Physical separation

I recently submitted this post to a lovely marriage and family website in an application to blog for them, along with an old blog post. I of course wanted to share it here as well and I would love to hear everyone's opinion on the subject.

When you first start dating your spouse and you move into the next stages of living together and marriage, you can't get enough of each other. You don't sit on separate couches, you don't watch separate television shows, everything is done together. You have a whole living room filled with furniture that you rarely use as the two of you sit snuggled tightly together on your over sized chaise lounge. You compromise the things you want to watch in order to not leave the same room as the other.

Then one day you're hot. You don't want to cuddle under the blankets anymore. You realize that suddenly you sleep better on your stomach and not in the spoon position. She hates watching football; he doesn't like reality television. That is when you find yourself becoming physically separated from your spouse. Something you thought was impossible. "I will never ever want to be anywhere but hand in hand with my love!" you thought.

Hearing tales of wives in bed with a book and husbands in the garage with a beer every night terrified me. I did not want to be like that. I wanted to stay connected with my husband in every way and was fearful of growing apart. We began watching movies on separate couches very quickly and it made me nervous. Why don't we want to sit together anymore? Are we growing apart? Is our marriage doomed??

No. We were just uncomfortable. That was all there was to it. There was no deeper meaning, in my opinion. It was only comfortability.

I've found over the years that being physically separated is much different than emotionally separated. We can stay connected in life without standing side by side every moment. That is probably what makes marriage so unique and so different than other relationships. The love is so deep that it withstands the details in life.