Prioritizing US

 Julie: Grandkids, family activities, visiting sick relatives and friends, volunteer work, visiting our kids, jobs, the house, the bills – life has a million distractions. It’s so easy to let our lenses of love get out of focus and prioritize these other things over our sexual relationship. Our sexual flame flickers as we behave more like roommates than lovers.

John: Julie and I know that in our hectic daily lives, it is critical to maintain a clear and strong focus on keeping our sexual flame burning brightly. This includes not only love making, but also physical and emotional attention to one another. Our sexual relationship permeates all of our interactions. This includes not only physical things like touches, caresses, and hand-holding, but also tone of voice, attentive and empathetic listening, and making it clear to each other that we are the most important person in each other’s lives.

We had just been through a crazy streak of days filled with distractions rather than prioritizing us. I took a step out of that busyness to suggest to Julie that we make time to focus on some snuggling. Julie happily agreed, and we mutually set about to wrap up what we were doing. This looked great, until….

Julie: When John suggested that we retreat to the bedroom, I was all about that. With an adult daughter at home working irregular hours and our 8 million commitments, we were in the middle of a love-making drought. I hurried to finish what I was doing and went looking for John. He was still washing dishes, so I figured I’d have enough time to go throw the clothes into the dryer, which I did, but…

John: I turned the corner and saw that Julie was putting clothes into the dryer but failed to notice that she was pushing the start button. At this point, I showed poor judgment in deciding to attack a new household task…

Julie: I looked up from starting the dryer to see John pulling on gloves and started working on a new task. I sighed. Here we go again. We started a period of overlapping minor tasks, each judging that the other was still busy.

This happens to us frequently as we try to shoehorn tasks in when we’re not busy running around. I didn’t want that to happen again, so I approached John and told him how frustrated I was with the situation.

John: Instead of heading to the basement to start another job, I should have dropped everything   and playfully and romantically let Julie know that I was ready and waiting for her – that she was my desire and focus. We both should have “prioritized US” right away.

I immediately realized that in the previous few minutes I had made some poor decisions about priorities and apologized to Julie. I suggested that we now drop everything and put our priorities where we really wanted them – on each other. We were able to do that and had an awesome snuggle. 😊

This was not a monumental issue or event in our relationship, but it was certainly painful. It served as a vivid and tangible reminder of the importance of placing each other and our relationship first in our lives. I resolved to learn (again) from this and to strive to let my love and passion for Julie burn brightly so she would never have to doubt that she is my #1.