There never seems to be enough time to connect with each other as husbands and wives. One major obstacle to a good marriage is excessive separateness – which usually results from an over emphasis on work and outside activities done without our mates.
In other words living too independently can lead to a single life.
“… Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.” The tense in the original language is “continually live together.” 1 Peter 3:7 (NLT)
This indicates that there is to be companionship doing life together – with understanding of our spouse, that we may at times need to be doing things together that our mate loves to do, but we may not necessarily like to do.
Of course, we all need to do separate activities to restore ourselves and to have different things to converse about. But we are not meant to go our own separate ways at the expense of intimacy.