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Home Balance between ''couple'' time and ''alone'' time

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cammy85

cammy85

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Do you ever feel the need for your own ''alone time'' without DH? I am perfectly content with spending all day every day with him, so it''s not like I feel like I need it, but I won''t pass up a night with the girls, and he won''t give up his sport leagues, and I do find that it''s refreshing to get out and be on my own every once in a while (even if it just means I clean the house while he''s out! haha)

So for me, while I am perfectly content to spend every night with DH, I won''t pass up an opportunity to go out and enjoy myself - or let him do the same. I don''t feel like I NEED that time.

How do you all feel about it? Do you need your alone time for your SSB (secret single behaviour - sorry, obscure SATC reference!)? Or are you fine with hanging out with DH all the time?
 
I like my alone time on occasion (as does DH). Right now we''re both so busy though that we are usualyl excited for the nights when we''re both home. On the weekends he gets really excited if I''m going for drinks or dinner with a friend and he doesn''t need to come b/c he can stay hom and have DH time (which consists of sitting on the couch in his PJs playing video games or watching football, and in general being lazy.
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While I love hanging out with Dh (he is the only person person I can take 24-7, haha), I do need alone time. I know he does too, but his alone time is more out with the guys kind of thing, so does that count as alone time? Anyway, I think it''s important for couples to have their own interests/ hobbies, keeps things interesting. And I would go insane otherwise.
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Date: 1/29/2010 11:24:33 AM
Author:cammy85
Do you ever feel the need for your own ''alone time'' without DH? I am perfectly content with spending all day every day with him, so it''s not like I feel like I need it, but I won''t pass up a night with the girls, and he won''t give up his sport leagues, and I do find that it''s refreshing to get out and be on my own every once in a while (even if it just means I clean the house while he''s out! haha)

So for me, while I am perfectly content to spend every night with DH, I won''t pass up an opportunity to go out and enjoy myself - or let him do the same. I don''t feel like I NEED that time.

How do you all feel about it? Do you need your alone time for your SSB (secret single behaviour - sorry, obscure SATC reference!)? Or are you fine with hanging out with DH all the time?
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Though I do have things that I enjoy doing alone, I do not call it "secret single behavior".
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I don''t "need" time away from DH, but I like knowing that I still have my own interests. When going into a relationship, I think everyone should keep some of their own interests, outside of what they enjoy with their SO. My fitness classes and my weekly girls night dinners/The Bachelor watch party are my favorites.
 
Date: 1/29/2010 11:53:54 AM
Author: meresal

Date: 1/29/2010 11:24:33 AM
Author:cammy85
Do you ever feel the need for your own ''alone time'' without DH? I am perfectly content with spending all day every day with him, so it''s not like I feel like I need it, but I won''t pass up a night with the girls, and he won''t give up his sport leagues, and I do find that it''s refreshing to get out and be on my own every once in a while (even if it just means I clean the house while he''s out! haha)

So for me, while I am perfectly content to spend every night with DH, I won''t pass up an opportunity to go out and enjoy myself - or let him do the same. I don''t feel like I NEED that time.

How do you all feel about it? Do you need your alone time for your SSB (secret single behaviour - sorry, obscure SATC reference!)? Or are you fine with hanging out with DH all the time?
Click to expand...
Though I do have things that I enjoy doing alone, I do not call it ''secret single behavior''.
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I don''t ''need'' time away from DH, but I like knowing that I still have my own interests. When going into a relationship, I think everyone should keep some of their own interests, outside of what they enjoy with their SO. My fitness classes and my weekly girls night dinners/The Bachelor watch party are my favorites.
Click to expand...
The SSB was more of a joke, it''s referenced in an episode of Sex and the City - and any time I think of having alone time, I think of that episode. Just as a clarification - Carrie Bradshaw stacks saltines -- she puts grape jelly on them. And she eats them, standing up in the kitchen while reading the latest issue of Vogue. It’s her SSB. She would never let her boyfriend at the time see her do that. It’s what you do in the privacy of your own home (where you likely live solo) - even like face masks, deep pore examination - nothing like pretending you''re single when you go out for an evening or anything like that. If you aren''t familiar with the episode it sounds a lot worse than it actually is. My bad.

I agree that separate interests are great for the relationship, I don''t ever feel that one person should absorb into another - that even though you become a family ''unit,'' that unit is still made up of two individual people.
 
I love my husband. I love doing things with him. We share a lot of similar interests and I enjoy our hobbies together.

But I LOOOOOVE some alone time!

Ideally, I'm good with 1-2 nights per week. I can catch up on my bad TV (I can't believe that DH isn't a fan of the Real Housewives of Orange County) and eat cereal for dinner. D used to be in consulting, which took him away during the weeks and gave him back to me on weekends. That worked for me for a couple of months, but every week night without him was too much.

We try to balance it so that we have a date night and a night to do our own thing every week. We also sometimes go our own way for a weekend. For instance, this weekend he'll probably go up to NH to ice climb and I'm on the fence. I'd love to climb with him, it's been awhile for both of us, but having a weekend day to myself sounds very appealing as well...

We also vacation solo at times. D is a great travel partner (even I can't top his planning), and I love our trips, but I also like having my own vacations. DH just took a 5,000 mile road trip this month and I didn't have the vacation time, so he went with a friend and that was great. I'm planning a girls trip to Chicago soon, which I'm really looking forward to. We're even planning a trip to Switzerland this year and he'll go 5 days before me so he can climb the Matterhorn and I can join him in Zurich afterward. This kind of balance works very well for me.

ETA: about 6 months after we were married I went through a phase where I felt I really needed more of my own time/hobbies. I took a photography course, I took up horseback riding, I took salsa dancing lessons. It was great, but I actually found that I preferred the hobbies I shared with D (rock climing, mountain climbing, golf, etc.) so while I still love my own hobbies, I do genuinely prefer to do things with D.
 
Cammy- I understand now! lol. I don't remember that episode.

Re: Absorbing your SO's intersts. I have a friend that does this in every relationship. She is a really cute girl, and all guys (in the beginning) think that she is the coolest girl ever, because she will go out and do anything they are interested in. Well, after a month they begin to see that she has actually given up all of her own interests in order to be around them 24/7. It is a cycle, and I wish she would find some things that she really enjoys and can do by herself. (She considers doing things by herself = going to work
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Meresal - haha, i figured it just came out wrong. I can see how Secret Single Behaviour can seem not-so-benign haha.

It''s funny, because my hobbies and interests really don''t take me out of the house all that much. I sew, and do some crafts, but I have my little area set up downstairs, so DH can watch TV, play his PS3 or do something else I''m totally not interested it - yet we are still ''together.'' So I feel like I get my ''alone time'' despite the fact we''re actually in the same room, but I didn''t know if that''s weird haha.

I do enjoy having girl time, and being able to talk with them about things I wouldn''t want to talk to DH about haha - and things he doesn''t want to hear about I''m sure as well.
 
I definitely like my alone time! I love my husband, and we spend *a lot* of time together, especially now that I''m only teaching part-time, because he typically only works 25 to 35 hours a week. We were just talking about how much fun it is to have all of this time together during daylight hours, because when I taught FT we only really spent evening hours together during the week.

Anyway . . . as much as we love being together, we definitely enjoy time apart. We each have our "own" rooms in the house, so we always have a place to retreat to. I probably go out with my girlfriends two to four times a month on a weekend night, and my book club meets in our house once a month, so DH always goes out with his guy friends then because he doesn''t like being around for our rowdy book club meetings!

DH used to go on a big international trip with the boys every year, but I think that''s coming to an end now that his friends are starting to have babies. I''ve traveled without DH, too, once as a chaperone for a student trip, several times with my girlfriends, as well as with my sisters and mom.

We also share a handful of hobbies and interests, but we have a lot of very different hobbies and interests, too. So, we spend a good bit of time pursuing our individual interests on our own or with friends.
 
I like when he goes out on the weekends and I can stay home - I spread myself out all over the bed and listen to whatever music I want, as loud as I want. And I watch girly movies!
 
It might be a function of us being together for a long time or that we were in an LDR for 3 years, but we both feel our alone time is crucial. We are both very independent people, which helps. And, we have 100% overlap in close friends, so our group time is always spent together, so "me time" is generally spent alone. Like Haven, we both have a our own rooms in our apartment, and neither of us would think a thing of it if the other spent the whole evening in our respective offices.

Like any couple, we have "date nights" and routines--like watching certain shows or sports teams together, and we make it a priority to eat dinner together as often as we can. We certainly, though, do not feel any need to spend every night together. As for my SSB, most of that is forced.
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It is not that I sneak and get on PS or watch and re-watch runway shows from Fashion Week online. At this point DH knows all my guilty pleasures. It doesn''t mean that he is willing to partake in them, though.
 
I love and cherish my alone time. I love to eat a cupcake for dinner and dance around with my ipod, or order whatever takeout I feel like without asking someone what they want. I sleep so much better alone too. While I''m very independant DH loves to be around others and definitely does not need as much alone time as I do. Sometimes he doesn''t get my need for time alone and it hurts his feeling but I remind him it''s nothing personal I just love my space.
 
DH knows that when I go into the bathroom to take a bath it is MY time. He doesn''t dare get close to that door because he knows I''m relaxing and winding down from the day.
 
hahaha... "alone time" is our secret code for "being intimate with yourself" if you know what I mean... but I know that''s not what you''re referring to.

nah, we''ve never had that. we do most things together, but maybe once a month he''ll go out to the pub with a friend and on another night I''ll go have dinner with my friends. I don''t like to be home alone. of course when he goes out I always say "that''s great", but I prefer if he were home, even if he was playing behind his computer and I was elsewhere in the house. likewise, I think he also doesn''t like to be home alone. but it''s never come up as an issue for us that either of us needs more time to be alone.
 
Right now I feel like I barely see DH. He works late on some nights and I go to bed early, so I might only see him for 45 minutes-which SUCKS.

Right now though its a bit of a blessing in disguise because I am in grad school and can get my work done while he is at work and I don''t have to feel guilty about ignoring him because he''s not home! We do have our days that we spend together when he is off so it works out decently right now, though I wish we could spend a bit more time together some days.
 
While I adore spending time with DH, I adore my nights out alone with my friends and going to the gym by myself. He equally adores his nights out with the lads and he goes fishing. It makes us both happier having some time apart so when we''re together we have tons to talk about and enjoy each others company.
 
We don''t do much alone time simply because we''re usually so busy during the days that we''re more than happy to spend almost all our evening and weekend time together. We do occasionally plan out own things about once a month, where I do things with my girlfriends and he goes out with his guy friends.
 
I love my time by myself to do the things I enjoy, just like DH has his own things. I think it is very important to keep your own identity throughout a marriage, and I understand it can get even more difficult once kids enter the equation should you choose to have them. Establishing the me time early on will help that.

Recently Andy had to start travelling a lot more for work, and having to spend 4 nights a week by myself actually was like a guilty pleasure. I would do the dishes when I felt like it, sprawl out in bed with my dogs watching tv, land make whatever dinner I wanted and didn''t have to take his picky habits into consideration.

It was always the best feeling in the world when he would come home on Friday tho...I missed him bunches during the week.

Now that it calmed back down and he gets to be home, I know we have to get back into scheduling our time alone.
 
We have just enough built in to our weekly schedules that we''re usually ok. DH works evenings typically twice a week, so I get time to read or watch movies or a marathon phonecall with a girlfriend, and on those days, he stays home until the afternoon while I''m at work, so same thing - he catches up on his tv shows on dvd that I hate (I can''t stand anything with blood and violence, and DH loves shows like Dexter or the Shield).

But this was a pretty big issue early on - we were so used to spending as much time together as possible (until a month before we got married, we lived 45 mins apart and didn''t see each other daily) that we didn''t know how to say "Hey, I''m going to go hang out in the study and listen to music and read" or whatever - it felt kinda wrong to not want to be in the same room, but then we both started getting a little aggravated. Things are much better know when we understand that space is a good thing to have every now and then.
 
We both like to have alone time. Mine is when I get home from work and in the mornings on the weekend (I get home much earlier than my husband M-F, and he sleeps late on the weekends). His alone time is after I''ve gone to bed - he''s a night owl and I''m not. It works well for us. We love spending most of our time together, but we know that it''s important to have time by ourselves to do whatever we want.
 
interesting question... FI and I started as BFF''s, so we spent all of our free time together for about a year before we started dating. Neither of us are needy or clingy, but we have a nature ease and comfort with one another and really enjoy spending time together. We intended to set up ''his and her'' rooms in our place, but we ended up putting a bed, couch, computer and TV in one room and we spend most of our time in there together, lol! We each will do our own thing, like reading, crafts/hobbies, tv watching, playing with the dog, talking on the phone, but we very much enjoy being in shared space. On the other hand, we have natural ''alone time'' built into our lives through friends, hobbies, separate personal interests, family visits, etc. We travel separately from time to time, and it''s easy to appreciate time together and apart after having been LDR for 5yrs.
 
While I love spending time with my DH, I do like my alone time as well. Sometimes I wish I had more alone time at home, he gets home before me, so I''m never really alone there, and when we are both home, we spend almost every min together. So I think its important to have separate time too.
 
DH and I have an interesting situation. I used to travel for work allll the time, so I felt like we spent far too much time alone. Especially because while his alone time was comfortably at home, mine was in hotel rooms which was just depressing.

Now, I''m unemployed, so I have all day by myself which is definitely more than enough. DH does his things - he usually plays an intramural sport at least once a week, goes to the gym with a few work friends, etc. Plus, he plays a video game a lot, and that''s alone time for both of us, even though we''re usually in the same room.

So all in all, I think we spend plenty of time alone and occasionally wish we would spend more time together (though I only feel this way after he''s been playing his game for 5 hours on a weekend and I''m ready to throw the controller out the window
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). We are both pretty introverted and like to spend lots of quiet time at home, but I don''t think we ever feel like we need a break from each other.
 
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