My husband and I live together, but our best conversations happen over the phone

• My husband and I talk to each other on the phone all the time.
• Having important conversations over the phone helps us stay focused.

On a recent Saturday morning, I pushed my baby in the swing as my older kids chased each other around the backyard. I was talking on the phone, my trusty headset in my ear. It had been a stressful week, and I was having a heartfelt conversation about my feelings, the million tasks on my to-do list, and everything else in my mom brain.

My kids are used to my long phone calls. I'm an American expat living in Canada, so I am quite a distance from my family of origin and childhood friends. That morning, however, I was talking to a fellow Canadian resident who, in fact, lives with me: my husband. As I watched the kids in the yard, he was inside the house, and we were talking through our headsets.

Now that we have kids, my husband and I have our deepest, most fulfilling conversations over the phone. Sometimes we talk when he's on a break at work, but often we're both in or around our home and on the phone together.

Talking without seeing each other helps us avoid distractions

I never really questioned this habit until I was recently watching the Netflix reality series "Love is Blind." On the show, contestants sit in "pods" and talk to each other through a wall though the point is that they don't know what the other person looks like, they also get to know each other without distractions; they are focused only on the other person's voice. I suddenly realized that my phone calls with my husband were just like the pods.

That's why I love this habit we've developed. When we talk face-to-face, there are many distractions: our kids, naturally, but even our home environment is distracting. My husband recently interrupted me while I was speaking to complain about the brand of soap I had purchased. This was a non sequitur, but he had seen a new package of soap on the counter. Annoyed, I complained that he had interrupted me to complain. We laughed about it later, but in the moment it degraded the original conversation we were having.

Speaking of soap, I am guilty of doing the dishes during our conversations and only half-listening. When I'm inside my house, so many tasks demand my attention that it's hard for me to be fully present for an adult conversation.

When my husband and I talk on the phone, however, our chat is separated from the general chaos of our household.

It's like when we were first together

In this way, it reminds me of when we were first dating, before we shared a home and the responsibilities that go with it.

We didn't talk about soap back then, and I wasn't stressed about dirty dishes. We talked about our hopes and dreams and what we loved about each other. Seeing his name on the call display gave me butterflies, and 20 years later his name on the call display still makes me very, very happy.

I love how our phone habits reconnect me to those first feelings of love.

Our phone calls also connect me to something else: friendship. Because I live so far away from many of my loved ones, talking on the phone is my love language. It's how I communicate with my friends, and I have learned that a long, heartfelt phone conversation can be almost as fulfilling as hanging out. So, on a typical Saturday you won't find my husband and me planning a date night, but you will find us with our headsets in our ears, talking to each other.