A Woman Captures The Simple Joy Of Hanging Out With Your Husband At Home
Forget date night, this woman wants to know if other couples make plans to just vibe on the couch.
Truly there are few finer pleasures in the world in settling in for a night of coziness. All you need is a beverage of your choice (I myself enjoy an evening cocktail), a good book or trashy reality show, and, it should go without saying, your oldest, most threadbare sweatpants. And sometimes you’ve also got your partner on hand, basking in all that comfort with you. But this concept was recently lost on a friend of TikTok user @them_yangs, who shared the story with their permission (and started some conversations in the process).
“I told my friend the other night I couldn’t go out with her because I was hanging out with my husband,” she began. “And honestly she was confused. She was like ‘Oh, you’re going on a date with your husband?’ And I said ‘No, we’re just hanging out. I’m going to read, he’s going to play Zelda, we’re gonna drink wine on the couch. We’re just hanging out.’ And she could not understand the concept of hanging out with my husband. And I said ‘Don’t you hang out with your husband?’ and she said ‘No!’ and that made me sad.
Folks in the comments overwhelmingly recognized the particular, simple joy of enjoying quiet time with your partner.
“Parallel play is important,” noted @jacquelinebailey148.
“Just existing with your partner doing your own things is so soothing,” says @peaceofkrys. (Co-sign: so well put.)
Others pined for a similar arrangement, with @Toxicflower332 writing wistfully “We used to hangout [sic] all the time before we had a kid. I miss it so much TBH.”
User @worthlessprotoplasm (great name) pointed out that this level of coziness can, in fact, take many forms.
“Sometimes I sit on the phone with my sister for HOURS while we play our own games or do our own things because it’s nice to just have company and vibe even over the phone,” they observe.
But, of course, social media being social media, there were a handful of naysayers.
“We do that all the time so I don’t understand rejecting hanging out with friends,” argues @leggupleggup. “I would say yes to the friend and he’s coming, too.”
“I can hang out almost any day with my SO,” observes @Scarab100000. “So if a friend invited me somewhere I will go out and then hang out with SO another night.”
“It’s a terrible excuse to bail,” agrees @lizslayed. “Friendships deserve priority, too.”
Look, every relationship is different. And it’s certainly not like you have to (or by any means should) spend every single night on the couch with your partner, whether that be a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, or someone in-between and outside all those titles. But, truly, if your choice of life mate can’t hang, and if there aren’t times where you’re going to pick spending time with your partner over going out... What’s the point?
Often, it’s less about what you do than the intention of doing it together. And that kind of intention can make a big evening of a night where you don’t even get off the couch.
