Doing Your Own Thing Is Good For Your Relationship.
By: David Shorb
Tags: Relationships, Romance, Couples, Life, Introvert

Doing Your Own Thing Is Good For Your Relationship.

Why having seperate things can help keep your relationship alive.

Photo by Heng Films on Unsplash

Here’s a couples activity. Doing stuff on your own. Enjoying your own hobbies by yourself. It might seem counterintuitive but having some activities that you do separately is healthy for your relationship. You don’t have to do everything together, and you don’t have to spend every waking moment with each other.

Being able to enjoy your interests by yourself allows you to decompress, to destress, and to just unwind and relax. Something that we don’t get enough of these days. Being away from the stresses that having a relationship brings is healthy for you and it’s just good self care.

Having your own interests is healthy, and it’s kinda like the oxygen mask that falls down in a plane. They always tell you to put the mask on yourself first. It’s the same kind of thing. According to the American Psychological Association, about 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. However, there are studies that show couples that have at least a few interests do have a better success rate.

If you enjoy baseball, and your partner enjoys not baseball that’s ok. If you want to have woodworking as a hobby, and your partner enjoys make-up as a hobby then that’s ok. To take this just a little further. You’re rock ’n’ roll, and your partner is country, and again that’s ok. Just make sure you use headphones.

We get this mixed message from the media that we should be together, but that we need to have their own identity. How can you have your own identity, if you aren’t pursuing your own interests? That’s not how relationships work. Every couple has to have both time together and time apart. There has to be a balance to it, and you have to have both. Relationships are better when each person in the relationship have things they can do on their own.

As the saying goes, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Being apart for small periods of time will let you appreciate your time together. I feel that it’s important to have that time apart because it allows you to reconnect to yourself. To have time to explore your inner-self, let you have time to think, and to just enjoy your hobbies and interests.

I find that when you spend every waking moment with your partner and don’t take the time to have your own space. At least for me, I start to feel run down, burned out, and overwhelmed, if I don’t get that time apart. I’m not talking about when you’re at work. I’m talking about when you’re not at work. When you have downtime, when you are just watching TV, or out running errands, just living life. Not having that space to just be yourself in the only way you can when you’re just by yourself. We all need that kind of time.

Self-care isn’t just about you. It’s about all the people you’re connected to and the energy you put out to support them. It takes a lot of work and energy to maintain a healthy relationship. You have to have downtime to rest and restock your spoons.

I’ve talking about the spoon theory before. However, just to recap. “The spoon theory or spoon metaphor is a disability metaphor (for a combination of ego depletion, fatigue, and other factors), a neologism used to explain the reduced amount of mental and physical energy available for activities of living and productive tasks that may result from disability or chronic illness.” I don’t think it is something that only has to apply to people with a disability. It can apply to relational dynamics as well.

I think that daily we only have so many spoons for relationship stuff. I think there is only so much energy each day for all the different aspects of a committed relationship. I’m not just talking about monogamous relationships either, this can apply to any relational dynamic including ethical non-monogamy. You can only do so much.

I think energy management within ethical non-monogamy is very important and I don’t think it’s given enough attention. Being able to have the time to do the things you want by yourself is important energy management, and it’s just good self-care practice.

Those couples that you see that spend every waking moment together. Those are the couples that end up having those sudden splits. The ones that seem so happy being together all the time, aren’t as happy as you think. If one person is always insisting on being with the other, then there could be some issues that need to be worked out. There has to be some kind of insecurity that other person has, and you need to talk about it with them.

There’s being together, and then there’s unhealthy codependency. I have had relationships like that, and they never ended well. My current marriage has a good balance. My wife does things she enjoys, and I have time for the things I enjoy. However, we also do things together. We do things to reconnect and remember why we love each other and why we got married.

Having time together is important as well, but that time apart is what will make the difference in your relationship.

I put the question out on twitter, “Why do you think it’s a good thing to do your own thing?” Author Kary Fontaine had this to say. “It’s healthy to have your own hobbies TOO. They fall for us because of who WE are. Remember, as time goes by, we all should want to learn about different things & will grow. Don’t hold each other back. Encourage & they’ll probably want you to go with them. It’s a life process.” She also made a good point about marriage counseling. “Any good marriage counselor will tell you the same thing. Go to couples counseling before you get married and check in every three years or so. They know things, we don’t. Not AFTER things get bad.” It’s a good point.

If you are both doing your own thing because you can’t stand to be around one another, then you have bigger issues. It’s time to either accept that it’s over, or it’s time to sit down and talk about the issues that are eroding the relationship. Marriage counseling should be done before you are to the point of no return. When you’re just starting to see issues, or if there has been a major issue that has developed. It should be your first step, not your last step before the divorce papers are filled out.

Another reason it’s good to have your own interests is that it gives you a place to go to cool off before an argument gets out of hand. You need something to put that energy to a more productive use. Plus the space will allow you to work through the issue without the risk of you saying something you won’t be able to take back.

At the end of the day, it isn’t the time apart. It’s the ability to foster growth in not just yourself, but in your relationship. Because if you aren’t growing, then you’re stagnating and that isn’t good for anyone.