Whatever the “average” or “normal” is doesn’t really matter. What works for you, in your relationship?
A really close friend of mine has a fiery relationship like fireworks. They spend a lot of time apart and make every second count when they’re together. My relationship is much more like a comfy blanket - the stereotypical “best friends” who do almost everything together. We’re both on quite different ends of the spectrum. Mine works for me. Hers works for her.
So ultimately, you need to figure out what works for you and hopefully you can negotiate a comfortable level that also works for the other person in the relationship with you. What works for other people really has no impact
Yeah. I think when you can find someone who has similar expectations for togetherness and apartness, it is a real blessing.
It doesn’t matter whether you both barely see each other or are joined at the hip – the important thing is that you’re both happy with the arrangement.
We spend most of our time in the evening together, though a lot of it is “business,” which includes ushering the kids through the evening routine - dinner, bath, book, sleep - then the two of us sitting down together after they’re asleep to relax, maybe have dinner and watch TV. I usually try to take an evening walk to get some alone time, and my husband loves video games, which often prevents the two of us from talking (he has a headset).
I’d like to go back to the way we did things before our daughter was born - all of us ate together as a family, then the bedtime routine started, then my husband and I had more downtime in the evening to relax together and get things in order before bed so we woke up to a cleaner home. That’ll happen eventually when our daughter gets a little older and begins to eat more solids and can stay up a bit later (she gets tired right around dinner time, so I’m usually putting her to sleep while my husband hangs out with my son while he eats). Until then, though, we just have to hang on. Our lack of time together has not only resulted in less adult fun time, but higher tension levels. It should ease with time.
Mig and I spend a few hours every evening in the house together but less than an hour in the same room unless it’s the weekend. He hangs out with his brother in brother’s room and I hang out in the other room. Still we holler at each other occasionally. We even sleep separately because he can’t tolerate the bed and I honestly don’t care for the snoring.
We’ve been like this and happy for six years so far.
Virtually all time outside of work spent is together, we’re best friends, we can parallel play as well as play with each other, usually spend face time with outside friends together too unless some friend is having a crisis, blah de blah. I love having him around, even if just in the background.
Apart from a 3 hours per week of coursework (for me) and a couple hours per week of Yoga (for her,) we’re together virtually 24/7.
I may arse about on the internet if she watches something of no interest to me, but most of our television viewing is planned and done together. She doesn’t watch Lost, so once a week I stay up a little later than her (not a difficult task) and watch it by myself. Got through the whole of Battlestar Galactica that way, too.
If there’s another person on the planet that I could spend that much time with without stabbing, I should be very much surprised.
My bf and I have been together for 2 years. We have separate residences, although my recent move has us living less than a mile apart. So we are still figuring out some of our times.
The rule of thumb is that we spend Fri night - Mon morning together. And that usually is actual together time. We usually stay at his house, and he’s king of his kitchen, so sometimes that means I hang out on the couch while he makes breakfast/dinner - but we’ll take back and forth while he’s doing that. We’ll usually each spend some time on emails and such - but not for very long. The weekends are “our times” and usually whatever we do, we do it together.
What’s nice is that we know we will have Mon - Thurs nights to ourselves. So time with friends or alone time is usually scheduled for then. We email each other during the day at work, or text. He calls me every weeknight at 10 to say good night and talk about our days. Usually it’s only a 10-15 minute call - just to hear each other’s voice and say I love you.
A lot of people ask us why we don’t live together, and I think it’s because we know we have a good balance. Neither one of us is going anywhere - and we enjoy what we have. Why rush it? When the time is right, we’ll make the next move. For now, we are both enjoying our independence.
We’ve been together for 5 years and married for more than 3, and the biggest struggle for me has been finding enough alone time. I need a LOT of alone time, and in order to get it, I was sacrificing any outside activities, which was not healthy.
It takes a lot of communication and an ability to not let your feelings get hurt (for both of us) when your partner says they need to be alone. But we’re working it out. My husband works almost 50 miles away from where we live so I have an hour in the morning when he leaves for work. I live close enough that I can get home at lunch most days so that’s another hour, and then I have usually half an hour in the evening after I get home from work before he gets home. And I’m still scrounging for more alone time most of the time.
We have a really good relationship, are really compatible and I enjoy the time we do spend together. It’s just my personality - I really need alone time to rejuvenate. And that’s ok because we’re making it work for us. It wouldn’t work for everyone here who’s said they spend almost all of their time together. But what makes us a good match is that, once we started talking about it, my husband was on board and has plenty that he can do alone too and now we’re happy when we’re together because it’s balanced by the time apart.
Talk to your partner. Find out if he (she? I don’t know either of your genders so sorry if I’ve guessed wrong) is willing to work out a better balance for you. What works for others doesn’t matter if it’s not working for you. If you can agree to more time apart, you’ll probably find that the time together is a lot more fun. That’s what happened for us - I was much less stressed once we started having more alone time so I am much happier and less crabby when we are together. Win win.
Just talk and find what works for you, regardless of what works for people here.
We don’t have kids but we have opposing schedules. I wish we could spend more time together. Generally all the time we have off together (two full days per week and a couple nights/mornings) we are within a few feet of each other, but usually doing various activities such as gardening, shopping, cooking, or doing parallel play, me with my book, him watching a movie. We’re not big talkers, but we are cuddly.
I also value my alone time, but being with him is almost as relaxing to me, and I do have time without him in my week. Both of us barely socialize with others in our free time (excepting his family).
It’s totally individual and it nearly always involves some compromise for both parties I feel.
How much time? Not nearly enough. We work opposite shifts, so Sunday-Thursday we’re ships passing in the night. Neither of us really has the time or opportunity to chat or IM while at work, so no communication except a five-minute phone call here or there.
On the other hand, we both enjoy alone time, so we’re okay with it, just wishing for a little more time together.
We’ve been married 16 1/2 years, lived together for almost 2 years prior and knew each other for several years prior to that. We spend almost every weekday evening together, usually watching TV but discussing what is on, and we try to have a “date night” once a week, as well as a going away for the weekend every three months or so. I have plenty of alone time, since I don’t work any more and am on the road two or so weekends a month. He doesn’t seem to want alone time, as he plans golfing with his buds, or goes to a sports bar when I am gone.
We’re in the same house, that’s about as “together” as it gets sometimes! I will be doing all sorts of things - cleaning, tidying up, laundry, ironing, reading, watching tv…he’ll be playing WoW in his little box-room. He can play WoW for hours at a time without noticing the passage of time so unless I stand in the doorway and throw frozen fish at him, he probably won’t even notice I’m there.
We’ve been together for a few years, married for more than half that time. We go to work and then we’re usually in the same room for the entire night.
He does go jogging, and when he’s working (which is sometimes five hours at night) we don’t really speak, but other than some distractions like television we are mostly together. Less than two feet apart, even when he’s working.
He has a few things he doesn’t want me to do with him, like going climbing, that he does a couple of weeks out of the year. He also doesn’t like doing some of the things I do, which is normally a couple of hours out of the week.
We used to talk more than we do now, but life does get in the way and relationships do change over time. He is still the most important person in my life and I would spend all the time I have with him were it possible.
So, for me at least, there is no upper bar in the time I would spend with him.
My wife and I spend probably 50% of our non-work hours together. It’s not perfect, she’d like it to be more some days, but it is what it is.
Generally, we watch TV or movies together, or take walks or play video games or whatever. Sometimes we spend a fairly large bit of time doing different things in the same room–I’ll be playing on the computer or reading, and she’ll be knitting or watching a movie, and we’ll occasionally chatter back and forth as interesting things happen. We’ve found the different-activities-same-room thing to be absolutely key for moderating our very different levels of companionship/alone-time needs, since she can perceive it as companionship time (which she desperately needs, as she works from home and therefore spends a lot of time alone not interacting with non-cats) and I can perceive it as mostly me-time, which I need after being at the beck and call of everybody (I’m a lone IT guy in a big company) all day.