In an attempt to get a bit more personal/educational/we-actually-practice-what-we-preach, I thought I’d share a relationship insight that my husband and I recently stumbled across.
Now that we have a baby we are much more aware of the time we spend, or rather don’t spend, with each other. Babies are tiring. And when you’re done taking care of baby you really don’t feel like taking care of your marriage, or what it really feels like, your husband.
Because let’s be honest, the marriage ball is almost always dropped by the woman when a baby enters the picture. Husbands still love date night and spending alone time with their wife and getting, well, any attention at all. I know that my husband loves our son with a fierceness, but he’s admitted that he gets jealous of all the attention I give to the baby.
And on the wife’s side the ball is dropped because we’re really just one person with limited resources. We only have so much time and energy to give and we almost always choose to give it to the baby. You know, since he’s kind of dependent on us because he can’t walk and talk and stuff. So when the husband looks at us and asks, “What about me?” you kind of want to tear someone’s head off.
Which is where date nights come in for us. We were not good at date nights while we were childless. We’re both homebodies and preferred Chinese take out to getting gussied up for a night on the town. We had more than enough time to connect when it had been too long. But now that we are parents time is a scarce resource so we started carving out nuggets of time during the week (or months if the schedules got too crazy) to try and have husband and wife time.
It started off as Friday nights dropping the baby off with grandparents (if you don’t have grandparents around go find some friendly senior citizens and adopt some, they’re amazing) and having dinner. The problem was that Friday was a day that I worked and would have not seen the baby most of the day and I hated not spending time with him in the evening. Also, I had worked and was tired from it. This led to date nights filled with questions like, “Are we done yet?” or “Can we go pick the baby up now?”. Needless to say it wasn’t exactly what the hubs wanted to hear during Us Time.
We went a few months like this. Me eating dinner as fast as I could so that we could pick up baby, him getting pretty annoyed that I was so uninterested in reconnecting. The tension was growing for sure.
And then all of a sudden I had an epiphany!
Why was it always date night? What about date mornings?
I was way more refreshed in the morning, I wouldn’t feel so rushed to get back to little man and just to be real knowing what time of day you’re most likely to be “in the mood” is an important piece of info when it comes to planning time together. My husband didn’t think it would change anything. He was sure I’d still be in a rush to get home and guess what?
HE WAS WRONG! (Not going to lie, that might be my favorite marriage phrase ever… just kidding!)
We had our first date morning this past Saturday and IT WAS FABULOUS. Sure we had to wake up early on a Saturday to get little man to the grandparents but it was wonderful spending the morning and afternoon relaxed and present with the hubster. And he loved that he finally got more attention than normal.
Takeaways:
1. Your wife loves you, she’s just tired.
2. Your husband isn’t trying to be annoying, he just misses you.
3. Think about 3 times during your week when you are most refreshed. Give one of those times to your spouse.
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