How To Get Along With Your Roommate When Your Roommate is Your Spouse

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. How the hell do we follow that formula during quarantine?

I watched Sex and The City 2 last night (on Netflix now, you’re welcome). It was truly what I needed to feel better — about myself, my life, and a future where we can get dressed up and meet our girlfriends for cocktails at a trendy city bar.

I am desperate for an evening of intimate female companionship — without men and without children. I know we are all desperate for that.

Watching Carrie and Big mull over the idea of taking 2 days a week apart, I didn’t think the concept was all that unconventional. Unlike Charlotte, I thought it was quite brilliant.

When you wake up together, go to bed together, and now, roam around the same house all day every day together, the thrill of marital bliss is so far gone you can’t remember the last time the two of you felt excited to see one another.

It made perfect sense to me. She would get 2 days a week to write, and he would get the same 2 days to do the things that annoy Carrie, like watch TV with his shoes on the couch while eating takeout.

And it got me thinking…

Every couple should be able to make up their own rules in a relationship. Or as Carrie says, “Take the tradition and decorate it your own way.”

After all, there are many different types of marriages. Look at couples with a spouse in the military. They see each other but a few times a year when the husband or wife is deployed. Look at celebrities. They have separate homes from their spouses that act as safe havens for when they need a break from each other. Look at couples where one or both people travel frequently for work.

The reunion is so much sweeter after you’ve had time to remember why you love and want and need your man or woman friend.

It’s not that I want a break from my marriage. Or that I’m condoning taking a break from your marriage. It’s comforting to know you have your own space, your own goals, and your own sense of self in the realm of now and forever because you can so easily get lost in what your partner wants out of life that you forget what you want.

That’s why relationships are so challenging. You don’t always want the same thing at the same time.

---

Want some science-backed ways to keep the sparkle in your relationship? Here are a few trusty articles from NYTParenting.

How to Reconnect With Your Partner After Having Kids

How to Work From Home Alongside Your Partner Without Losing It

My Marriage has a Third Wheel: Our Child

Takeaway thought

Does being married mean you have to follow the marked rules of marriage?

Be you.

XOXO,

Ashley