Seperate but Together

I've been thinking about this alot lately and vissith's last post made me think about it more.

One of the things I remember hearing about what made my grandparents (on my mom's side) be able to live with each other for over 50 years was that they were able to spend time both together and apart.

To some extent, I've always understood this on a theoretical basis, but I've never made it work for me in my own relationship.
Then again, before a month ago, my time with Kristen was brief and intense. It really made no sense to drive an hour and a half to do seperate things (except for once at Running Gagg when we went seperate ways.)
It's only been the past couple weeks, we've started (and really, we've only started) to put this into practice.

At first, it was being in the same room, but doing seperate things. I'd be playing with my music list, for example, and she'd be browsing LJ.
And we agreed we'd work on getting out of the "weekend" mindset where we have to do everything NOW because we won't see each other tommorow.

Now we're concentrating on living our own lives. I've joined xiombarg's roleplaying group and play Softball while Kristen is trying to rejoin SCA and go back to UU church.
And I think for the first time I really understand what they were talking about when they said grandma and bobby could live happily together because they could spend time apart well, but also spend time together well. I DO enjoy spending time with Kristen.. going to see movies with her is infinitely better than going myself, playing SimCity with her was just cool, going to places like the Inner Harbor or Six Flags or wherever with her is always a great deal of fun, more than I could ever have alone.

I suspect the new direction of Howard and Kristen, at least for a little while, will be moving towards living semi-independent lives while still living and sleeping in the same apartment.
And that.. is a good thing.

An example of this was last night. I finally got my grubby hands on Gigantic (as I said yesterday) and went to watch it yesterday. And it was good! I need to rewatch it just so I can catch the stuff I missed while I was distracted by scooping cat litter, being too far from the TV and having a Kristen snuggled in close.
Kristen, being overtired and a little bit snuggly (She tends to be very snuggly when overtired.) tried to cuddle in while I was watching and I realized, after pausing, that this was something I really wanted to do alone, without distraction.
She took it well and retired to the bedroom to read for a little bit before turning over and sleeping and I watched the rest of the movie.
And it wasn't an issue and it was cool because I got to do the thing I really wanted to do (without too much distraction) and she got to read, relax and sleep.

If nothing else, being able to succesfully spend time alone makes the times we DO spend together all the sweeter.

So the moral of the story is, at least for me (and members of my family who have succesfully lived together for long periods of time), the secret to a good and long lasting relationship is being able to spend time alone just as well as you spend time together.

This post brought to you by the Center for Silly Meanderings, the letter Q and the number Pi.