Committed: The Ties that Bond
with Angella Dykstra
I'm a mom of three, a professional accountant, and an amateur photographer and writer. I am not a marriage expert. But my husband and I take "Til death do us part" seriously, and here I'll be sharing how we keep our marriage strong while we both do that insane work-life juggle.
Check out my Work It, Mom! profile and my blog, Dutch Blitz.
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This past weekend my husband and I packed our three kids into our minivan and embarked on a road trip to the Oregon coast. In the course of four days and three nights we traveled over 1,300 miles throughout Washington and Oregon states. Based on the fact that I am sitting here typing this, you know that we made it home alive.
We wondered how well our kids would do on the trip and were quite surprised (and thankful) at how well the whole thing went. We broke the driving into small chunks of time (two hours on average) and would stop to get out and stretch our legs, have a bathroom break, grab a meal, etc. While in the van we had books, snacks and the almighty DVD player.
Before we left on our adventure my Dad’s lady friend (I’m never sure what to refer to her as; they aren’t married and “girlfriend” seems odd for people in their sixties) asked who did the driving when we go place. I told her that my husband has always been the driver, except for when I was pregnant. The car sickness is was kept to a dull roar if I was the one behind the wheel.
The decision of who drives is not a man/woman thing, but just how we like to travel. He likes to drive and I like to read with the occasional break to change the DVD or pass out snacks. I’m also the one in charge of navigation but based on this last trip we might have to invest in a GPS. Seriously.
So how about you? Who sits in the driver’s seat when you and your spouse are in the car together?
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I hate driving, and my man does not. Therefore, whenever we go anywhere together, he drives, whether we’re in my car or his … unless I’m the DD. On a recent 14-hour round-trip roadtrip, I drove a total of 1.5 hours. Nothing to do with male-female division of labor. I just hate driving.
Molly | October 13th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I will always be happy to let someone else drive, whether that other person is male or female.
SKL | October 13th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I’m not married so maybe this would be different if I was, but we take turns driving. When we are in my car, I usually do the bulk of the driving and when we take his car the same is true. When we do long day trips I prefer the morning and usually let him take care of the drive home.
K | October 13th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
As I commented on your personal blog, I do the majority of long-distance driving (I like it, Noah gets bored) and he does the city driving because he likes it and I’m better at navigating. This driving plan saves our marriage every time we drive together. Seriously.
Mrs. Wilson | October 13th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I like to drive…. for some reason, even though he is a safe & careful driver, I always feel nervous when anyone but myself is behind the wheel.
Leslie | October 13th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
He does and I sit in the back. With a curtain strung between the headrests. I like to pretend he’s my chauffeur.
momsmith | October 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Just FYI, the GPS is NOT always right. (my husband would disagree despite the evidence!) While it might save your marriage, it has on more than one occasion been a near destruction of ours!
I drive more now than I used to… he just doesn’t like driving that much these days. Although after this weekend’s, um, incident, I might not drive that often either.
Jennifer | October 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I do the day-to-day driving of the kids to and fro as my husband is at work all day. When we’re together on the weekends and on out-of-town trips, my husband does the driving. He likes to be the one responsible when we’re together as a family. It’s just been that way since we dated.
Grace | October 13th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I drive 99.5% of the time because I have severe motion sickness. It’s horrid. I hate having to do ALL the driving, and Bryan hates always being driven places. Sometimes he jokes it’s just because I need to have control but seriously, it’s because of the puking! I promise!
Glad you had a great trip
samantha jo campen | October 13th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I drive all the freaking time. Even when “my” car was a pickup with no air conditioning and “his” was a car with a/c, I always ended up driving when we went anywhere together. Now I have the nicer car, and I still always drive.
I think it started because he doesn’t like to drive to places he hasn’t been before, and I guess he just doesn’t like to drive. Also, I don’t drink, so I’m the permanent DD. He always says he’ll drive if I want him too, but he gets cranky when I ask. It’s easier for me to just do all the driving, and I don’t mind as much as I used to. His driving makes me kind of nervous now because I’m so used to being in control of the car.
On long drives, it’s whoever is awake. He frequently does a majority of the driving if it’s an all-day drive. In unfamiliar places, we’ve discovered it’s best if I drive and he navigates - he’s a better navigator and he gets very cranky if he has to drive in any traffic at all or makes a single wrong turn.
Teri | October 13th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Usually Rob will drive when we go out together. But on long trips, we share the driving fairly equally. For example, our family drove from Auckland to Wellington a couple of years ago (it’s a 9-hour drive without stops) and back again 4 days later. Too much for one person!
We don’t have a DVD player in our car though, so we probably have to stop more often than most families. Every 2 hours we need to stop and let the boys run around, otherwise they’d go mental!
Hannah | October 13th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
My mother always drove, she said she didn’t trust anybody else’s driving. I do not EVER recall my father in the driver’s seat if my mother was in the car. As I got older, I remember wondering if my dad ever felt emasculated by this arrangement. Not that the man should ALWAYS drive, but for the completely opposite to be true, without fail? It just seemed like a (strangely accurate) metaphor for their marriage: she was in control, he was along for the ride. They’ve been divorced for 10 years or so. Just saying…
My husband really likes to drive and most of the time I could take it or leave it. On long trips when he says, “I’ll drive the whole way”, I couldn’t be more pleased.
Of course, my 2 year-old informed me some months ago that “boys drive and girls don’t!” on one time that Mommy took the wheel and Daddy relaxed, due to a headache. This shocked both of us - what does who’s driving all the time really say to your kids? Does it say anything? (To my pre-teenaged self, it certainly did.)
Meg | October 14th, 2009 at 10:13 am
my husband and i each drive our own cars. What can i say, we just don’t share cars well! Occasionally we switch off (one car driveway and sometimes too lazy to swap cars). On trips we generally trade… depending on who is up for driving or who knows where we are going. I really like driving. My husband has a touch of road rage when behind the wheel so once he has reached his horn honking limit I will usually take over!
Kate | October 14th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Its a battle… both me and my husband love to drive… We have figured it out.. short one/ errand filled ones/ shorter ones.. he would drive! Since this way i get the time to manage my ‘to do’ lists and ensure things are in peice..
The more longer peacefule ones, i take.. this way,, he gets his nap.. chit chat time with my daughter.. and we both are happy..
This happens “most” of the times
GNSD | October 14th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I do most of the dirving when we go anywhere. Always have. One of the reasons is that for long trips, I do better because he has bad knees, and sitting for long periods of time in that particular position is a pain in the ass for him. In the last years, tho, we do break it up into about 2 hr periods. That way, neither of us gets tired.
However, three is a big difference when we “drive” together. I’m the type that I simply want to put on some music, generally soft jazz or something like that and be left alone. He, on the other hand, wants someone to talk to him, which unfortunately, I don’t do a lot of, cause when I’m the passenger, I want to sleep (the motion on the passenger side makes me sleepy). Consequently, sometimes, I just go ahead and drive.
I’ve NEVER understood the couples where the husband refuses to let the wife drive. One of the ladies I work with is in that type of marriage. Her husband absolutely REFUSES to allow her to drive on trips when they’re together. I guess it’s a stupid macho thing, but it never made any sense to me whatsoever. Then again, my parents shared the driving, so I grew up in a non-macho house.
Jane | October 18th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Jennifer,
You’re right re the GPS not always being right. About 8 years ago, we drove up to Boston for a spring break vacation. (this was before the gps rage). MSN’s directions were great EXCEPT for the very last turn downtown to get to the hotel. Now, mind you, this was during the Big Dig time. We got to the street to turn right. Could see the hotel. However, the street was going left, not right, and we couldn’t get to where we were supposed to go. So, after going around the “block” for about 3 times, trying to find someway of getting to the hotel, I finally saw a police office on the corner where we had stopped for a light. I think he also saw us, with out of state license, and the fact that I was trying to get my husband (in the navigator’s seat) to roll down the window and ask how to get there. Being a man, he didn’t want to, however, I had the windown half way down and the cop came over, looked at hubby and said, “She’s telling you to ask for directtions, right?”
I grinned and explained where we were supposed to go. He then told us that our directions were right BUT they alternated the direction on that last street every other day. We were on the day for the wrong direction. He was very kind and explained which streets to take to get us to the hotel.
Jane | October 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am