Being A Couple

My husband and I have been living with very different work schedules for quite some time now.  Often we see each other for just a few minutes each day, sometimes for many days at a time.  It is hard to maintain that feeling of being together when that happens.  He has had a big disappointment recently.  I haven’t really been available to process it with him.  I think it was getting to the point that he really needed to vent to someone, and I wasn’t around much. He tried to do this with our son and daughter-in-law who live with us.  They really didn’t respond in the way that he had hoped.  When I got home from work today, he told me about his feelings.  He just wanted me to sympathize with him, and to agree that what happened wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t.  I agree with him.  Even if I didn’t agree with him, I know how hard it is for him to go through this.  That is what being a couple is all about.  We are team against the rest of the world. 

At times, we have drifted apart, we have had times when we have lost that felling of being a team.  We sometimes begin to look at each other as part of the other team-the world that is against each of us.  We have to stick together.  There is no one else we can count on. Especially now that our children are grown and moving into their own lives, and into their own “couple” relationships, we have to rely on each other.  Our children’s alliance is to their partners now.  We are secondary.  That is the way it is supposed to happen, but it is a shift that I am not sure that we really appreciated until recently. 

We have been married  for 30 years, and have been together for 33 years.  That is longer together than separate.  I see a lot of couples who split up.  They either lost the sense of being a team, or it was never there.  I find it intriguing to see it happen in others.  To be honest, we have come close to losing that more than once.  My children might be surprised to know that; my daughter calls us her “rock”, my son and daughter-in-law refer to us as an example in comparing  other family members who have split up.

Time alone together is a major part of being a couple.  We are making an effort to spend more time with each other.  Last night we went out for dinner together to a neighborhood restaurant. Nothing fancy, but a chance to talk, and just be together.  It helped.  Yay team!

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