Somebody please explain this to me.
How do you go on a date?
And I know I’m old, and I’m old-fashioned, and I did not grow up here.
But how do you go on a date, and you stop by a bakery, and you get yourself a donut for yourself— and you don’t ask the person that you’re with, your date, if they would like some?
Like a bite or two?
Or if they would like one of their own?
What we did in a collectivistic culture doesn’t apply here.
I’m aware.
You can’t compare the two.
Sharing your snack, right?
If it was an apple, if it was a banana, if it was a sandwich,
and someone else didn’t have a snack—or even if they did, right?
You’d still offer to the people that you were with before you took a bite.
And you ate whatever was left over.
But everyone else did this.
So you’d have a bite of your friend’s snacks and lunches if you wanted some.
That’s why I’m saying—someone please explain this to me.
How this is possible on a date, where you’re supposedly with a person that you like.
That’s why you asked them out in the first place, I hope.
How is it that you go on with your snack or your meal, acting the whole time like you’re there all alone?
How do you not share with them?
Maybe they didn’t bring any cash, because maybe they didn’t know you were going grocery shopping.
How do you not ask?
I don’t get it.
This is flabbergasting to me.
Somebody please explain.
Doing the deep work in your marriage—it can feel lonely.
Nobody sees it.
Nobody’s clapping.
There’s no parade.
It’s not flashy.
Just quiet, gritty, heart-level effort.
But that space—it’s sacred.
You have to remember this.
You’re laying bricks down that nobody sees.
But you live in the house that you’re going to build.
So, my two cents: keep going.
Even if – even if it’s just you right now.
Even if your husband or your wife, they haven’t joined you yet.
You know how they say don’t go shopping on an empty stomach when you’re really hungry?
The other thing that you shouldn’t do is go shopping when you’re feeling guilty.
When you’ve just upset your kid to tears—which then made you cry—and then you go to Target and you buy one too many things of chocolate that you didn’t mean to, ’cause you feel guilty.
So don’t go shopping.
Don’t—don’t go to Target when you’re feeling bad about something that you just messed up on.
And I don’t mean guilty as in they made me feel guilty about something, but just feeling remorseful.
Because what happens then is this:
When you can’t find the thing that they asked you to go get, you just buy whatever else they had that you think they might like.
Like chocolate.
And these—’cause they’re delicious.
Stuff that you know they like.
And just more stuff that you know they like.
Because shopping when you’re in this kind of state—
I don’t recommend it.
And you end up going to two different stores because Target didn’t have what they wanted,
so I went to Walgreens to see if I could find it there.
And—no luck.
So just more other stuff to make up for the loss.
This is what happens.
You end up going a little overboard.
So I don’t recommend.
How we stay close when one of us is traveling.
Travel can easily disconnect couples, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Here’s how we stack connection even when we’re in different time zones.
One will listen to the same podcast while apart, or read the same book, and we’ll chat about it later like we just started a mini book club.
Sometimes I’d leave a little note in his bag, or send a thinking-of-you photo from the day—something that he would appreciate knowing or seeing but he’s missing because he’s gone.
Sometimes I’ll just call while I’m finishing up cleanup or dishes and chat for a few minutes.
Then, depending on where in the country or in the world my hubby was at the time, we’ll try to FaceTime during lunch breaks.
It doesn’t have to be deep necessarily, right?
But we just want to check in.
When the kids were younger and we included them, we knew not to do this right before bedtime, because they would inevitably get upset missing the other parent and have a hard time going to sleep afterwards.
So it ended up creating more work than it was worth.
So we’d make it a point for the two of us, as adults, to connect separately—which is always the point anyway.
The thing is, you don’t need hours, right?
This doesn’t need to be a two-hour conversation.
Just intentional overlap, even if one or both of you are doing something else as you do.
Connection doesn’t need to stop when the travel starts.
It shouldn’t really, right?
You just need to plan and package it a little differently—and on purpose.
Does your spouse travel for work a lot?
Or do you?
What do you two do that helps you stay connected while you’re traveling?
Let me know in the comments, and I’ll read every single one.
So you’re not in the old pattern anymore.
You’ve been working on your marriage.
But you haven’t built the new one yet either—not quite, anyway.
That space?
It’s called the in-between.
It feels uncomfortable.
Like nothing fits right.
Like, are we even okay?
But it’s not a breakdown.
You’ve got to know that.
You need to be able to reframe that.
You’re not lost.
You’re just in transition.
And that in-between space?
It’s where new habits, new roles, new love gets built.
So keep going.
Don’t stop.
The payout is worth it, even if you don’t see it yet.
