Fully prepared for the opinion to be split on this - a mixture of 'get over it' and 'I see why you're concerned' is likely to happen, but I'm mostly just wanting to get this off my chest and have a vent! Opinions, thoughts and personal experiences all welcome!
Yesterday afternoon, DH spent 4 hours in the loft (whilst I was downstairs with our two young DC's) getting it ready to become his 'man cave'. Now I should state from the off that I HATE that term. It makes me think of blokes that are trying to hide away from their wives and families, and would rather be holed up in some uni-esque looking room drinking beer and watching sports all alone. Anyway! The evening rolled around and it was time to get DC's to bed - we did so, DH then ate dinner and went up in to his new 'man cave' for another four hours, leaving me in the lounge on my own before I eventually got fed up and went to bed.
When he spoke of this man cave idea a few months back, he said it's a place for him to 'watch his tv shows and play games' - now, here's why I think I largely have an issue with this whole separate room thing - we enjoy different shows, but still, every single evening I tell him to put on what he wants, to open Netflix and watch the next season of that show he's been dying to catch up on, to stream the next wrestling episode online. I'm not some ogre that bans his shows, I'm constantly offering to watch what he wants to watch - we BOTH enjoy using the PlayStation so I rarely, if ever, complain about him using it - unless of course I'm being left to do ten tonne of housework on my own whilst he plays batman.. But evidently, he'd rather sit in a freezing cold loft with no heating, no natural light, no furniture and a grainy pixelated projector screen to view his shows on.
Im left feeling like this room is nothing more than an escape from me. If I had the choice between sitting on our sofas watching a 50" tv surrounded by lovely warmth and general home comforts, I wouldn't go and sit in a dark and cold loft on my own.
I know he's going to wind up spending Saturday and Sunday evenings up there, and I doubt it'll be long before a few week day evenings are spent up there too. After we've got the kids to bed, we have around two hours each day in which to properly see each other and talk, and I'm worried that this room is going to take away what little time what we have.
Is he hiding from me?