we’ve been together for going on 8 months and for context, my boyfriend and i both work full time jobs. he works 5 days a week, 7-6:30/7 and i work 5/6 days a week, 8/9-5/6. thankfully we don’t have any kids and we plan on keeping it that way, but i still would like some advice.
we both wake up at 6am and i cook us breakfast, which we eat together but then he leaves an hour later at 7, so that’s one hour we get together in the morning. then, at 6 when i get off, i get home and make dinner for us and he’s home usually 7pm. we eat together, maybe go to the gym or play video games but we’re both in bed by 10pm so that leaves us with maybe 3 hours together at the end of the day. we both get sundays off but we’re both so exhausted by the work week that we don’t have much energy to do much. we just moved to a beach town and i would love to go to the beach or even our apartment buildings pool after work but the pool closes at 8pm so we don’t have time for that during the week and as for the beach, 15 minutes seems like a long drive after working 11 hours and it being late.
we’re also not really big spenders so we don’t go out to fancy restaurants or anything like that (even though i would love too, i’ve never been in a healthy relationship where that was a possibility). on top of that, when he gets home from work, he tends to get on his phone and watch instagram reels a lot which bothers me to an extent because i feel like even though there isn’t much to talk about or do, being on the phone just takes away any chance of quality time.
i love my boyfriend so much, he’s the love of my life and i just want to spend more time with him but it feels so impossible now even though we live together. i want to spend the rest of my life with him, so anyone that’s been in a long term relationship and has struggled with similar issues, can you help me out?
TLDR; i feel like my boyfriend and i hardly get to see each other because of work despite living together. how can we make more time for each other working 11 hour days?