Our Normal
- gprentice8
- Aug 1, 2017
- 2 min read
Everybody has their own ‘normal’. Everyone is different.
For us our normal is living separately for 4 days a week. He leaves on Sunday night/ Monday morning and returns on a Friday – usually before I am home from work (traffic and PT dependent). We have done this pretty much for the full 7 years we have been together. There was a brief 6 months were we actually shared a roof for a 153 days and nights (give or take the odd exercise or my own work trip) but this was short lived as his next posting was due and off he went. I promise I played my part as a dutiful housewife well… it was purely circumstantial!
I always get asked
“How do you do it?”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
My answer - yes it’s hard. Yes I get lonely. But secretly (dare I say it) there are actually a lot of benefits…. Yes i have to plan my weekend’s way in advance. Yes I spend half of my weekends in a car and yes I do get lonely.
BUT
I have the bed to myself at least 4 nights a week. I get to choose what I want to watch on TV, when I want to watch it. I don’t have to cook dinner if it don’t want to and I equally won’t be judged for slobbing in my PJ’s from 5.01PM with a bag of doughnuts and a bottle of wine until I fall asleep on the sofa!
In my mind – and I don’t mean to brag - I believe have the best of both worlds.
There’s the age old saying ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and, the majority of the time, this is true. I cherish the time we do get to spend together. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with spending time on the sofa in a vegetative state, we always plan something to do (a movie, dinner, visiting a friend or place) so we are always making memories.
As cheesy as it sounds, we make the most of the time we have together and I think our relationship is better for it.
My 'me time' may be longer than everyone else’s in an average week, but as very independent beings, we love it. It’s our normal.
GL
- x -