Making Time for Marriage Too

I really find it hard to spend time with my husband like we need to. And it’s not that I don’t want to, he’s kind, and handsome, and smart…it’s just that by the time the kids are asleep at night, we’re both spent.

Lately I’ve found that we’re getting better about spending a lot more time together, even though we have no babysitting resources to help us. We just moved to Italy, and we’re still meeting people and don’t have any family nearby.

But what has mostly changed from this overseas move is that we don’t have our individual interests and occupations to distract us. Now we only have one computer and it functions as our TV, movie player, internet access, news source, reading library, and music player. We have to use it together if we both want to use it.

I didn’t realize how often we retreated to our separate computers before, or our separate books, different hobbies, and individual responsibilities. It was easy to do it that way when we were too tired to come up with something better, especially after so much of our family interaction time is poured into the children. Even family dinners together with our small kids, while good, can be a lot of work.

I don’t want to treat my husband like my roommate, and we did find time to go on dates once in a while. We would go out to eat if we had the chance, or go get coffee once a week together, but that was a small amount of time compared to most evenings when we retreated for time to ourselves in blissful quiet.

I think time alone is great, and important as well. I feel so restored by spending time by myself in the quiet. I just don’t want to give my marriage the short end of the stick.

One thing we have tried to do is spend time together during the middle of the day, such as going out for lunch, instead of waiting until the end of the day to be together. Or we’ll put on a movie for the kids to find some time to talk.

When personal time as a parent is few and far between, how do you nurture your marriage as well?