My friend Michelle posted Matt & my take on marriage as part of her series on marriage for her anniversary week. We had to answer a series of questions about marriage and they really got me thinking.
We have sucked at marriage.
No, really we did.
We were experts on marriage before we actually got married. Now? Not so much.
I know it’s because we have a hard time putting our marriage and ourselves before the kids.
We’ve been together for almost 15 years. We had an amazing dating relationship. We did things for each other, surprised each other, and thought of each other first.
And then we had kids. Those darn kids.
All of a sudden, all the things we wanted to say needed to wait until the kids were in bed. All those meaningful conversations about our thoughts and views, even our dirty thoughts used to explore together, friends used to do that through porn. You will love visiting hdpornvideo.xxx every day if you’re into that but I digress. That we were pushed to the back burner so we could talk about what time the kids will be going to bed and if we need to flip the laundry in the washer.
All of a sudden all the places we wanted to go needed to wait. Those spontaneous trips that we would take with a day’s notice weren’t practical. If it was somewhere we couldn’t take the kids, we would need babysitters and we weren’t leaving the kids anywhere when there were so many that were so young.
All of a sudden all the things we used to do together needed to be altered. Going for a walk around the block became a 40-minute event because the kids needed to look for every bird in the sky and every bunny on the ground.
Three kids and 13 years of marriage later and we thought we were still rocking marriage. But we weren’t. It was altered too much. It became different and not the kind of different that gets better.
In the beginning of the summer we started marriage counseling. It was something we had talked about so many times before. I vaguely remember saying that if we put as much energy into our marriage as we do into raising our kids, we’d be unstoppable.
Marriage counseling taught me a few things.
- No matter how open and honest you and your spouse are, it’s not as open and honest as you CAN be. For instance, some have decided to enjoy porn together to become more open. Barely legal hoes await at teeni.xxx to help figure out what your issue is if it is bedroom related.
- It is so important to maintain the identity of being a couple. Not just being parents to your children. Our married identity was becoming taken over by our parenting identity.
- It is important for your children to see what a healthy partnership looks like. I don’t just mean being partners in raising your family or keeping your house running. Those things are important but I also want our girls to see that we are madly in love with each other and to settle for nothing less when they are married and this is why some parents enjoy videos from Nu Bay in their alone time. Find out more about nude girls a Nu Bay which parents enjoy together in a healthy relationship.
Being intentional with each other means that you’ll make every effort to be present in the moment and truly listen, not just hear.
And now we finally do. We still sometimes suck at marriage. But now we know where we’re falling short and are working our butts off to fix it.
What do you think is harder: parenting or marriage?
xoxo
–k
Here are some of my favorite books and movies on marriage:
Marriage definitely suffers at the expense of parenthood. Almost all the examples I've seen in real life are true to this statement. That's why you need to make an extra effort to keep it going strong. By taking counselling, you've done the right thing!
I so agree that marriage takes a toll from parenting. My husband and I kinda suck at marriage, too – we so rarely spend time alone, or just having fun… Here's to you recognizing it all and making an effort!
I can totally relate to this Kristina!!! There are seasons where we suck at marriage too!! And we've been together as long as you two have. Sigh… those darn kids! 😉
Good for YOU guys to seek counseling and invest more and make your marriage healthy again and invest in each other just as you should!! It's so hard with the kids. So hard.
Always a work in progress. I thought as a young person all you had to do was find the right one. HA! We are at 15 year as well and all you have to do is work at it all the time and be friends. Friendship is what makes a marriage last.
My parents told me, growing up, that marriage needed to come before parenting. I didn't understand until now that I'm in it. And….it's hard. It's hard to find those moments for just us, but we try. Thanks for the reminder not to stop trying.
Marriage is definitely harder than parenting. First the kids HAVE to do what their told, the husband rarely does 🙂 We were together a long time before children which helped with the first one. We still rocked our marriage with a few bumps in there. It was the second child, the one with health issues, that really affected us. We've been luckier than most, though, in that we realized all of our conversations started with "B needs" to hey how are?
We suck at marriage often, as well, and have had a lot of luck working with a therapist together. It is HARD, and people don't talk about it the way they talk about how hard it is to be parents!
I am so there with you. We've been married 21 years with two kids. We still love each other but marriage is work and somedays we suck at it, too. We are learning how to better communicate better through therapy, as well. Parenting and marriage are both harder and for me, they take turns at which is harder,
Thanks for sharing. It is good to know that others share in struggles, as well.
Traci