Finding romantic moments with your husband in the midst of motherhood can seem pretty impossible some days. If we’re being honest here, it can feel impossible most of the time. I don’t know about you, but there are days when I look at my husband at 5 PM and say “I haven’t even kissed you yet today.”
Thankfully, Brandon does a really good job of making sure those days don’t happen much. But we do often find ourselves needing to get creative to find moments as a couple when there’s so much parenting to be done.
Last Friday, we took the day off work. And we took the kids to camp and daycare anyway. That’s right…our poor children who cry every single day at camp/daycare drop off. We thought for about two seconds of just letting them stay home an extra day. Then we realized: we need this day. We need time to be together without the kids. We need time to talk without someone interrupting. So we dropped off Harlyn and Maverick, and had a day of fun sans children.
We went to breakfast, the arboretum, and to play putt-putt. We had a long lunch. We went to the running store. We got my ring inspected on time for once. We strolled Target for as long as we wanted. We got Starbucks. And it was fabulous.
I think the key to finding romance in the trenches of parenthood is simply to find moments. Sometimes, they may be 5 seconds, and other times, it’s a week long vacation. But as long as these moments (however quick they may be) come often…marriage will remain a marriage and not become a roommate agreement.
It’s about waking up and giving a quick kiss. It’s about helping the other person in those busy mornings to show you are in this together. It’s a call or a text during the day. It’s asking “how’s your day?” or “how are you?” at a time when the other can truly answer…not with screaming kids and dinner about to burn on the stove.
Romantic moments are found in slightly bigger, non-everyday ways too, It’s a weekly lunch date (which we have come to NEVER want to miss). Our lunch dates give us time to actually talk about real things, to connect, and to just enjoy each other’s company. It’s the times we’ve been able to go on a trip without kids. Yes, it takes planning and it’s not easy to coordinate. But those trips have been a breath of fresh air into our relationship. It helps us reset. Romantic moments might come in the form of a home date night (which I’ve talked about before…you can check out home date night ideas HERE.
The best news about finding romance in parenthood is that it can be anything and everything. Read a book together. Listen to music or a podcast *cough cough…try The Fools in Love Podcast!* Cook together, bake together, binge watch a whole season of a show together. Whatever you guys like to do can be turned into a date. You can choose to take anything you’d normally do on your own or silently together and make it so much more.
Sometimes, Brandon and I have to take a step back and look at what’s going on around us. That’s exactly where we found ourselves last week when we felt bad for sending the kids off to daycare and camp and thought about just staying home as a family. But when we really thought it through we realized: 1) The kids only struggle at drop off and both have great days every single day 2) they were home with us the day before and it was almost the weekend anyway 3) our relationship has been on the back burner for a few weeks, first as we prepped for a life change and now as we are walking through it. It can only stay there so long, and we had the PERFECT time to bring it to front and center on the 5th.
Lastly, it wasn’t all that long ago when I looked at my husband and asked him…what do we ever really even talk about other than the kids and work? And it was a defining moment for us, because it was then that we realized we had to put in some effort if we wanted to connect on a deeper level. If we wanted our relationship to grow, we had to be willing to talk about more than the surface level stuff. And so we started. We started challenging ourselves and each other through conversations about our life and where we were heading. THAT’S when we made the decision to not just live each day barely surviving parenthood, but to intentionally carve time out as a couple so that our relationship with each other and with our kids got stronger, better, and easier. We’re still a work in progress. There are still days when I feel like I barely said “Hey” to Brandon. But we know the end goal, and so we will work to find little moments of connection in our daily life.
What’s something you and your partner do to stay connected in this crazy busy life?
