Alone Time
Something Eric and I both hold near and dear to our hearts is our ALONE TIME!
Eric has been away for the last week and I’ve been chilling at the house by myself. It’s been a really lovely week actually. I was able to watch what I wanted when I wanted on TV (which wasn’t much, the TV wasn’t on nearly as much as it usually is) and the house is cleaner than it has been in a long time.
Alone time is something Eric and I both treasure a lot. I went away on two girls weekends this year leaving Eric alone for 4-5 days and he enjoyed that. It worked well for us because I like getting away with girlfriends and he enjoys having the house to himself. Win-win!
I see and know of lots of couples who spend ALL their time together. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t work well with our personalities as we both need time to ourselves every once in awhile. Plus I figure it doesn’t hurt to be given the opportunity to miss someone
Even after we’re married I plan to regularly take girls weekends/trips away and I’m sure Eric would like to do the same. After enduring six week stretches apart during the year we were long distance five days to a week really feels like nothing 
Questions of the day: Do you enjoy alone time? If you are in a relationship do you and your partner tend to take weekends/weeks apart or no?
Well, you know how I feel about alone time!! It’s so important for me. When I am in a relationship, I will still make time for alone time. Luckily the sport of running helps in that regard, to some extent, since I do some of my running alone. But I would still want to read alone, or go for walks by myself, or most importantly – SHOP BY MYSELF. I am not a ‘shop with other people’ type! Except with my friend Brooke, I enjoy shopping with her because she understands that it has to be like turbo speed shopping or I get cranky!
And I will still take trips, like the ones we’ve taken! I think it’s true to stay true to yourself in a relationship – so if you did marathon trips with girlfriends before, I think it’s great to continue to do them (if your finances allow for this). I am so glad that I will always have our running rendezvous to look forward to!!
Alone time is sacred to me! I don’t know what I would have to talk about with my partner if I didn’t live a little life away from him.
i adore alone time!!!! though my husband will be all like you’re not allowed to go away for long stretches of time, but i think it’s so valuable. and i think in the end he appreciates it as well. when he goes away, I’m like “YES! i get the place to myself!” it’s awesome!
I definitely need my time alone, I feel like that’s when my creative juices kick in. I start doing scrapbook projects I’ve been putting off for months, cleaning my room, watching my favorite shows, etc. I’m introverted in a lot of ways, and one of the big ones is that I feel energized when I’m by myself. Being with other people too much is tiring and sometimes I just need to get away.
That’s one of the reasons I love living alone. I’m with people all day at work and then at night I just come home and I relax/do whatever I want to do. I see my boyfriend on (most) weekends. This is also a nice set up because just when I need a break, it’s Monday but then Friday comes and I can’t wait to see him again : )
My boyfriend lives 3000 miles away from me right now — we get PLENTY of alone time. I am with you though; I think it is important to have your separate activities and time from each other. I am with Lisa; I think that running is a great time to be alone but that hopefully there are other times as well!
Actually I am not sure how Mr. L and I will fare if we are actually in the same place for an extended amount of time. We may drive each other crazy!
I cherish my alone time so much! I am so introverted that being alone is where I recharge and refuel my mind. I live with my mom now and we are both the same in this respect so it works out well for us! But I worry if I date someone who is more extroverted than I am, sometimes they just don’t understand an introvert’s need to be alone.
Honestly, I do not remember the last time me and my husband spent a night apart! Probably our stag/stagette last summer…
I think we have done a couple boys/girls trips but those were when we were just dating.
I require alone time, lots of it. Trying to teach that to the 7 month old haha.
I love my alone time! Sometimes it’s nice to have the whole house to yourself and do whatever you want. Not that Brian says I can’t do certain things, but you know what I mean. We definitely each take weekends away from each other. I enjoy running while he enjoys biking, so we have separate groups of friends for each of those
ps- we need to do another girls weekend!
I crave alone time – Nathan hates it. I’m lucky if I get a couple of hours to myself every few weeks!
After doing the whole LDR thing for 8 months Spike and I are a-ok with having alone time. His job takes him out of town for a couple days every other week and that’s my time to do whatever I want, clean the house, talk on the phone til late, play on the computer, etc… We totally respect “me” time and encourage it but we also definitely enjoy those rare vacations of days on end spent with each other. Balance is key!
I work at home alone, so oftentimes I’m craving to be with people, my husband included, when the day is over. But occasionally I go out to run errands by myself and I’m like “wow, it’s so nice to just move at my own pace and not get pulled in some random direction!” LOL. And I definitely think I need more girl’s weekends. I’ve actually never been on one, although I do dinner with friends every so often. I rarely travel without my husband except for work, which doesn’t really count. I should see if some of my friends would be interested…
Yes! I love alone time. I need to pretty frequently or I can become cranky. I mean, it’s different since Peter and I live so far apart, but we are on Skype all the time, so once in a while I need to take a few hours by myself. Like Lisa said, running helps with that!
I hold my alone time dear! I lived alone for almost 9 years before moving in with my boyfriend. I loved living alone. I loved being able to do whatever I wanted. Now that I live with my boyfriend my gym time is my alone time. I also spend time with friends and sometimes he hangs out with his friends and I stay home. It’s a really important element to a happy relationship. Spending 24/7 with each other isn’t always good!
I think the complete lack of alone time was one of the many reasons my last relationship didn’t work. He would just assume that it was ok to be at my house all the time, and would say, “ok I’ll be there at 5 tonight.” Ummm . . . no. I need my space too there bud. Back off.
As someone that’s always been really independent, I think alone time is so important. I mean, yah, it would be nice to WANT to spend all your time with someone, but I feel like the only way to keep it that way is to not spend all your time with them. I look at my parents as a pretty solid example for what kind of relationship I want – they’ve been married HAPPILY for like 30 years – and I think a big part of why it works so well is because they don’t do every single thing together. My dad travels for work, so he’s away one week out of every month and so when he gets back they’re actually happy to see each other. Time apart really, really helps.
Kyle and I spend a lot of time together – we have more or less the same circle of friends, but we enjoy having “me” time as well. He likes to go hang out with the guys and I enjoy just curling up on the couch and watching chick flicks. Even if we’re still at home together, I’ll read a book on the couch beside him while he watches TV. For me, alone time doesn’t mean we necessarily have to be “alone” alone, just as long as we are still doing what we like without leaving the other person feeling neglected.
Andrew travels 30% of the time for poker and I love it. It’s a nice chance to be alone. Last summer, he was gone for two months and I didn’t like that (I visited twice) but still, the occasional week away does us both good
I LOVE that photo of you two!!
We are big into “alone time.” I am better at making plans to do things with my friends without him (either girls nights or weekends away) but J isn’t quite as good at it. From the very beginning of our relationship we made it clear that we didn’t want to spend all our time together.
I have some friends that are glued to their significant other’s hip and it drives me nuts. Can’t we go see a chick flick without the boys? How about shopping? Plus it’s so much harder to arrange schedules for 4 people instead of 2 people!
I think I act super clingy, but I love love loveee being alone I just don’t admit it!
I think its great that both you and Eric like alone time. I’m sure you’re ready to be reunited with him though! I love my alone time and tend to need lots of it. Ever since moving to GA, I’ve had lots of it. =) Have a safe flight home, friend and Merry Christmas!
since we are so used to being apart, I have no doubt that we’ll need to make sure we have time alone. I know that I definitely need it, even if it’s just an hour or so during the day.
It’s funny because I don’t like being alone but Tyler and I both have plenty of alone time together in the house or same area if that makes sense. But we never get sick of each other and have gone days (on vacation) where we were together literally the whole time and we loved it. I’ve always liked being surrounded by people and don’t really like being alone anyways.
I have definitely always been a fan of alone time, especially time away from large groups of people haha. However, I even like my alone time from Eric and both of us get that a lot since we don’t go to bed or wake up at the same time, so every night he has 1-2 hours of alone time, and on weekend mornings I have a good 4 hours of alone time each day
I like this. I will say though that we don’t tend to take trips without each other unless it is for a specific reason like a bachelorette party or all of my college friends getting together. We just love traveling together so much that we don’t like to spend a lot of our travel money on traveling without each other. If we had an endless supply of money, this would probably not be the case and we’d just travel with and without each other happily haha. When Eric goes away I do enjoy the house to myself though, it’s definitely not any cleaner, oops! But I’m with you, the TV is on a lot less. In fact, Eric is out getting dinner with a friend right now and it’s silent in here haha.
I enjoy being with my spouse most of the time and wouldn’t necessarily want to live apart, but if we got jobs that took us in that direction I would consider it at least in the short term. We have done a couple of stints of being apart for several weeks, which kind of sucked. However, I do enjoy when one of us has the occasional weekend away to visit family or friends or to go to a conference.
I like alone time – although I don’t get much of it because Brian is usually around most of the time. Sometimes we do different things on weekend nights or on the weekends but we haven’t really gone anywhere (besides work trips) without each other over night and those work trips have been very few.
I love my alone time. When Matt and I started dating (and years into the relationship) we only saw each other on the weekends. Now that we live together it’s nice for both of us to take a timeout. I think it’s healthy
Alone time is absolutely necessary!! Even more so after having kids
My hubby and I both LOVE our alone time. Some people think we’re a bit odd but it totally works for us (and we think they’re a bit odd!). And it’s so nice to clean the house and have it stay that way….
YES, alone time is so important! It helps keep a relationship healthy!
Absolutely, I think it’s healthy to have some alone and independent time to do what you like to do and just give yourself space to think. Some people ask why I sometimes show up or do things without my husband, and it makes me shake my head! Sometimes we just want to do our own thing, we have some separate interests and that’s just what happens! I think it’s a good sign to have some independence, it means you are truly comfortable in your relationship to be able to do what you like to do!
The longest the hubby and I have ever been apart is 2 days when he went away (2 hour drive away) for work. It was nice to have the house to myself for a couple days, but also scary at night.
Alone time is a MUST for any married couple like us. Love my hubby dearly, but oh lord. If I didn’t ave me time I would lose who I am!