In January 2018, we set out to take a one-way ticket trip for our honeymoon (a trip we are still on 9 months later). We had just hosted our wedding festival the year prior and were living in San Francisco.

In Silicon Valley, sabbaticals were commonplace for people working in the tech industry. It wasn’t rare to see a line on someone’s LinkedIn listing a sabbatical year off to rejuvenate and work on new ideas in between startup gigs. So we decided to combine the idea of a sabbatical with our honeymoon, thus creating the sabbatimoon.

sabbatimoon

noun \ sab·bat·i·moon  \ sə-ˈba-ti-mün \

: of or relating to a sabbatical year during a period of harmony immediately following marriage

Formalities aside, to us a sabbatimoon meant a year of seeing the world and growing deeper in our relationship.

It’s funny to think that you spend the most productive time of your days, the majority of your life’s days in fact, away from your life partner. If you are like us, you are at work from 9-5 on good days, or 9-10 on productive ones. So, that leaves you tired and without sunlight for the majority of your life partner time. That’s crazy. This is the person you proclaim to be the most important person in your life yet you spend so little time together. We wanted to change that.

It also meant a gap year between us finally getting married and starting a family (yes, we are talking about kids, Mom!).

Just like the cyclical cycles of growing up and evolving as a person, we knew that having children would have many challenges and changes as well. Our plan was to use our sabbatimoon as an avenue towards improving ourselves individually and together.

Specifically, we were excited to work on our couples communication. Most of the times when there are misunderstandings in life it’s the art of communication that triumphs. Knowing this we tried to be very intentional going into our year together.

A few things we did (and still do) are:

• Talk with a couples communication coach periodically

• Plan monthly time to connect deeper with each other

• Ask each other three questions at the end of the month:

  • What was challenging?

  • What was joyful?

  • What do you want to do more of going forward?

• Use disagreements as learning opportunities

Already our sabbatimoon has been a truly deepening experience. It’s not always obvious or intentional, but it’s always us facing different challenges together. The key words: us, together.