taking time to work on the business - and our relationship

At a workshop I attended earlier this week to learn more about starting up my own Love, Sex, Family business, one of the presenter talked about the importance of taking time to work on the business and not just in it. Yesterday, Leighton and I got the day off to do just that, while Lilly was at her best friend's house. Then in today's paper there was an article on how couples are finding enrichment by participating in retreats. Specifically, the article was about Heart to Heart Workshops, offering "all committed couples the opportunity to examine their relationship together - their strengths and weaknesses, their attitudes, their hurts, desires, ambitions, disappointments, joys and frustrations - and to do so openly and honestly in a private/safe face-to face, heart-to-heart encounter."

As it turned out, Leighton and I got our own little heart to heart retreat yesterday too, because as a part of my homework, I'm supposed to take inventory and record a list of my own strengths, and another of my weaknesses, and then reflect on how the former may or may not compensate for the latter. Since Leighton's working with me on Love, Sex, Family, his strengths become part of the calculation, e.g. his technical skills in programming and web design, his creative ideas, and his listening skills that make him an amazing resource for bouncing off ideas.

It was just so good to have this time together, to really get to talk, feel connected, supported, and strong together. And to feel like city people again, with scrumptious lunch at blackbird in its new Minneapolis location, lingering for hours, stopping by the progressive sex shop Smitten Kitten in Uptown, and then a drink at Kitty Cat Klub in Dinkytown before dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant, Origami in the Warehouse district.

(Cell phone shot of us at the Kitty Cat Klub)

We don't have family nearby and though Lilly now could be ready to spend the evening with someone she knows and trust, we just don't have the budget to pay for a babysitter at this point. This was our fifth date since Lilly was born more than two and a half years ago and much appreciated.  

I feel lucky that our relationship is doing as well as it is, even without much time to nurture it, working on it, and not just in it. I think a big part of it is Leighton's patience and kindness, and also that we're both persistently quizzical people who can't let go of something till we've thought it all out somehow. However obnoxious this may be at times, I think it's also what drives us to work things through whenever that's needed too.