Sharing a living space (she/her)
I think both my husband and I need a substantial amount of personal space. Beyond how much we own or how we organize our home, it is the luxury of having an “empire” (exaggerated, yes) all to oneself that we truly crave.
He gets to be the Emperor five days a week. I know he waits every morning for me to leave for the office so he can have the entire space to himself until evening. Who knows what he does! I have a wild imagination, but I’ll refrain from mentioning it here. It is his secret life, and I choose not to know.
I, on the other hand, become the Empress only on my days off when he is on his solo vacations. The first thing I do the moment he leaves is dash to the supermarket to replenish the fridge with things he doesn’t eat: potato chips, fish roes, specific soups. Then, I wake up grinning, knowing I can stay in my PJs and lie around all day, watching TV or videos I never planned to watch. I drift between the couch and the fridge, grazing on a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It is a guilty pleasure of total indulgence.
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This is the side of me he rarely sees. It’s the moment I throw away the “workaholic, active, and health-conscious” version of myself and allow myself to be completely useless. I could be this way with my son, but not with my husband. Over our twenty years together, I’ve realized this is the one thing he lacks: the ability to have a truly “dissolute” day. Recently, his daughter’s partner mentioned they couldn’t imagine me being a couch potato. “You are wrong,” I said. “You assume I am like him. I am not.”
When we first started living together, I thought sharing a space was a matter of architecture — finding the right house size or the number of windows. Because he needed “more” physical space than I did, I resented that everything had to be so uselessly big. I thought a large house was a compromise I had to make just to coexist. But a big house didn’t address my fundamental need: the psychological freedom of being home alone.
I am perfectly fine sharing our living space when we are together. We have found a good rhythm for being a couple. But we have also found a good way not to be around each other. We absolutely need this. For my part, I rent an office away from home — it is my palace and my duty station all at once. It is a space I never have to share. And two or three times a year, I get the entire house to myself.
In the end, it is the absence that makes the togetherness special.
