After coming from work and having dinner, what do you and your spouse do for the entire evening?
If we leave out the ‘having sex’ answer for now, below are some of the ways couples can spend an average day’s evening at home
Catch up on the day’s events [This doesn’t take that long]
Read a book [This is solitary, and does not involve the spouse]
Work on a hobby [Unless it is a shared hobby, this does not involve the spouse]
Play cards or a board game [How many couples do this on a regular basis?]
Watch TV or a DVD.
Overall, it seems that watching TV or a movie is the only thing that is widespread, frequent, takes up a significant amount of time, and is something that is done together with your spouse.
Do you guys think the above is correct?
How do you spend the evening at home with the missus/hubby?
Well, we commute together so we talk about the day or the future or shared past while driving. mrAru frequently reads during the drive and we talk about the book if it is one i have read.
At home, dinner, dishes, laundry, evening showers if required and we will turn on the tv for noise [a movie, documentary or a music channel] and settle in to a nice hour or more of world of warcraft [we both play], or one of us might play and the other read or watch tv. The gaming computers are in the bedroom as is the tv and cable box.
I switch on my computer, get into more comfortable clothes while it’s booting up, launch Firefox, and bring up the Dope. Then I fire up Visual Studio and work on my latest pet project, occasionally switching back to Firefox to see if anything new has popped up.
What better way to relax after a hard day programming and Doping than more programming and Doping?
If I’m feeling particularly randy, I might fire up Civilization 4 or Oblivion and try to save and/or destroy the world.
Oh, and if it’s Monday or Thursday, I cook and clean. Good times.
[ul]
[li]Pick up a kid (or two) from after school activity[/li][li]get dinner together if we’re all eating together[/li][li]straighten up the house a bit[/li][li]play on the internet awhile[/li][li]help a kid with homework if they need it[/li][li]jump Mr. AdoptaMom’s bones[/li][li]catch up on phone calls[/li][li]balance the checkbook[/li][li]yardwork[/li][/ul]
Clean up (sometimes), the shopping (sometimes), laundry (sometimes). Dinner. World of Soddin’ Warcraft, hopefully not with 'im inside since I don’t want BooFae angry at me
Sometimes I read or watch a DVD. No TV at the time.
It seems to me that the OP is implying that time spent with a spouse doesn’t count unless it meets a criteria. I like spending time around my spouse, even if we’re not doing the exact same thing. It’s still companionable if we’re doing different things in the same room.
Typical evening activities in our household:
Eat dinner, lingering over coffee and talking can drag this out to an hour and really gives us time to connect and/or catch up with each other
Clean up from dinner
Play with kids
Read paper
Browse internet
Watch news
Get kids ready for bed - baths, stories, snacks, tucking in can get time consuming
Veg out - knitting, reading, watching tv
Eating dinner and getting the girls ready for bed eats up about 2/3 of the evening, with the remained left to relaxing.
-play with the baby while chatting with the husband
-start dinner with the baby playing at my feet while husband helps clean
-feed the baby
-hand baby to my husband and get his bath things ready
-bathe the baby
-with my husband, play and cuddle with the baby before bed - includes reading books, playing with his stuffed lamb, etc.
-put baby to sleep
-finishing putting dinner together while chatting with my husband
-while dinner is finishing cooking (I usually try to make something I can set on the stove or in the oven and leave - Indian food lends itself well to this if you make a dish that goes well with rice), do launry, clean for 15 minutes, go through mail, etc.
-sit down, talk with my husband and eat dinner
-once we’re done, talk for a few minutes more
-work out, if possible; if not, watch TV while cleaning
-usually put the baby back down at least once while all this is going on
-get lunch ready for me for the next day, breakfast and lunch ready for the baby
-pass out in a comatose sleep only to be awakened a few hours later by the baby
If possible, I’ll try to fit in some time to write or tinker on the computer, but that rarely happens.
Shortly before we got married, my parents sat me and my husband down for a pre-marital talk, and their number one point of marital advice was to have dinner together daily, or as close to it as we could manage. Their logic was that life goes by quickly, and this way, you always take the time to discuss your day and find out what’s going on with each other. My family had always made a point of having family dinner nightly (my father missed it for business reasons about once a week), but I never realized that my parents thought of it as important from a marriage perspective - I always thought of it as something they did for us kids. I think it’s great advice, personally, and find that it really works.
We usually are in the same room, with either both of us reading or her sewing as I read.
-Or else she’ll go upstairs to practice fiddle (it drives our dog NUTS!) Maybe once a week or so will make some noise together, her on the fiddle and me on mando or harp.
-On the nights that something is on TV that we want to watch, we will. Or if one or both of us just wants to veg.
-At least 1-2X a week I’ll need to drive with a kid to a music lesson or other activity (Currently 2 teens getting in their hours towards their licenses).
-And it seems that probably once every other week or so we attend some kind of school event that takes up most of the evening. Either a concert or play one of the kids is in, a HS basketball game they are playing pep band at, or the like.
-On a nice evening we might go for a walk, or sit out front of our house.
-Maybe a couple of times a week in nice weather I’ll go to the local golf course to work on my game.
-Friday evenings we generally rent a movie or 2 to watch as a family. I’ve mentioned to her the possibility of our joining a “9 and wine” couples league at the local course, but I assume that ain’t gonna fly.
We usually are heading to bed not much later than 9, 10 at the latest, where we read some more before falling asleep. Yep, we’re a pretty boring bunch.
Abuse myself
Exercise, maybe
Make dinner
Eat dinner
Clean up dinner
Watch TV, read, or play on the 'puter for an hour
Enjoy one of my many hobbies, usually painting
Go to bed
When I get home I usually play the Sims for a while. My husband gets home about half an hour later than I do. When he gets home he messes around with his aquarium for a while. Then one or both of us starts dinner. After dinner we usually have something on TV to watch or sometimes a movie. Somewhere in the hours of 7-9 I go upstairs to walk on the treadmill for 30-45 minutes. (If it’s nice out and I can convince my husband, we will go for a walk outside as soon as he’s home from work and have dinner afterward.) While I’m on the treadmill, my husband surfs his reeftank websites, plays Xbox, or watches TV. When I come back down we usually watch something on TV together. I’m almost always alternating between reading and watching. Sometimes we play a game of Tetris on the ol’ N64 or get in a game of Scrabble. We also play with the cats/dog on a nightly basis.
