happiness project

i just finished reading gretchen rubin's the happiness project, a book detailing the twelve months she spent learning if she could become happier. i am generally a happy person but i am always on the lookout for ways to become even happier so this book really inspired me. i'm working on my resolutions now and will share them at a later date. in the meantime, i had to share an a-ha moment i had this past week, shortly after reading gretchen's account of february: remember love. in this chapter she discusses ways to stop nagging and how to fight fair with your spouse, and she also shares a discovery she made in her research that men and women approach intimacy differently. that's a fair and accurate statement, right? apparently, "women's idea of an intimate moment is face-to-face conversations, while men feel close when they work or play sitting alongside someone." (pg 52 of the happiness project) i guess i never realized just how fair and accurate that statement really was until i spent some time watching tv with my husband. i think we stayed up three hours passed our bedtime to watch back-to-back episodes of storage wars (a show we had never seen before but one that we couldn't turn away from). somewhere during this time my husband looked over at me lovingly and said, "wow, we haven't done this in a long time. i miss hanging out with you." i looked at him like he was foreign to me and i almost said something snarky until i remembered gretchen's discovery. i just smiled back and said something nice. while i felt it was just a waste of three hours precious sleep, he felt close to me and it made him happy. somewhere in my previous posts i mention that my husband and i tend to be polar opposites on a lot of things and here is one instance i would have rolled my eyes and passed off as just that, but now, how can i blame him for something that is pre-wired in his maleness? i simply can't. instead, i think i'll schedule more time to sit and and watch tv with him.