Okay, here's the situation.....
My husband's work are organising a weekend retreat.
For two days, they are going to cram everyone who works for them, and their significant others into a house on the lakeshore.
How nice.
Officially, it's voluntary. Nobody has to go.
Except, if you say "No", they start talking about your commitment to the company, and the "team". They nag you. One of the wives calls your wife at home on a Sunday evening.
We had a valid excuse. I have a bad back and I cannot sleep on the floor. They arranged for us to have one of the two beds.
It's nice of them, it really is.
But we don't want to go.
Every day, N. starts work between five and seven in the morning. Three nights, he works till midnight. When he gets home, he is shattered, and bad tempered. He wants to eat, watch TV, and sleep -- and who can blame him.
I work from home, and don't have a car, so during the week, I am stuck in the village.
The weekend is our time.
The weekend is when we do things together. We go out, we swim, we have coffee, we talk.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the weekend is when we fuck. It's when we have time to lay in bed and cuddle and caress and enjoy each other in a leisurely kind of way, rather than the quick tired scramble that provides for the physical desire, but, however pleasant it is (and it is), isn't all we want out of sex.
This weekend however, we have to spend with N.'s colleagues.
For the most part, they are strangers to me. Those I have met, I have nothing in common with. The only thing he has in common with them is that they work at the same place. We have to spend two days socialising, being civil, doing what other people want to do. Eating when they want to eat. Going to bed when they want to. If I want to smoke, I'll have to go outside.
And there won't be a computer and a modem within miles.
They may well be nice people. I certainly don't dislike them.
But they are stealing my weekend, and I resent that. Badly.