Accept that none of you is being rational If you know each other’s habits you can always discuss them and find a compromise, but if you or they are caught hiding something, the whole relationship can break down. Just remember that distrust is always worse than disagreement. It’s the easiest thing in the world to skate over something because you think they might not like it or it’s too small to mention. Give each other as complete a picture as possible of what you do.

Do you clean your groceries? With soap, or with disinfectant, or with neither? Packaged food too? Do you take your shoes off when you come into the house? Do you separate “inside” and “outside” clothes? Do you disinfect your phone if you’ve been using it outside? Your house keys? Door handles? If you’re in a place that doesn’t require masks, do you wear one anyway? What about gloves? What about when you exercise outside? Do you get takeout food from restaurants? What about deliveries? You may be astonished to hear what other people do, or don’t do. Whatever your precautions against coronavirus, you take them for granted by now. Any reluctance on your part will breed suspicion that you’re going to flout the rules behind their backs. (A couple of days later the city I live in mandated it anyway.) Chances are you’ll have to make some concessions accept them gladly. I wasn’t wearing masks when I walked in the street or rode my bike, but my friends asked me to start doing so two weeks before we saw each other. Agree to all follow the same rules, whatever they are You may be able to ward off potential areas of friction.

So start out by discussing your underlying motives for teaming up. If we had mutual friends staying nearby, I’d be inclined to let those friends come over for dinner, while my housemates might not. It might seem obvious: you just want more company! But what if you and your friends have different expectations? I discussed joining a couple I know at a house in the countryside for part of the summer, and learned that for them the point is less about being with other people than about getting out of the city. Four times a very small risk is still very small, but all the same: with a great bubble comes great responsibility. If you were living alone and you start bubbling with three other people, all of whom take the same precautions as you, your chances of catching the coronavirus will be potentially four times as high as they were-and so too will your chances of infecting someone you pass in the street or in the store. You can be great friends with someone you would never even contemplate starting a business with. And what you’re going into isn’t a friendship, but a partnership. The pandemic forces us into binary choices: you can probably join only one quaranteam at a time. By the same token, don’t be resentful if you’re not someone else’s choice to join a bubble.

Be time up pandemic pod