Wow.  I can’t believe it’s March 1.
What happened to February?

I wanted to just post a little bit about the month of February.  If you remember, I shared at the start of the month that I would do some exercises in intimacy throughout the month of February.  I also mentioned how my beloved husband wasn’t really interested in my public sharing of our marriage life… so for his sake, I only posted one update in February.
Now that February’s experiment is over, I’d like to give some final thoughts…

1. Intimacy is hard.
Like, really, really hard.  Mostly because intimacy takes time, and it takes energy.  Two things that always seem to be in short supply around my house.  This month I got crazy sick and was out of commission for a few nights, Sam had a lot of extras on his plate and was exhausted a few nights, we were apart for a few nights when I took the kiddo up to visit Nana and Poppa.  Intimacy is hard.

2. Forcing Intimacy is even harder.
Instead of becoming a habit, which was the hopeful outcome of each month in this year-long project, this became an annoyance.  We were tired and sick and cranky and now we have to touch and answer questions and gosh if we really didn’t want to.  To be fair, most often the conversations ended up being great, and I did really feel like I connected to Sam in a better way… but sometimes we just checked it off the list and moved on.  That’s not intimacy, and it was an important lesson for me.

3. Intimacy is also not hard.
Ok so this might seem like I’m contradicting the other two points here, but really, it was surprising how little time it took to make sure we connected in some way each day.  Did we always feel like it? No.  And in the future maybe we’ll let it go.  But on those nights where we aren’t sick or exhausted or working, it is actually really easy to just turn off the phones and computers and take a few minutes for each other.

4. Intimacy is a choice.
Obviously I want to have a great marriage and a good relationship with my husband.  But if this month has taught me nothing else, I learned that I can choose.  I choose connection or disconnection.  I choose time together or time apart.  I choose conversation or one more chapter of reading.  It’s my choice.  And neither one is wrong.  I might need the time apart (or more realistically, Sam might need the time apart).  But recognizing that intimacy doesn’t just magically happen was an important lesson.  My choice matters for me and for my marriage, and so it’s important that I take the time to really listen carefully for what I need and what my marriage needs each night, and act accordingly.

Intimacy is hard.
Intimacy is easy.
and Intimacy is a choice.

Now on to March.