Friday, October 28, 2016

Entry 354: Politics... Wait, No, Family and Marriage, Actually

Is there anything else to write about now other than the election?  Yes, there is, but I have a different forum for crossword puzzles, and nobody wants to hear my in-depth thoughts on the Seahawks running back situation.  (But if you want my quick take: I miss Beastmode!)  Oh, I suppose I could also write about family, but things are pretty boring right now on that front – which is fine.  We have our routines; they work for us… for now.

If you froze my current situation in time and repeated it until the day I died, sixty years from now (99 seems like a decent age to hypothetically die), I wouldn’t think it was much of a life – the highlights of my day are usually the walk I take during my lunch break, and the five minutes I’m home and both of my kids are awake and not whining about something – but the good thing is that my current situation is not frozen in time.  I imagine the kids will be less clingy and less fussy by the time they reach their 60s (when I hypothetically die) than they are now.  I imagine someday S and I will be able to do more things with them and take them more places.  I imagine someday they will become more independent, and we will be able to spend more than ten minutes alone together, when we aren’t sleeping or wishing we were sleeping.


It’s weird, two of S’s friends who don’t know each other, and who each have small children confided in her in back-to-back days that their respective relationships with their husbands have been very rocky since the kids came, and they are both worried.  One of them said she was frequently annoyed with her husband’s presence for no good reason, and the other said that she and her husband had become “coworkers” instead of spouses.  And my first thought was, “Uh… yeah, isn’t that how all relationships are for parents of small kids?”

I suppose it’s a matter of degree, but that’s kinda how things go for a while, right?  If you have young children, you’re likely to be majorly overworked and sleep-deprived; and if you’re majorly overworked and sleep-deprived, you’re likely to be grumpy; and if you’re likely to be grumpy, you’re likely to be annoyed by the mere presence of other people; and if you’re likely to be annoyed by the mere presence of other people, you’re likely to take it out on your spouse, because they’re the person who is always around and whom you can take it out on.  If you tried to pull that shit with your boss, you'd probably be fired.

As for being coworkers, yeah, marriage does get pretty logistical with young kids – that's just how it goes.  But if you work well together as a team you can take some pride in it.  The other night both our kids woke up at the same time around 2:00 a.m., and S and I arose from our slumbers, quickly set up our game plan, double-teamed the kitchen for some milk, went into man-to-man coverage to put each kid back down (she got big; I got little), and were back in bed spooning within five minutes.  (Of course the spoon only lasted about five minutes because it’s not very comfortable to actually fall asleep in that position, but it was a nice five minutes.)  Things don’t always go that smoothly, but when they do, it’s a beautiful thing.

My general feeling on it is don’t put so much stress on your relationship.  Enjoy the little things and know that the big things will come back in time.  I think S feels the same way, but maybe not quite to the same degree.  She definitely gets antsy and starts saying we need to have a date night, and we usually do, but here’s the thing about date nights: They are not always fun.  Sometimes they are, and you have a great time, but other times you just feel like you’re going through the motions because you should, and you’re not really enjoying yourself.

[I find both these actors very funny, and yet you would have to pay me a lot of money for me to actually watch this movie.]

The first problem with date night is that you have to get somebody to watch your kids.  DC is an expensive city, especially when it comes to child care, so sitters are pricey.  Add this cost to the cost of the activity, and S and I are dropping at least a Benjamin every time we go out, often much more.  That's not such a big deal, if we have a fantastic time, but a lot of times we don't because (a) we incessantly worry about the kids (more me than S), (b) we start to fade immediately after leaving the house (more S than me) -- and not only that but we are cognizant of the fact that our kids are going to be waking us up at the crack at of dawn, possibly early, and it's really hard to cut loose and relax when the prospect of a 5:30 a.m. wake up call is hanging over your head.  All of this is not to say S and I are incapable of going out and having a good time.  We do have enjoyable nights out sometimes.  It’s just to say that date nights often aren’t what they're cracked up to be.

Actually, recently S really wanted to do a date night, so I suggested that instead of going out and spending a bunch of money just to be tired in nicer clothes than sweats, we should rent a movie from iTunes, pick a specific day and time to watch it after the kids are in bed, and make it into a little event that we are going to do together – no folding laundry, no checking Facebook, no reading work email, no following a game online.  We are going to set up date conditions and have a date night at home.  She said that was a good idea, so we did it, and then she fell asleep a half hour into the movie.  I didn’t mind.  I finished it (Whiplash -- pretty good), then I turned on the end of a football game and watched that, and then I woke her up and we went to bed at the same time, which is a rarity.  Oh, and both kids slept until the morning – so it was actually a nice little night.

Alright, apparently I can write about something other than the election.  The actual vote is coming up in 10 days (the end is nigh!), so I’ll probably have something to say on it next week.  But for now I hope you enjoyed this all-family entry.

Until next time…

2 comments:

  1. I remember clearly a unit in my Adult Development and Aging class in college that addressed this after-kids marital slump. Statistically speaking marital satisfaction peaks soon after marriage, dips it's lowest when kids are youngest and then gradually goes back up to finally level out to some degree.

    ReplyDelete