Days 138 & 139--Better Days

I know that saying this will sound bad, but it is actually true--yesterday was good for me because Barney and I spent much of the day apart, and I got to spend my day shopping with the girls for baby things.  Most marriages have a far, far greater amount of time where the spouses are apart than what we have in our marriage.  We probably average over 20 hours per day each day within the same building, if not room, as one another.  While in many ways, this makes us lucky, it has its own challenges, as I am sure most married people can easily imagine.

No matter how much you love someone, time apart from one another is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy relationship, as long as you are not spending too much time apart or spending the time apart unwisely.  When we lived in the big city, we actually had more time apart than we do now because we both would head out and run various errands here and there throughout the day.  But, here in the country, going anywhere is an ordeal, and with gas prices where they are, it is not fun just to drive for the fun of it.  So, we tend to wait until we've collected a variety of errands and then will go together, usually with the kids, and run them all at once.

None of that is bad by any means, but it can be hard to decompress from stressful or tense moments with one another if there is no time apart, and if we aren't careful, tension can really start to build.  All of that to say that it was great for me to get to go out and shop with the girls yesterday.  It made for a much more fun evening, and then that carried over to today.  We also got a lot of outside social interaction today with church, a visit from a good friend, and then dinner with new friends.  It's amazing to me how sometimes what our relationship seems to need most is interaction from people outside of our relationship.