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.
I don’t talk about sex, much, in this column, other than to say that my husband and I have it. Regularly. We have three kids, I have been pregnant four times (I miscarried my first baby), so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that all of the babies came to be because of us having sex.
(I’m pretty sure that my children will choose to believe that my husband and I have only had sex four times, despite the innuendos that their Dad likes to throw out to make me laugh and them cringe.)
I’ve read a number of posts about Jennifer Aniston’s (supposed) lack of a prenuptial agreement with her fiance Justin. The general consensus is that she would be a fool to not have a pre-nup. She is worth far more than he is, and he could gain far more in a divorce, etc.
For us mere mortals, is this even an issue? My husband and I got married twelve years ago, just as we were starting our careers. Sometimes I’m the primary breadwinner, sometimes he is. Our earnings all go into one pot, which pays for our house and all of our household costs. Should we ever divorce (not going to happen), everything would be split down the middle.
Do you have a prenuptial agreement? Why or why not?
I’m sure that you’ve read a hundred posts by now about the fact that Katie Holmes filed for divorce from Tom Cruise. There is much speculation about the why (Scientology weirdness being the main reason), but who really knows? Maybe he’s not the same smiling/happy guy he is for the public, or one hundred other possible reasons. Their impending divorce got me thinking about celebrity divorces in general.
Anyone who knows me in real life, or who reads me here or on my personal site knows that I WON THE LOTTERY when it comes to husbands. He cooks (when he’s home before I am), he cleans (far more than I would ever think to), he deals with all of the kids’ extra-curricular activities (Jazz, and swimming, and soccer, oh my!) and, man. I’m forever grateful for all that he does on top of working his full-time job while I’m at my full-time job in a city twenty minutes away from our small town.
She is so easily mockable, Miss Gwyneth, what with her GOOP advice. It’s hard to take parenting advice from someone who has a nanny/cook/personal trainer.
Especially when she says things like this:
“I have little kids in school. I want to maintain my marriage and my family, so I have to be here when he comes home.”
I often marvel at the fact that my husband is, well, my husband. I don’t get hit with that feeling as often as I did when we were first married, which was at least once a day. He is my HUSBAND. I am his WIFE. We are MARRIED. IS THIS REAL?
My friend Linda summed up what my husband and I have been discussing lately. We went from child-free, with promising careers and all of the free time we wanted to do whatever we wanted, to having three kids in less than four years and riding the waves of career changes, to where we are today. Three school-aged kids, my husband in a job he did not go to college for, and me dabbling in a creative side that I didn’t even know existed when we got married.
A post I read yesterday at The Motherlode — ‘Is the ‘Good Enough’ Marriage Good For The Children‘ — grabbed my interest and also made me shake my head a little bit. The author refers to an article in The Atlantic where the author talks about how she may never find a husband.
She broke up with an “exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered. I was bewildered. To account for my behavior, all I had were two intangible yet undeniable convictions: something was missing; I wasn’t ready to settle down.”
I’m sure that you heard about this yesterday, but in case you didn’t, here’s what went around the Interwebs. Pat Robertson, you know who he is, took a call from a viewer who asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.
Pat’s response?
“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said.
It seems as though my last post struck a nerve with a few people, and it had nothing to do with why I appreciated the article I linked to. I am a huge proponent of marriage. I’m not saying that YOU need to be married, if you don’t want to be. I’m just saying that I love being married and I put the effort forth (as does my husband) to keep it fun and enjoyable and awesome. I am better for it, he is better for it, our kids are better for it. We have a very happy family unit.
Hence, why I write this column. To encourage and support and provide resources to support marriage and committed relationships.
Our fearless leader Nataly sent me the link to a Huffington Post article titled “On Second Thought, Don’t Get Married.” Being someone who believes wholeheartedly in marriage, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading. The first two paragraphs had me wondering where the article was heading.
More than 2 million couples will get married in the United States this year alone. Several hundred thousand of these couples should reconsider, postpone their weddings or not get married.
Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is “becoming obsolete.”
