Maintaining the connection

On Friday, after our couples couseling session, my husband and I headed into Boston for an overnight date. The last time we had been away overnight together was last October to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. That trip had been our first overnight alone since the birth of our son. What I noticed both this past weekend and back in October is that we seem to slip pretty comfortably back into our pre-parent relationship when we are alone and away from our house and our daily routines.


We went into our time away this past weekend both feeling stressed and somewhat irritable. For me it was the end of the school year with all of activities that were winding down coupled with a visit from my sister-in-law who is moving down south and wanted to store a few things in our basement. For my husband, it was the end of one long work project, and the beginning of another in addition to gaining a new supervisor and finding out that he would have to travel to Singapore this week.

Our counseling session helped us to blow off some steam in a constructive way which I think helped us to move beyond our day-to-day troubles once we arrived at our hotel room. We enjoyed a relaxing late afernoon and evening filling most of our time with conversation. One of the things that having a child has robbed us of is the luxury of time to delve more deeply into each other's lives. Not having these moments together means that we start to lose our connection to one another which makes those instances when we are in conflict with one another more adversarial.

When my husband isn't traveling, we have about 45 minutes at the end of a weeknight in which to synch up our schedules, exchange any relevent updates and briefly check in with one another. Being peace loving people, both my husband and I avoid conflict; so, I know on my end, on those evenings when time is scarce, I don't bring up anything controversial. If I am feeling overwhelmed or slighted or I think there is a problem with our budget for the month, I simply put it aside until there is more time to talk. I think this is a healthy practice except for the fact that sometimes these things get pushed aside for weeks if my husband is traveling or we have a busy weekend. As a result, instead of being addressed in a calm constructive manner they explode out of me. The other side of this, of course, is that I give the impression that everything is going fine, so instead of recognizing that there is a problem brewing, my husband gets blindsided.

This has been the dance of our marriage for over six years now. The good news is that I can now see the pattern. The work ahead is learning to behave in a more constructive and loving way. I think the first step is creating more space to be alone and talk. So, it is time to get the old calendar out and putting date nights on the schedule!