One evening at a time
Posted 12th June 2009 by Lakshmi, tagged marriage, time together, date, talk
We have been married for almost 10 years. Our older daughter will be 5 soon and our younger one is 19 months (still not sleeping through the nights). We both work full time and kids go to daycare/preschool. We do a pretty good job of juggling home and work and taking turns with child rearing. However recently I have been less patient and short tempered. After a stressful day and some bickering with my husband, it slowly dawned on us how much we have been neglecting the relationship between just the two of us. We realized that we were just two people working for our kids and we need to do some things differently to savor our marriage. We are both avid readers and researchers. I read a lot of articles online including some in this website and others and took on some pieces of advice home. We did 3 things differently yesterday evening.
1. I talked to our little one’s daycare teacher and asked her if she is interested in babysitting the girls once a week and she agreed! So we are planning to have her around 7 pm to 9 pm on Wednesdays so husband and I can try to get out by ourselves.
2. After kids were in bed, husband did not turn on the laptop or open a book, which was a biggie. He loves to be on top of all kinds of news all the time. I told him let us try not to turn the laptop on just this evening and let us try to see what we can do.
3. No, we did not watch a movie or play board games. He asked me – what are you trying to do. Live by advice from some website?? I said – let us just sit down together and see what we can do. After couple of minutes of awkwardness, we started talking. We talked a lot – I do not remember anything significant. We were able to just talk different things, mainly silly or unimportant things just like we could before kids or during early years of our marriage. We spent time together from 9 pm to 11 pm and that was just the 2 of us – no computer, no TV, no book, no decisions!! Well, that was something after a long time for both of us.
2 comments so far...
My husband and i are now trying to make most of the evenings when we can after our daughter goes to bed. It will vary, sometimes just a good movie, sometimes just havnig dinner with no TV on, sometimes just chill back and chit chat. And then there will be just some "Me" time.. either i'd have a girls eevning out, or he'd go play some pool.. or we'll read our books and cuddle next to each other.
Yes, its not as frequent as i'd like.. but as you said: "It's start" and small steps to the bigger goal: a well rounded household :-)
Flag as inappropriate Posted by GNSD on 12th June 2009
These little things mean so much. It's nice to hear the same from others.
Flag as inappropriate Posted by Phe on 12th June 2009