The Battle of the Schedules. Got Ideas?

I’m busy. I’ve always been busy. When single you are given the opportunity to do all kinds of things – anytime you want, anywhere you want.  You can just pile it on. Or shrug it off. Whatever. It’s fabulous.

But, then, you get married.

Giving up the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, is supposed to be replaced with a level of deep companionship, love and other goodies that aren’t PG enough for me to dare to post here. So, that’s the trade off right?

But, as any LBB will tell you, knowing this and doing this are two different things.

I’ve blogged before about Just Being There. This means if you want to stay married you have to physically show up for one another. Sometimes this means sitting on the couch with Husband while he’s watching the news when you’d rather be doing, well, anything else.  But, you can’t be married and Be Away. (Ask any Hollywood couple who spend 95 percent of their time on movie sets away from their loved ones. They end up eventually Walking Alone Again.)

But, what about all the stuff you used to do, that you really like to do, and that you’d like to continue to do that doesn’t involve Husband?

For instance, I take Pilates class twice a week, dance classes twice a week, go to the gym, I dunno, four times a week, and attend volunteer board meetings and business networking events (fewer now than before but still regularly). Oh, and I run my own business, which involves going out of town a few days a month. And, of course there are lunches, occasional dinners, coffees and wine dates with friends to keep. Also, one-time events occur, such as office moves and car breakdowns necessitating buying a new one (as I did this month).

(I’m thinking about adding guitar lessons to the schedule. What do you think? Too much?)

With all this plus Husband’s stuff — his business, his volunteer work, his hobby of flying his own airplane — and you could say getting Husband’s and my schedules together is harder than getting the U.N. together.

And, to top it off, while the schedule might work out, the actual event that is scheduled may not be what you want.

The truth about any relationship is that no one wants to feel like they are giving anything up to be in it; they want to know they are gaining something better. It’s important to not just give up everything you love to do to adopt the other person’s version of fun activities. So, it’s important to have things you like to do together and not torture each other when you want to do things separately. But, I’d really, really, really like to know how to reconcile his interests with my interest with our interests.

Anyone got any ideas? Before I call the guitar teacher…

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