Shauna Niequist
I enjoy being with my husband, but I also need “me” time. He doesn’t really understand, though. How do I explain that to him without hurting his feelings?
My short answer: welcome to marriage—to the beautiful, hard, life-changing, frustrating, wonderful thing that it is to be in a marriage relationship.
My marriage has shaped and transformed me in a thousand ways. But what I’m finding is that while we do change along the way—we rub off on each other, we compromise, we learn from each other—there is still an essential self that we bring to the marriage, and it doesn’t—and shouldn’t—change much.
I’d put the need for “me” time in that category. I imagine you needed alone time when you were a little girl, and when you were in high school, and at every point along the way before you were married. That’s how God made you. And moving into a committed relationship with your husband doesn’t change the way God made you.