Yesterday, I wrote that many of the couples I talk with look back fondly on the early days of their marriage. I think it’s the cohesion and teamwork – the “us against the world mentality” – that created a sense of positiveness in the marriage. I just can’t see youth and poverty as being beneficial to marriages. And, as Meredreth pointed out, Find a young couple with very small children, trying to make ends meet and ask them if they are having the “time of their lives”. I bet you will find the opposite to be true. Time warps our memory, good and bad.
The opposite is true. When I talk with those young couples, lack of time, energy, and money are often given as reasons they haven’t been on a date in a long while.
No couple can allow having small children or being strapped for cash to become excuses for not paying attention to their marriage. The last thing any middle-aged couple wants is to spend years being completely kid-focused all their married life and then looking at each other as empty-nesters realizing the relationship died some time in the past.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being focused on the children. Just not to the exclusion of the marriage. I figure when all is said and done, I will have been raising children for about 30 years. That’s a lot of time and love invested into my children and I want to do it right. But, I’m planning on being married to my wife for 60 or 70 years: at least twice as long as raising children. Some things cannot be put on hold for two or three decades.
Date night is important. If money is tight, then we need to learn to be masters of the cheap date. If we don’t have family around to watch the children, then we need to find other ways to secure babysitters. When are children were small and I was a starving grad student, we found three other couples in the same position and came up with a babysitting arrangement that didn’t cost us anything. Every Friday night was date night with each couple watching all the children one Friday per month. The kids loved it – they had a party every week – and we were able to have a date night three times each month.
Be creative. Make spending time with each other a priority.
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I cherish our “date nights”. Between school for me, Devon’s demanding work schedule, and the five million activities bounced between kids, church and life in general, finding time to spend even an hour together alone is hard. Going out to dinner is even a treat.
I hear young moms almost bragging, I never have used daycare, I rarely ask others to keep my children ….. as if being tied to your children 24 hours a day is a good thing. I cringe when a friend says she “feels guilty” when spending time away from her kids.
For the sake of our marriages and famlies, finding time alone with our spouses should be a priority.
Meredreth,
Just remember: not everyone has access to such an incredible, gifted, brilliant, and beautiful teenager to babysit for them. If every young mother could get
my daughteryour babysitter to watch their kids, you might hear a different tune.Absolutely. Date night is so important. Make a babysitter two times/month a non-negotiable part of the budget. It’s too easy to say it is too hard or expensive, but it’s an important part of maintaining your relationship with your partner.