I have always had it in my mind that my husband and I would continue our date night traditions even after the kids are born. Some date nights, of course, will include the kids. But we have said that if we are able to afford it and find the energy for it, we would like to leave the baby with the grandparents so we can leave the house for a few hours together as a couple. We want to continue to have date nights, just the two of us, alone, one-on-one. We want to continue to grow our relationship as husband and wife, not just as the parents of unnamed baby.
Growing up my parents took time for themselves. I remember spending nights at home with babysitters or my nana, or going to my aunt's condo for an evening or staying overnight with my Grandma because my parents went away for a weekend or wanted an evening alone. We also went to stay with my aunt and uncle at their trailer in the states, or went to summer camp. This wasn't always just for us - it was for my parents. And my parents never hid this fact from us! They told us that they were still in love and wanted to go on a date. And we understood that in order for them to do adult things, they needed to have a break from us and, in all honesty, we needed a break from them as well so that we learned some independence and saw different perspectives. It never made us love them any less.
Aaron's parents, on the other hand, spent that time away from their kids to engage in partying. They had different priorities at that point in their lives. They worked hard all week at the business that they owned, and spent their weekends with their friends being consumed in their bad habits, making poor choices that made their children resent them, coming home late so as to not be able to wake up to make breakfast. Their priorities weren't always their children or their own marriage. This has since changed, but growing up, Aaron didn't have a great role model for a healthy marriage, and it carried into all of his relationships, including with me at the beginning. Again, his parents now have a wonderful marriage, and are celebrating 45 years this weekend. They are very much in love and are very committed to their marriage and their partnership.
You see, my husband is my first priority. My husband is my favorite person in the entire world. My husband is everything to me. And if I allow my responsibilities to interfere with my marriage, I will be turning my husband into a co-parent and roommate instead of my partner. It is my own (humble) opinion that if our marriage suffers for the sake of the children, we are giving them a toxic example of what a relationship looks like, and they will in turn go out and seek unhealthy partnerships, using our marriage as their model. I want our children to be able to use us as their point of reference, as the core of their value system for what a nourished, strong marriage should be. And in order for us to give them this model, we need to continue to focus on our own relationship. Leaving our baby with Nana or Grandpa for a few hours a month so that we can reconnect as partners is not going to put any sort of fracture in our connection with our child. If anything, it will help our baby build a bond with its grandparents and learn that they can rely on other members of our family. The last thing we want to do is make them so dependent on us that they feel lost when we aren't around. Building independence is important to the growth of their personalities and confidence.
So... date nights in our house WILL happen. A night away WILL occur. We will not allow ourselves to become strangers who pass each other in the halls. We will not allow ourselves to lose sight of the reason why we fell in love in the first place. We will shave, put on some nice clothes, and try to impress each other with witty lines and fancy dance moves. We will eat delicious food, walk hand in hand, entice each other with naughty invitations... and we will do so alone, as husband and wife. And when we wake up in the morning, we will go back to making our child our number one, never forgetting about each other in the process. After all, we made the choice to become a couple, to move in together, to marry, to buy a home together, to bring this child into the world, and we will make the choice to always continue to choose each other, and to remember why we made those choices to begin with - because he is my priority and I am his.
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