My Marriage After Kids

I am by no expert on relationships; I actually have very little experience with new relationships.  I met my husband when we were 16 years old. We dated through high school and college in the off and on format that is so common at that age.  We attended different high schools and colleges but maintained the relationship by establishing a regular schedule of seeing each other.  As we matured so did our relationship and we learned to resolve conflict with conversation and mutual understanding in lieu of our previous method of “breaking up.”  After 9 years of dating, we married.  We’ve been married for just under 3 years and have two children together.  Ok that’s enough of a biography on me and my husband.

Anyone who has gotten married in the Catholic church you know all about pre-cana, for those of you who haven’t let me bring you up to speed.  Pre-cana is a series of classes or meetings that couples must attend before getting married.  The following topics are “required” to be discussed:

·         Spirituality/Faith

·         Conflict Resolution Skills

·         Careers

·         Finances

·         Intimacy/Cohabitation

·         Children

·         Commitment

This was the first time my husband and myself really sat and had some open conversations about our life plan timeline and how children fit into our picture.  Both of us had some couples in our lives that we thought were good examples of what we wanted our relationship to look like and both of us knew we did not want the type of relationships that we saw between our parents.  The one common theme we both saw in our parents was that there was not a focus on the other spouse which we deemed was the #1 thing we wanted to ensure we had in our married.

Over a year later we found ourselves married, moved into our first home and expecting our first child.  I was worried that having a baby was going to change our relationship.  I was afraid that all the focus was going to be on the baby and we were going to end up complete strangers living under the same roof.  We made the decision to put aside time every day that is just for us!  To put this into practice we established a bed time for our son of 8 pm and we diligently put the baby to bed at 8pm (even though we weren’t always successful).  From 8pm until we went to bed (or the baby woke up) was our time. 

Two years later that is still our time.  We watch our favorite tv series, play cards, clean or organize the house, talk, have a fire in our fire pit, ect.  My friends joke that we’re always busy making babies when ours are asleep and they are probably right.  I believe that’s an important part of any relationship.  To be perfectly honest, that’s also the time when we do most of our arguing.  When talking to other parents (and just other couples) to be honest it seems like taking your partner for granite seems to be an epidemic in our society.  Everyone is on all the time, on line, on the phone, on social media that it’s difficult to be in the present.  That’s not to say I can’t be found to be playing some candy crush before I go to bed each night but it’s so easy to let that stuff come in between my relationship.

Date night can become very expensive very quickly.  Dinner and a movie can easily be $70 and then a babysitter can easily cost $50 so that date gets expensive fast.  We try to make every night a date night and when we do go out without the kids we make it count.  I don’t think my marriage is perfect; yes we could do a few more date nights and we could probably spend less time on our computers working on our fantasy football teams but we’re happy.  I can honestly say I look forward to seeing my husband after work and even after 12 years he still makes me smile everyday (just don’t tell him that haha).