Do You Two Have a Place?

My husband and I have a few places. One is a very comfortable neighborhood restaurant and bar with good music, really friendly service, palm trees with colored lights, lots of comfort food, and an unlimited supply of fresh, hot tortilla chips. We go there when the tension level reaches a certain level. It lets us smile at life and each other again.
In a way, it is a Third Alternative. My husband would probably find a well-run jazz club very relaxing. Not me. And I love to relax in a pool, but he finds nothing inviting about clorinated water. We both relax immediately at Poco’s, and it’s a lot closer than either of the others.
We found it pretty quickly after moving here, because it’s important to have a place where we will both relax back into our generous, supportive selves.
We also have a place for celebrating, a place for riding our bikes together, and a place for getting away from it all. And they are all Third Alternatives, places we sought out because we disagreed about the first few we tried.
We go other places, too, places that delight him or make me feel great. And we check out new places all the time.
It took some effort to find our shared places, the ones where we both feel uplifted or calmed down, where we can both experience flow while we exercise or feel part of something larger than ourselves. But it is so good to know we can count on them when we want to share a good time.
Tonight, as we got into our better moods at Poco’s after power failures stopped our computers twice in one afternoon, I thought about the value of having our places, and I thought about you.