Conversation with My Wife (65)
“Q: If you want your relationship to last, do this 10–12 times a week… “
So as we’re cleaning up after breakfast we’re listening to our usual morning radio station at home*, and the Question of the Day is:
Q: If you want your relationship to last, do this 10–12 times a week…
ME: Ten to twelve times? So it’s not sleeping together.
DEB: In either sense of the term!
ME: Well, I don’t know, that would only be one-and-a-half times a day, so…
DEB: Not even if we were 20-somethings. And who gets the half? I think it would just make a relationship worse.
One of the first callers gets it, and the answer is:
A: Say “thank you”
DEB: (pause) Okay, I can see that.
ME: Still only one-and-a-half times a day. Doesn’t seem like enough.
DEB: We do it more than we think about. It’s how we were raised, it’s how we operate. That’s it’s just the two of us doesn’t matter.
ME: (mulling it over and making non-committal mumble)
We head upstairs to the sinks. Deb is first, grabs the toothbrushes and toothpaste, preps both brushes simultaneously, hands mine to me as I arrive.
ME: Thanks, honey!
DEB: (making sure to catch my eye first) See!
*We listen to one station at home in the morning, another in the car on the way to work, because… I dunno. Maybe because one is music and babble (celebrity news, silly quizzes, chatter between the DJs) that doesn’t distract from getting ready for work, and the other is NPR because what else have we got to think about on the drive to work? Except traffic, sometimes, in which case I turn down the radio so I can listen to Deb when she updates me about the situation on Waze. On the way home, we usually chatter about our workdays and what’s happening later.
