He Said, She Said: when your partner is away for work

The most exciting thing about He Said, She Said is wondering if we’ll still be married by the end of each post! We both write on the same topic but we don’t read the other’s work until after it’s published.

He Said:

At last! I get the remote control!

She Said:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

What’s more, he says:

Mrs Romance is very important. Not just to me, but to the wider community too. In her capacity as Hair Romance, she is often donning the cape to fly to the aid maidens in hair distress.

She’s also a popular orator, and is invited to speak at lots of conferences, events and forums all over the place. Sometimes I go with her. Sometimes I don’t.

Generally speaking, I’m happy either way. But when I don’t go with her, it means I’m left to fend for myself. I quickly enter my own Manscape.

This entails eating what I want when I want, watching what I want when I want, and going to bed when I want and sleeping diagonally!

It’s not that Mrs R stops me doing these things, but living and working with your partner, you have to make concessions and compromises on what you want to do. Mrs Romance does it too. She only puts shows like The Block on when she thinks I’m not looking!

The tough bit comes when you suddenly realise – in the middle of your self-revelry – that you miss the other person. It comes as quite a shock. Mrs R always says she’s going to miss me – even if she’s only going away for a night or two.

I usually laugh at her and give her a hug when she says that, certain that as soon as the door’s closed, I’ll be slumped in front of the TV, burger on lap and watching mud wrestling or something. But it’s not long before I notice she’s not there, and it’s not very nice.

I suppose the thing to take from this is that – in spite of all your partner’s weird foibles and quirks that wind you up – it’s so important to cherish them when they’re with you. Don’t forget – you chose to be with them for a reason, right?

Anyway, I’m off – mud wrestling’s about to come back on!

And another thing, she says:

I grew up with one parent who travelled a lot for work and I saw how their marriage stayed strong.

My dad travelled so frequently he used up an entire passport in two years. While he missed many dinners at home, he would call every single day.

You don’t always have to be together, you just have to be thinking about each other. So often it seems that couples who are always together have less real conversations than those who are apart.

Now sometimes with my work I get to travel. I really enjoy it because it’s not that frequent that it becomes a burden. I love when Mr Romance can travel with me, but sometimes it’s nice to spend a few days apart.

Being apart really makes me miss Mr R. As well as being excited to see each other when I get home, there are some fun bits about being away from home.

• Sleeping diagonally. Being able to take up the whole bed is a single person’s privilege and I do enjoy sleeping diagonally and taking up as much room as possible.
• Watching bad TV and not being judged for it. I think Mr R feels the same about this when I’m not around.
• Eating room service. Mr R doesn’t like eating in bed so I can order room service and watch bad TV while laying diagonally across the bed. A triple threat.

But these things are only fun for a few days. I always call every day I am away and look forward to coming home.

Do you have to travel for work? How do you deal with being away from your partner? Or what’s your favourite thing to do when they are away?

Image by Mrs Romance.