I can’t remember the last time my husband and I have been on a date night. We talk for an hour or two after the children are in bed. I call him on the phone during the regular workday (or a lot if I’m having a very hard day at home). But we haven’t had the time to actully say, we’re leaving the children at home and going off on a date. And during this date we are going to stick to the follwowing three rules:
1) Don’t talk about children.
2) Don’t talk about children.
3) Don’t talk about children.
Child centered marriage. It’s an easy pit to fall in.
We’ve fell in it. Big time.
I hear all these stories about how parents spend time solely focused on their children: shuffling them off to various activities, being too permissive for fear they’ll psychologically damage their children, etc. And when the children are up and gone, there’s nothing left to give to the one to whom you said “I do” at the altar decades ago.
I don’t want to be that person.
I want to celebrate my sixtieth anniversary and say: “It was good. Hard sometimes. But good. I’m glad I did this with you, this life. We did good together.”
To accomplish, I have to make the time, to listen, to talk. To hope with him. Together.
Hope is the engine.
Hope is the fuel.
Hope puts together the messy parts, the hidden parts, the scary parts (and the child centered parts!) of marriage and molds them with the beautiful. Makes them fit.
I know of a woman who lost hope. She lost hope after years and years of being in a physically abusive marriage. After the marriage ended on paper, the divorce settled, fear still haunted her. Kept her from loving again. She lost hope.
I know of another woman who lost hope too. She lost hope in her dream of being a singer after she said “I do.” Not because her husband didn’t want her to be a singer, but because she had a false persception of what a “good wife” should be. And so she lived out her marriage carrying the burden of a false hope. And her relationship with her husband grew strained as the years went on.
Thinking about these women, having a child centered marriage doesn’t sound so bad.
Or does it?
I may not have experienced the same level of stresses that these brave women endured, but I do know the importance of ensuring healthy, loving interactions with the wonderful man I share a one-flesh destiny with.
Hope.
I want to make room for hope, true hope, in marriage. And so I resolve to do something small to keep the marriage part of the family going. Something like a compliment a day.
Then, we can take a baby step towards a date night. {RedBox movie, anyone?}
But hope can be lived out simply. Day by day.
Hi Preslaysa,
Good for you! You see the great importance of keeping your marriage relationship primary, alive and active. It began with just the two of you, it will so quickly be just the two of you again. God, marriage, children, family, community…that’s a good order to have it in. Your continuing and regular union (heart, mind and flesh) is so, so important.
‘Children-centered marriages’ are common, and they’re failing often after the kids grow and leave. Mine failed. All was centered around the children and their activities. I became ‘volunteer dad’ along with my ‘volunteer wife’ in many groups the kids were in, thinking that was what I should do. Our marriage bed became a family bed early on (NOT good). We didn’t do date nights or weekends alone, just us two. Intimacy dwindled after the first child, with the busyness/tiredness/presence of kids/body changes. I (mostly) silently tolerated it many years, hoping for a return some day to the union we once had, feeling neglected as a mate, becoming ever more frustrated, and eventually becoming an often angry guy. That created an unrecoverable catch-22.
Wow. Great insights, Drew!