Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Cocktail Hour.”
Michelle and I taught at a Pre-Cana (Catholic marriage prep) class this weekend and it was great to see the eager faces and happy, young relationships of the 41 couples who were there. They came from all over Western PA, Ohio, and West VA to listen to us old, experienced married couples talk about what was coming for them.
I don’t know if we made a huge difference in their lives or in their upcoming marriages (most things involving marriage you just have to learn yourselves), but one thing I said during our presentation on Communication in Marriage that really struck a nerve was to “Set aside special time to talk and be with each other.” To make this real for everyone, I put some meat on the bones.
I told them about how Michelle and I made this a reality – with our formal institution of The Cocktail Hour. This really seemed to resonate, and it came up several times again across the course of the day.
Once your life gets busy enough you have to actually budget time for the most important things, otherwise you never make time for them. This was happening in my family – I would get home from work at an increasingly later hour, we would rush to get dinner on the table, get the dished cleaned, I might do some homework with one of the older kids. By the time Michelle and I sat down, it was past 9:00pm and I would be so exhausted from the day that I would often start falling asleep as we started to unwind. It was really bothering my wife that we didn’t seem to spend any time talking.
So we decided to institute The Cocktail Hour. I make a point to come home just a little earlier, if I can, and we sit together in the family room with the doors closed off from the kids and have a nice, settling cocktail and talk about our days, and life in general. It is such a comfortable forcing mechanism for us and it has been really healthy for our marriage.
Comments (2)
Great post Alan! Only question I have is what are you drinking?
The shorter question is what am I NOT drinking… actually, my winter standard is a nice, dry Manhattan; the rest-of-year standby is a nice, dry Martini. But the cocktail list is long in the Veeck household… Michelle favors gin/grapefruit juice, and the kids get the olives, cherries, and limes at the bottom!
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