How manta times a day/ week do you do this with your dh?

[emkana]

sit down (or lie down, or go for a walk or something) and talk to each other with no distractions from the tv/computer/children/work?

Every day, usually once the kids are in bed, over supper.

lots.

But given the opportunity we are both motormouths and don't get much opportunity to talk to others during the day.

Depends, but a little every day. Even if it's just 5 minutes once the kids are aslleep and before one of them wakes up.

Around once a week, sometimes less, but we don't live together.

We talk nearly every day on msn/facebook chat though.

Every day.

We do what we call 'desulting' as in chatting in a desultory sort of way every morning while we drink our tea and look at the papers.
Mind you we are retired,just us and we spend most of our time together.

I'm always moaning at DH for not listening to me. He has his laptop on most of the time, even when we're watching TV! But as I'm expecting our first soon I'm guessing he'll be more interested in the baby than bloody football forums.

But we always have a good chat before bed, when cooking and I drag him out for the odd walk too. Plus, I phone him most mornings for a 10-minute catch-up while I'm at home at he's working. He works in his own office whereas mine's open plan so I can't really speak during my shift.

Hmm. Actually, not that often. Every moment is taken up with our two little ones. DS is still in our room and is not a good sleeper; I think it'll improve once he's in with DD. No babysitters around so we don't get out on our own. I guess we only really get to chat when DD is stuck in front of a DVD.

We are still immensely close, and we love things like board games or playing wii etc to reconnect in the evening. Don't get much physical connection ATM - due to a back injury DH is in constant pain so we can't often cuddle up :( that's pretty difficult for both of us as we are normally very cuddly. There is an old wardrobe door under his half of the mattress!

Today our copy of Futurama Season 6 finally arrived (we are serious cartoon geeks) so we spent DD's preschool session lazing about watching that while scoffing doritos, that was pretty nice :)

At least twice a day, while the dog is exploring the park.

As we both work from home it's often more.

we do spend quite a lot of time together -
we have breakfast together - DH is a postie, so his mid-day break comes at my breakfast time. we meet in town for half an hour.
he comes to me at lunchtime (when he's finished) and we have lunch together too. (that's usually about an hour, depending on whether he has anywhere else to go in the afternoon)(eg visit his mum, practise the organ etc)
If he practises the organ, I'll fetch him from church after I close and we walk home together.
and we have tea together (although i'm rushed 2 nights out of 5)
and we watch tv together too.
we always go to bed together - we change each other for bed, which sounds daft, but it's something we started dong when we were first getting-to-know each other's bodies and it's now routine.

can't guarantee most of these times are without distraction (and it'll be worse when the baby comes along!), but we do talk, and we're not allowed to leave each other's company without a kiss, so I class it as quality time.

it's sometimes just little routines that work best though - like if we ^are6 watching TV together, we'll sit close together, either holding hands or me leaning against him.

if you miss the closenessm you've got to do little things to becoem routine.
maybe he doesn't even realist that he misses it, but would if you started it up again.

I'd get a bit bored spending so much time with just one person, frankly.

Well....erm..... .....probably about twice for approx 10 mins I would imagine. Unless we get the chance to go out and more often than not it's with other people. We always have loads to say when we do though.

DH and I spent 10 years, 24/7 in each others company and we loved it.

Now he's back in full time work it's extremely important we spend plenty of time chatting or cuddling on the sofa etc.

Every day and each Saturday we go out on our own for a pub lunch. But then our DSs are grown up so it's easy for us now.

We do the nightly round up thing that another poster mentioned. DH talks whilst I try very hard to keep my eyes open (so, so tired rather than DH being boring, he is in fact lovely and quite interesting). It's one of my favourite parts of the day.

We have a good old cuddle (not a euphamism! well not much these days ) and a natter before we go to sleep every night. It's one of my favourite parts of the day - we have two preschoolers and it's the most "peaceful" time we get IYSWIM.

DH has just reinstated the practice of eating our evening meal in the kitchen instead of slumped in front of the telly, and I must say it's made a lot of difference to our relationship :) Things haven't been hard, exactly, but in between our toddler son, DH's busy job and my heavily pregnant tiredness the talking has rather slipped to one side. I knew I was missing it...DH is always interesting to talk to.

Having said that, tonight is his swimming night so I fully intend to eat my dinner prostrate in front of CSI

Every evening, either while we're eating or in the bath.
Normally at bedtime too but that has been subsumed by us looking at youtube videos of China for the last few weeks as that's where we'll be come Friday.

Every evening- we make a big effort to talk to each other, because we realised we were slipping into taking each other for granted a few years ago

• evening meal not in front of telly

Yes. In the garden after we get home from work. With a glass of wine and ds unwinding from a busy day at nursery in front of cbeebies. Am I a bad mummy??