Sometimes when I am nursing Eli, I am completely transfixed by each little hair on his head and spend the entire time whispering sweet somethings to his sweet-smelling baby face.
Other times, I am multi-tasking: reading the news and nursing; planning a vacation and nursing; on the phone with my Mom and nursing; reading to Gabi and nursing. Eli doesn’t appear to mind. So long as he gets his 4 ounces. And – for the record – I am nursing A LOT these days.
This morning while I was nursing Eli my mind wandered off to what I wanted to blog about today. What bubbled up is that forefront for me right now is staying connected in my marriage. Then, Eli pooped on me. True story.
My experience (and many books and workshops on the topic of maintaining intimacy and connectedness) has taught me that a key factor in maintaining a happy marriage is setting aside positive time for your significant other (especially time when we are not doing house-tasks). Time to talk or walk or eat or kiss or read next to each other, a bike ride, or a movie. Sometime our date night ends up being grocery shopping – not exactly the ideal date night.
While my inner housewife would rather shed the tired black leggings and put on a clean, magically ironed shirt, wear fancy earrings and share tapas…
…with two tots on our hands, Dan and I take date nights where we can.
So…
…we did in fact go on a DATE to Costco.
[NOTE: anecdotal evidence suggests that this kind of date is not uncommon.]
This could have been sad as a date night -- but we had fun. My inner housewife struggles between maintaining intimacy and wanting to finish my Costco shopping. But come on, whose doesn’t?What generates my anxiety about maintaining connectedness in my marriage? A number of things… but I’ll take this opportunity to share two recent date night experiences to illustrate.
Date #1:
Book Club. It’s just the two of us -- very exclusive. No, our book club didn’t generate the anxiousness but the recent book choice did indeed.[We choose books in this manner: whenever one of us seems to get immersed in a novel, the other person casually sneaks it away until suddenly we are both reading and sneaking the book back and forth at the same time. Its all great until someone asks, “what did you think of that part where ___ died?” Our book club meets most nights in our room around 11pm. Quite convenient.]
Our book club is currently reading a very well-written book (though the tone is quite bitter, the insights resonate and are hilarious) that I recommend, called “The Wife” by Meg Wolitzer. http://www.amazon.com/Wife-Novel-Meg-Wolitzer/dp/0684869403
As the title implies, the protagonist is “the wife”, Joan; The narrative follows Joan’s life as a young Smith student who leaves school to become the wife of her writing professor in the mid-50’s. We meet her current day, when she is accompanying her husband, a celebrated novelist, to Finland for a coveted award. The author explores the sacrifices and consequences of being defined by family roles. On some level, for me, it reads as a cautionary tale.
Date #2:
I went on this date with other favorite date night partner (and housewife goddess), my girl J.M..
We went to see…Sex in the City 2.
SPOILER ALERT: it sucked!
We both knew it would suck. I was hoping that maybe, just this once, it wouldn’t be quite as bad as it was. My inner housewife had one critique and one compliment for this film, a film that most of you will only ever see if you are on an airplane and in that case the only good parts (I am generous for even using that word) will probably be edited out for mainstream consumption.
Complement:
So there’s this scene of where the two women who have children meet for a late dinner. They start, first, with drinks at the bar. And then…it’s time for: mommy confessions! In this particular part of the movie, I found myself actually tearing up a little. There was the essence of truth, loss, gratitude, giddiness, relief, bliss and madness that was… authentic.This scene resonated and was validating for my inner housewife.
Criticism:
There’s this other scene that shows how the Arab women in the movie secretly don designer labels under their oppressive garb and mock the men in their lives. My inner housewife was suspicious: did the filmmakers decide they wanted this scene SO BADLY that they crafted an entire movie around it? They may have…Anyway, I am not sure that this scene did anything to help or hurt my anxiety about maintaining connectedness in my relationship but it was so annoying that I felt the need to mention it anyway.
P.S. TWO HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES. Enough said.
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Date nights and quality time and all that stuff that makes two people stay connected….well, my inner housewife is coming to terms with something painful – it’s really really hard!
My final insight from date night is that we need to keep the love account very full so that when we are low on “income” we can take some loving & lovingkindess from our savings.
And…we need to find a regular babysitter.
