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A weird question...
Not that this will wake anyone up, but it might start a conversation...
As y'all know (if you pay attention to my posts), I'm a graduate student right now (I teach simeltaneously). The other night in class, a fellow married grad student of mine asked me:
"How does your husband feel about all the time you spend with A & L?"
(A & L are two girls I met in grad school, who have quickly become two of my best friends. For those of you who are my FB friends, they're the girls in my profile pic with me).
I nonchalantly replied "He doesn't care. Actually he kinda prefers it."
(This is true -- my DH doesn't really like going to bars, and he works about an hour away from where I go to school [we live halfway between his office and my campus]. A & L and I usually go out after class, which is right when he's getting out of work. He likes having an hour to go home and play video games or whatever while I'm not home.)
The fellow married grad student friend of mine looked shocked and just shook his head. Later, when we all decided to go out after class, he said he couldn't because he needed to get home to his wife.
Am I the only one who thinks this is totally weird? Is there some unwritten law that says if you're married, you should only be hanging out as a couple or with one another?
I should probably say, A & L and I hang out just us girls probably twice a week unless there's something special going on (they came with me to the Brad Paisley concert, for example). But, it's usually Monday - Thursday and we always save Friday/Saturday/Sunday for our sig. others & families (again, unless something special is going on...but even then, we usually try to drag our bfs/dhs with us if it's a weekend event).
How much of your free time do you spend without your husband? How much do you spend as a couple with other couples/friends? How much do you spend ONLY as a couple?
Re: A weird question...
That's funny you brought this up b/c we've been talking about this lately. I think we have a pretty healthy balance of our time together.
I don't really get the difference between question 1 and 3.
I spend probably 50% of my time with M, 10% for just me time and 40% of my time with girlfriends or doing things with other couples. We don't do a ton on week nights b/c we both are tired after work. I usually watch tv or do some project while he does what he wants to do.
We don't have a schedule for "other friend" time, especially because our schedules are so weird. However, my H doesn't care if I have plans with my coworkers and girlfriends -- he usually encourages it. He's not the type to want to be attached at my hip. Last Wednesday he had a rare night off work but I already had dinner plans with friends. No big deal.
On the weekends we usually do things together, but if he works late and someone invites me out for drinks, I go, and sometimes he'll meet me out when he gets off of work.
Lucy Elizabeth 10.27.12
1) I do think my situation is different because of the kids obviously. My DH is gone for work by the time we get up (6-6:30-ish). He typically gets home 6:30-7 p.m. so all of his free time during the week is spent with us basically. Once in a while (maybe once every 3 months), he will go out with some guys from work but that is extremely rare. So to answer your question, I really only see him about 2 waking hours per day during the week so I spend a LOT of time without him.
2) On the weekends, he will typically watch the kids for at least 2 hours so I can go out and get some sanity by myself (shopping, Barnes & Noble, mani/pedi etc). Other than that, we spend all of the weekends together just the 4 of us or with another family and their 3 kids. I actually have been out on more girls' nights out than he has guys' nights. And I really, really enjoy that time!
3) I think it's 80% us as a family vs 20% hanging out with other people with kids. I also think this percentage would be extremely different if we didn't have the babies. I love going to dinner/lunch/movies with my girlfriends!
We're in a weird situation as we live with Alex's parents, I don't have a job, and he only works part time. When I was working and going to school, he wasn't working. So, it's always been an abnormal situation for us.
I spend almost all of my free time with my husband, and most of that time is also with his family. I don't have friends that live near me (all of my friends live between 45 minutes to several hours away). So, that really contributes to us being connected at the hip, which is not ideal, obviously.
We don't really have other friends that are couples. Most of Alex's friends are single early 20-somethings that like to go out to the bars every day. I think they are alcoholics, but most of them are good people. We like hanging out with them, but we don't have the money to be going out to the bars, or even buying alcohol.
The one couple that we are friends with are to be married in the beginning of Nov, and she is pregnant. They spend the summers firefighting (at least the last two summers), so we haven't seen them in a while. I hope that our hanging out increases.
We don't spend that much time only hanging out with each other, which is getting to annoy me. We're always hanging out with the family because we kind of think it'd be rude to just retire to our room at 7 when Alex gets home from work. Plus, I don't want to be cooped up in our room til we go to sleep. Boring.
Like I said, our situation is kind of weird. If I had it my way, I'd be hanging out with my girlfriends a couple times a week, and he could go do the same. We'd hang out with our couple friends at least once a week, either together or separately. Mostly, just more hanging out with other people and more quality time together alone.
I think it's weird the comment that guy made about having to go home to his wife. I can't imagine me or Jr every saying that.
We do spend alot of time together. He doesn't have too many guy nights, if anything it's just him with his brothers (7, 12, and 24 years old) but even then they usually ask for me join them. And I don't have too many girls nights since my two best friends have turned into "our" friends, which I am grateful for. So we end up spending alot of time together with our friends or with couples. About once a month we will do our own thing, like I'll go shopping and he'll stay home and play video games. Although he does have at least an hour to himself a day by the time I get home. I think ideally we would have more time alone with our friends, but right now this works perfectly since we enjoy each others friends and we don't mind being together so much.
While I see nothing wrong with your situation, ours is different.
We spend about 90% of our time together I would say. Most of my girlfriends live out of state, the few that are here, two live on the other side of town (about a 45 min drive from my house) and one gets married on Saturday. We work together and go out to lunch mostly, occasionally we'll go to happy hour after work. We also hang out with another friend and her husband a lot as a couple. DH's friends are mostly married or in serious relationships, so we hang out with them as a couple mostly as well. About the only thing he does without me is play golf with his co-workers. In the winter, he'll go to basketball games with his dad and cousin, so that gives me about 1 night a week to myself. We like spending time together and the situation works for us, neither of us feel like we have to be home or together, we just like to be.
HomemadebyHolman
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We are SO freaking busy, that we don't have enough of any of these kinds of time as I'd like. Oh yeah, and also we have one of DH's friends living with us for 6 weeks, so we have practically 0 alone time in our house.
I'd say maybe once every 1-2 weeks I have social plans without DH. Always with my girlfriends or maybe my family if his schedule doesn't permit him to join us. About 2 times a week we go out with a group of mutual friends (more often mine, but his sometimes too). These groups are usually mixes of couples and singles. 2 nights/week I have class so he is on his own. When we don't have houseguests, we are usually home together 2 nights/week.