Why is email such a bone of contention for you two?
Sometimes I DO take work home on nights and weekends and need to check my email. But usually work email does not take so long and that email is not the type that aggravates my H.
I'm involved in some community volunteer/civic/political groups which conduct part of their business via email. For several of those I "manage" listservs. I don't spend a lot of time on the phone the way some women do, but some of these people have become "virtual" friends of mine.
I haven't analyzed it totally, but I think part of the tension is that I am focusing on something that doesn't include him. (Sometimes I have felt his reaction is unfair, because he has been involved in various groups throughout our marriage, whereas I didn't begin until our kids were teenagers - kids, home and job were more than enough before then.) But H is also right that for whatever reasons I let my involvement in these groups overflow into my personal life more than he does. Certainly, if I'm doing email late at night, it can interfere with ML, esp if it aggravates him and so destroys the mood. But in any case just the amount of time can take away from our time together unless I am disciplined.
Perhaps I can try to segregate my email (and BB use) to my office - but then I'd need to work longer hours to get the same job done (and hope no one looks over my shoulder at the DB BB). It might be worth it though.
Seems to me there is often a tension in a R re how much time is spent together vs apart, and if together, exactly what those joint activities are. I think I may be a bit more solitary than my H. In any case, we often find it hard to structure our free time so we have a satisfactory balance of together and apart time.
Quote:
As far as the news, why does it bother you that he watches it faithfully?
Perhaps it's partly a reaction on my part, a tit-for-tat of which I'm not proud, ie if he's going to complain about how I spend time on email then I can complain about how rigid he is about watching the late news. Also, it makes me feel as though he sets the "schedule". And given that his work hours are much shorter than mine now that he's semi-retired, he can more easily look forward to ML late-night or in the morning (his preference).
I think another thread talks about setting a schedule for ML. Perhaps that would help, to have 1 or 2 nights a week set aside just for us. I have suggested to my H a "date night", a concept he poo-poos as artificial. But I guess I couple it with the idea that music, a glass of wine, perhaps a romantic video, might all be nice to set the mood on a "date night". He's more of the "let's just do it" school of thought. (Though it's also true that he's more physically demonstrative throughout the day than I am).
Doglover
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