decompressing

I haven’t written lately because my work and personal life has been very busy, and when I come home at night I tend to veg, take a brief walk, read a little, then go to sleep.

Sam and I, after stumbling around emotionally for a week, finally determined a date and time to talk – this past Monday. I completely choked up. Could barely say anything. It was too long and I hadn’t had time to sit down and hash out with myself what I thought we needed to talk about.

It took a long time that evening to push past my inability to speak and began to broach subjects. Now, rereading previous entries to this journal, make me feel for sure that we had a productive conversation.

I cried when we made love. I do not know how I want to feel about such instances: it happens extremely rarely, possibly two or three times in my life, including after a hard (i.e., sad) night with Tobias a few weeks before I left for a year abroad in Europe. It was . . . cleansing. Relief.

We didn’t get as far as either of us wanted, but we figured out an important thing like spending quality time together rather than “quantity time.” We realized we have sought each other out a lot recently, but instead of it making us feel better it makes us feel wanting and unfulfilled. We couldn’t talk to each other comfortably or long enough in the short bursts of time we had together. We decided we need a prescribed date night, much in the way Sam and Diana exclusively reserve Fridays for themselves. In a way I was jealous of this, but I feel much better knowing that he and I have time set away specifically for each other rather than always trying to arrange something.

We agreed that this means that we will not see as much of each other in the evenings during the week. Sam has a busy schedule, I have some projects I need to tackle and have been avoiding, and both Tobias and Diana remarked that Sam and I were seeing more of each other than usual. (I disagree, because I felt that time wasn’t of much quality, but I can see what they were saying.) We don’t have to say to each other, “So when can I see you next?” and have the answer be, “I’m not sure, let me check.” We know. The structure is there. Barring a huge conflict, we’ll have that from now on.

Honestly, I’m relieved. This will work much better for me. My stress levels that usually heighten in the evenings plummeted this week.