Early in my days as a stay at home mom, I was in touch with my husband through out the day. We would quickly connect via instant messaging, text messaging, email, or quick phone calls. Most communications were just a few minutes. I would tell him something funny or infuriating the kids had done. He would ask me what was for dinner or vent about a long meeting. It made me feel connected to the world beyond my kitchen. It helped him feel like he knew what was happening here so he didn’t miss our girls so much. It made us feel connected to each other.

But then we noticed something. We were robbed of the “How was your day?” dinner conversation. We already knew what had happened in each others days so there wasn’t much to discuss beyond that. We are best friends so we rarely run out of things to talk about but discussing the mundane details of our day was easily managed conversation while cutting up food into smaller pieces and admonishing a little one not to feed the dog. It started to feel like we were too connected during the day.

We didn’t discuss it but we both came to the same conclusion and decreased our contact during the day. We are still in touch – just less often. And our communications aren’t usually about our day unless something extraordinary happened. We spend our time flirting via text message or instant message instead of reporting that a meeting was boring or the baby barfed on me again. The flirting keeps us smiling and connected while leaving us with the “How was your day, Honey?” conversation over dinner.

photo credit: CraigPJ