I’ve been together with my wife for 6 years now and there’s one thing I can say about us. Never have we paid more attention to each other than in the first 3 months of those 6 years. In that first 3 months we were focused and undistracted. Driven by the new experience and the burning desire to learn more from each other we talked for hours. Undistracted. Hours than often felt like minutes.
Then as the years passed the following things happened:
1) I started getting very distracted with work
2) I started getting new hobbies that I spend lots of time on. Cycling, golf or even computer games.
3) We had a baby.
All of the above things took two things from us: Time and energy. So much that by the end of dealing with all three we’re often tired and hardly have any quality time together.
What is quality time? Over the years I’ve learned that quality time isn’t watching a movie or a TV show together. It isn’t both of us hanging around in the same room for hours doing our thing.
Quality time is the time we spend talking to each other totally undistracted by anything. Not even looking at the phone for a short 3 seconds to check WhatsApp messages.
I first experienced that by accident. Shorty and I happened to be exhausted after our long days and laying around on our beds when we started talking. We started talking about our days, about the latest gossip that’s around our circle of friends… history… whatever. We just talked. As we talked I got to know more about the things that made her happy that day and the things that made her sad or things she learned. I felt like even though I was out working the whole day, I was still there for her by the end of it.
Quality time is important but admittedly isn’t something we do consistently too. It’s always too tempting to spend that 15-30 minutes of our night watching the latest episode of Orange is the New Black or just going to bed early. Today though I pledge to take 15 minutes of each day I have for the next week to lie or sit down and talk to my wife about anything at all. Undistracted by the calls of my baby or the beeps of my phone.
I want to write it here because that means I commit to it. That I can’t turn back. In a week I shall see the result and whether it has helped me build a better relationship with my wife.
If anyone else feels they can spare 15 minutes a day to have an undistracted uninterrupted conversation with your partner, try it out. I’d love to hear your results at the end of a week.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space