my housemates, phoning her when I could and getting through the rest of the time in the ways I knew how: reading, writing, watching Anthony Bourdain and cycling into Essex.

Other relationships seem to have strengthened already existing bonds. Some couples that came through the last two years seem stronger than ever, a shared trauma and the knowledge that you can spend 100 per cent of your time with that person, and even enjoy it, is remarkable. Hence one of my friends making the decision to buy a house, and another deciding to get engaged and have a baby. Can you be more certain of someone than after having been through the last two years?

Meanwhile there is the so-called "great resignation" with a number of adults in the UK considering quitting and changing jobs and suggestions of a 95 per cent increase in divorce enquiries to law firms. It appears that all this introspection – and the restraint we were forced into during the pandemic – has had an effect.

Theodore Roosevelt said about decision making that the best thing you could do is the right thing, the next best was the wrong thing, and worst thing you could do was make no decision at all. After two years of making fewer choices, it seems "big" decisions are back on the menu – right or wrong doesn’t matter.