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My husband’s kind of a loner. He’s drained by social situations, so if he’s had a long day hanging out with a group of people is the last thing he wants to do. He’s perfectly happy on his own, and if he doesn’t speak to a friend for years he’s totally fine with that.
So when he gets together with his friends – all whom live in the area, mind you – two or three times a year to play a tabletop game, I let him be. I’m not terribly interested in the game, though sometimes I think that if I gave it a shot, I’d really get into it. There aren’t any girl geeks for me to hang out with down here, so when a geeky night is going on part of me really wants an invite.
But this is a rare time he spends outside of work with his friends, and I don’t want to intrude. Jon doesn’t think I would be, but I think that it’s important for couples to have some separate interests and not spend every free moment together.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have anything in common with your spouse or not have any shared activities that you both enjoy. That would be disastrous. Jon and I both like to hike, to play video games either apart or separately, to read (we often spend evenings cuddled up on the couch together both reading a book), and we have very similar taste in movies and television.
I love that I can watch science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, and more films with Jon. When a fluffy movie comes up that I want to see, I watch it on my own or without Jon. I’d rather do that than force him to watch something he doesn’t enjoy, which makes it less fun for me, and besides we have enough things we both like to watch together anyway.
I might be beating a dead horse a bit, because I feel like this is a piece of common wisdom: it’s important to have your own interests outside of your spouse’s, and you should let your spouse have the same. I know a few people my age who want to do everything with their spouse, and sometimes I feel like that with Jonathan too, so I wanted to remind everyone how important it is.
Sometimes I feel guilty that a day might go by in the house when Jon and I are both home, but aside from meals we don’t spend much more time together than we would if he was at work. He loves playing out in his garden, which is growing rather elaborate. I like my books and my video games, and running around in circles in the yard with the dog. I’ve come to realize that that’s important: we shouldn’t feel pressured to spend our every waking minute together. As long as we make time for each other, it’s also essential that we have time just for ourselves as well.
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*(The above image by federico stevanin is from freedigitalphotos.net).