My boyfriend and I work pretty much opposite schedules, which means it can be hard for us to find time to spend together, especially time we can spend with just each other and not the group of friends who also want to see him on his off time. Because he’s in the restaurant business, he goes into work in the late afternoon when I’m leaving my desk job, he’s coming home when I’m going to bed, and I’m leaving in the morning when he’s still snoring.

We both have off during the day on Saturday and Sunday (when he is asleep till noon) and on evenings Monday and Tuesday. It’s not a ton of time, and since we don’t live together we don’t even get to see each other for those five minutes that our paths cross during waking hours on the other days. And Monday nights are volleyball with a big group, and Sundays are football with friends, etc.

It sucks a bit.

But as much as I value the time I do get to spend with him, I no longer feel inclined to make that alone time into a big production. Yesterday is a good example:

E: What do you want to do tonight?
Me: Go to a movie?
E: There’s nothing to see.
Me: Dunno then, whatever, we could just chill.
E: No, we should Do Something.

And probably a dozen more times over the course of the evening that we spent doing nothing but watching TV, he repeated “we should go Do Something” even though we couldn’t think of anything to do.

I don’t care if we don’t Do Something every time we hang out. I like hanging out and watching TV with him, not leaving the house, not having deep, meaningful discussions, not spending a bunch of money. I like sitting on the couch and reading while he holds my feet at the other end and watches something I’m not interested in.

I can appreciate more that casual time is still important time and we don’t need to Do Something to make our limited time together into something meaningful. I think it’s sweet that he wants to do things for me and so on, but I’m tired of the push to make things into a production. Sometimes it makes me feel like we’re failing to make the best of our time, and that’s frustrating.

When we’ve been married for a zillion years, remind me of this post and I’ll long for the days when he wanted everything to be special bonding time. But for now…

Honey, can we just SIT DOWN for awhile? Just you and me? Let’s eat what’s already in the house and watch a movie one of us owns or something on TV. Let’s not do anything tonight.