It's rather obvious, really.

It's rather obvious, really.

GalPal is going out of town for the weekend, so of course I am planning and anticipating a Saturday night full of beer, bourbon and falling asleep on my couch with a slice of pizza in my lap as the sun comes up. Good times!

Of course what will actually happen is this: I will go out with friends and sometime around 11 p.m. I’ll realize my gal is out of town and I have no one to really go home to and then I’ll mull that over and eventually I’ll probably head home even earlier than usual because I’ll come to the (semi-grown-up) understanding that it’s sort of pointless to be out.

Of course this response, while seeming initially sweet, perhaps betrays something darker under the surface. The endless push and pull that underlies every relationship is never resolved -- I think if that happens stagnation takes hold and each partner begins to die from the inside out – but I think it’s important to at least be aware of it. This is one of those situations that perhaps illustrates the best and the worst of that.

Also, as painfully cliché as it sounds, we don’t really truly appreciate what we have until we notice its absence. For that simple reason I highly recommend (assuming you have a partner) you occasionally make time to be away from each other, because that first kiss upon being reunited is the closest thing to knowing what it must be like to regain a phantom limb you may ever know.