I had a lovelie 10 year relashionship abnd some of the joys in that relashionship was that we played chess together, they tought me othelo. They hated lossing so compitision was a good thing.

we also ran, swam played squash and weight tranned together.I played guitar they played and sang

i reallie enjoyed the activities we done together and it enriched our relashionships and our lives at the time.

oh when we argued and had finished talking during that aftermath or small period of stinted difficult talken when digesting points we argued on we used that difficult time to clean the house together. It resulted in us talking and having worked out our difficulties while we done something productive lol cleaned..

due to work presures we stopped doing stuff together that and work presure broke us up, i see this in retrospect.

what activities or hobbies do you all do with your partners? do you enjoy them and think it adds to your relashionship?

Interesting cleaning house to create dialogue. I never thought it that way.

Things we enjoy doing together that do enhance our relationship a great deal (not just uh..obvious activities that spark sexual attraction):

*Cycling, snowshoeing and hiking together. Seeing new things together.
*Sharing thoughts about work-related stuff.
*Visiting our families ..which is not that often but meaningful for each of us when the other person is there.
*Entertaining friends or being with our friends.
*cooking, it may be a shared meal or we are cooking dishes just to please ourselves but we eat together.
*our weekly meal 'date'...there's a cost limit that we casually impose. It must no more than $10-15 per person.
*Using email, webcam and phone when we are temporarily apart for a few days/weeks. I know this is a mechanism but just ways of communicating is fun too. Half of the time my Skype microphone/audio, is not working so we make funny faces at each other.
*Sharing about cross-cultural stuff. language word games..to test each other's abysmal mother tongue fluency. (He knows more German than I know my Chinese. I can determine this with these games.)

i thought of you when i was typing this out becouse of your closness, shared activities and good comunicasion between you and your S.O. I never twigged that it reminded me of the good stuff from above mentioned relashionship untill a few days ago.

skype can be a god send just seeing the other is good for a relashionship when apart. i am giggling at though of you making funny faces becouse audio is strange thats very sweet. It sounds like you have a nice good relashionship with you SO

yea cleaning to soften up and to fill voide or strangness after an argument.
cleaning needs to be doner and we be together doing something jointly and productivlie with the time just after an argument. Cleaning was done on a saterday anyway but also after a good argument.

Sometimes it made for a very clean house lol.

you and yours do a lot together. :)do you think it helps bring you closer and keep you closer?

Fun topic celtic.

My first thought was how we always eat together, whether at home, in Towson, in the city, with others, with the kids, with friends, etc. Eat, eat eat!

We visit his dad at the retirement community.

Visit my dad and take him dinner together once a week. There's that eating thing again.

He mows while I garden so we are out there together.

We recently painted a room together, though he'll say he did most of the work, and he did.

We do church together, and activities at church.

We have dinner out most Friday nights alone.

We meet our son in the city for dinner probably once every two weeks.

We talk about work, family, and life in general all the time.

We text, email and call during the days.

We entertain together. I do most of the cooking, but he hangs out in the kitchen with me if I want company.

We take walks together and in the better weather we walk our dog at night.

We go to movies - saw He's Just Not That Into You last week. I roared and he snored!

We also usually go to bed at the same time every night which I think is a healthy thing to do.

well my eyebrowes wwent up that you watched that movie together, lol id have had some trouble getting some women to come watch it with me lol. great he did even if he snorred lol.

i though you ment eat as in sit dowen everynight to eat, its a good time to catch up with what everyones doing even if the rest of the days all higgledy piggledy. I feel unsettled if i don't get to eat nightlie with L, even. perhaps that italion thing creeping up in me again lol.

i see how many events you do that dose involve eatting but in my book thats not a bad thing as i am not out at pub thats how i spend a lot of time soicialising or doing cofe...food just makes it more of an event.

Dotsie your last point come to think of it thats a really important one that i would't have been able to put a finger on or count untill someone mentioned it. good one

same question dotsie ...you and yours do a lot together. :)do you think it helps bring you closer and keep you closer?

At least for us, yes those activities do help make our relationship closer. I'm not sure about Dotsie's marriage, but for myself, I do know truly what it means to live apart from a loved one, temporarily for long period time.

Jack and I have had a spell of 2.5 years within our nearly 17-yr. long relationship, where we each lived in different cities, separated by over 3,000 kms. The convenient mechanisms of every day communication do become quite important and what one talks about with one another is important too.

Just the act of cooking together daily is precious, did not occur regularily, when I lived and owned my condo in Toronto..since I made a decision not to move in with him at the time after his divorce.

And yes, Dotsie, some of the enjoyable stuff, involved eating together. I'm not convinced I would enjoy the company of guy, if he was highly conservative in his tastes if it wasn't based on any medical/religious restrictions. I actually would think he was abit of prude. I could never forget meeting a couple --she was East Indian and her hubby, Caucasian. He hated eating anything that was curry. I mean...really...that is the heart of East Indian cooking spicy/joie de vivre.

Come to think of it, a clue to guy's cultural flexibility especially if he wasn't Chinese that I assessed, first began on his natural range of culinary tastes. Part of becoming a well-integrated couple...particularily if it's intercultural and interracial, is basic appreciation of each other's key cultural difference. And food....is important...because it's a daily thing.

lol and if you think that set the limit of what your eatting for the rest of married life, might make one think diffrentlie about being married to that person, well it would me.

in everything you say about your partner orchid their seems a lot of warmth and respect THATS always hartwarming and good to witness in the world even if only virtual

celtic, I agree with you about orchid's relationship with her partner. She speaks so highly of him. It's refreshing.

orchid, I appreciate your comments about a coming togheter of cultural differences. Makes tremendous sense.

I miss my time with D. We are stuggling to find new things to do with each other.

We used to have a night or two a week when we would cook sexy together. Use your imagination.....

We used to have date night once a week - one week I decided upon the date, the next week he would.

We snow-shoed, cross=country skied, swam in the ocean,walked together as often as possible.

We still watch movies together, although we both fall asleep during most movies.

We try to eat together, but I can't eat slow enough to eat together.

We still find ways to make each other laugh.

We travel well together, but it is quite different now.

I don't want to complain, but life is so different for us right now. It is really difficult for us to find time to enjoy life together. It is easier when I am on a break from work. I am lucky that I have many breaks.

I have been thinking about this topic for a while and finally decided to jump in.

My partner and I have been together 13 years. What we do together a lot is talk. Although we have similar viewpoints on many things, there are some things we just agree to disagree on and don't discuss because we are diametrically opposed in how we think on the topic. We love watching nature shows; travel shows; and documentaries then discuss what we saw.

We enjoy movies - different genres generally, but we're always willing to watch whatever the other wants to watch.

We enjoy photography, computers.

I hate cooking so Steve does all that - I'm just not domesticated at all! LOL

We are both early to bed and early to rise; love animals; and we can also spend time apart without feeling abandoned or left out. Steve spent about 18 months working a job in California while I stayed here. We emailed a lot to save money on phone calls!

Oh, and we have a very similar sense of humor!