My Favorite Ritual

As a couple, honestly, neither Joey nor I is too clingy. Although we have a lot of mutual friends that we spend time with together, we also often spend time alone with friends. Since I've lived here longer than Joey has, I see "other" friends pretty often. And I spend a lot of nights in the lab or (lately) running. It's not rare for Joey to be home and in bed before I get there -- in fact, it probably happens two or three times a week.

Our weekends are sometimes so full -- the afternoons and nights are dedicated to (again) running and lab, or to hanging out with groups of friends. In fact, if we are going out at night or on a weekend, there's a good 80% chance that at least one of our friends (usually Rob) is with us. This is not a complaint; I'm glad we have so many friends to fill our lives and our time. We are very lucky to have people other than each other to connect with; they give us time and space to explore other relationships and to talk about other interests. And having Rob with us most of the time provides endless (literally endless, as he never stops talking) hours of entertainment.

And we do get to have the occasional date night, like last night (when we went to a concert) or last Sunday (when we went out for our anniversary dinner), and those are great.

But my favorite thing is our weekend morning kind-of-ritual. It happens at least one morning of the weekend; we wake up slowly, around the same time. If one of us wakes up first, then the other will usually just watch tv. But then we are both awake. We talk and laugh for hours -- literally hours! There are tickle fights and cuddles. And then one of us will do something that we know will irritate the other (there is a big list for both of us), and then some sort of wrestling will ensue. This time gives us the chance to do all of the things we don't have time to do during the week (like, ahem, each other...). And it's swiftly becoming my favorite one or two hours of the week.