The other day I happened to be sitting with a group of married women. One of these women, whose husband was coming home from a business trip the next day, started to do a little cheer out of excitement for her husband’s return.
The other women at the table seemed puzzled: “How long have you been married?” a few of them asked.
They started to chime in about how they loved for their husbands to leave on business trips or about how they wished their husbands took trips on occasion. The consensus was that although they recognized the importance of quality time, there was something freeing about not having to address anyone else’s needs for a while.
If I were a little younger, I probably would have thought their desire for their husbands to be out-of-sight for a stretch was kind of sad. After all, shouldn’t loving someone mean that you should want that person to be around? Now that I am a little older and have a couple more years of marriage under my belt however, I can better understand the need for “me time.”
I still love for my husband to be home but while I don’t think I would rejoice if he were away on a business trip, I can understand that free-to-be-me feeling that comes when you have the house to yourself. In those very, very rare moments when I am both husband and kid-free (seriously, I think it happens about one or two times a year) I relish my alone moments.
I love being able to watch whatever I want on any television in the house and not argue over the remote. I can relax knowing that the only dishes in the sink are the ones that I make, and I can eat cereal for dinner if I want to and not care whether anyone else is hungry. I can write without my husband calling me upstairs three times to talk about the new showerhead, something that he has done three times since I’ve been writing this very post.
It doesn’t mean that I love him any less than I did in the days when I felt like love meant being attached at the hip. It’s just that I better understand that even in the “us” that we have become, there is still a him and a me, and sometimes the “me” part just needs time alone. It gives me time to take care of me and to miss him a little bit. And although I don’t mind for him to go out of town, I’m still cheering when he comes home.
Are you happy when your spouse is away? Does being happy alone mean you love your spouse any less?
Aja Dorsey Jackson is a freelance writer and public relations consultant in Baltimore, Maryland. Find out more about her at www.ajadorseyjackson.com or follow her on twitter @ajajackson.