I’m often asked what’s been the hardest time in my marriage. Without hesitation, I name the first year of our marriage. We struggled with making it through every day without hurting each other. We eventually got into our groove around month 8 or 9, which at the time felt like year 80 or 90. Now, eleven years later we still fall back into similar patterns that we established during those first 12 months of marriage.
But there is another answer to this question that has come up a few times lately, and I myself have been intrigued. The hardest year was our first, but the most difficult time has been the impact of having kids. We have four kids, which at times feels like four too many.
If you’re thinking of having a family one day, let our story be a guidepost for you and your spouse. Invest your time and money into your relationship as much as possible now.
We look back on our two years together prior to having kids and often wonder what we did with our time and our money. It’s not that we had a ton of money early on, but we had the ability to work more so that we could play more together. We both regret not taking advantage of opportunities to travel, play and try new experiences.
Dating is even more important after marriage.
We did our fair share of counseling early on, which is a big reason we made it out of year one still liking each other. But we didn’t really make dating an important part of our relationship. It’s easy to get into a mindset of spending so much time together at home in the evenings that you don’t need to go out. While this is true in the short term, it will come back to cause problems later in life. We humans are creatures of habit and the norms we set today will be the norms we live by tomorrow. Changing these norms individually is challenging, changing them in a marriage is very difficult.
Kids have a way of disrupting your schedule and life. While that’s pretty easy to see in the baby’s first 6 months of life, it doesn’t have to be that way once the baby becomes a bit more settled into your family. Because Stephanie and I didn’t set an expectation and pattern of ‘dating’ each other early on, when kids came along it became so much more difficult to try and instigate dating as a new marriage value. Marriage values need to be created and cultivated before kids arrive.
My advice to young couples is to have one date night at least once a week. Protect this night at all cost. Do no let work functions, friends or other social issues creep in and overtake your night together. Set an evening each week and alternate ownership of that date (e.g. the wife takes the odd weeks, the husband the even weeks). Your date night needs to vary in what you do together. Don’t make it just dinner and a movie. Mix it up and try new things together once every week. Rain, snow, or shine: Go out on dates. It’s that important.
Sex makes babies.
Before kids, sex can be freely spontaneous. It’s possible for it to be so after kids, too, but it becomes a bit more complicated. For one the woman’s body is biologically wired to be responsive to her baby’s needs (even if the baby is bottle fed). This responsiveness comes as priority number one for her, which can sometimes leave the husband feeling on the outside looking in. This is a *huge* shift for couples and most of the time they don’t see it coming.
After kids, the sexual embrace changes. There are physical and emotional differences that take time to work out.
I had some older men share some advice about marriage after baby, specifically in the sexual realm of our relationship. In our case, Stephanie chose to breastfeed our kids, which meant that her body was first and foremost paramount for the survival of our child. It’s a beautiful experience but it was also a bit threatening to me. If our relationship was based on the physical expression of intimacy, we would have been in a lot of trouble. However, because we’d been able to connect with each other in non-physical ways, the kids caused for some reorienting of how we expressed sexual intimacy with each other.
Kids can make getting to know each other seem impossible but if you put into practice norms and values today, you’ll allow your kids to be invited into your family—as opposed to making your family apart from the kids’ lives. If you continue to be curious and explore life with your spouse, having kids will be a wonderful addition in your relationship.
