Spending Time With the One You Love

Do we actually spend time?  Or does time pass and we spend our lives “doing stuff”?  Stop a second, how do you pass your time?  What are you doing?

At this season of the year, there can be more chores to do and to get done, than time allows.  I wonder if getting stuff done, completing the dread “To Do” list, working at a job, doing volunteer work, watching TV or working on the computer completely shuts out any time available to “simply pay attention” to the one you love.

I wonder how much time and energy people spend each week in really listening, actually making eye contact, really touching, hugging or holding, truly giving attention to the one they love.  In balancing the one life, we each have to live.

Giving full attention doesn’t mean merely being in the house at the same time as your significant other, or being in the same room as one sews and one does dishes, or as one watches TV and one uses the computer, or as one does bookwork and the other reads, nor does it mean one sleeping in front of the TV while the other sleeps in bed.  Certainly those things are part of life, but they are not all of life.  It’s about balance in relationships.

Relationships flourish with mutual interest and attention, shared love, vibrant lovemaking, intimate conversation and paying attention to one other.  When all one’s time is given to doing, going, running errands, volunteering, working, and almost none is set aside for “attentively being with” the significant other in your life, two things begin to happen:

1.               The relationship suffers;

2.               The relationship dies.

This is something to ponder, especially at this season of the year, a season which traditionally is meant to be about hope and love.

Some questions:

How are you really “spending your time”?

Are you paying any attention to the one you love?

Is what you are doing getting you what you want in life?

If not, what needs to change?