Marriage Confessions,  Out and About

Still Having Fun

December 4, 2011 /


Having children has changed my marriage in a lot of ways. More than anything else, it deepened the way I love Chris. Seeing him in the kids, seeing him interact and parent them, seeing him take care of his family, all of those things made the love that I already had for him mature. It also taught us how to be patient with each other, how to listen to each other, and how to ask for help from each other. Raising children together has taught us that relationships are not about being right or wrong, they are about helping each other be the best version of ourselves. We could have learned those lessons in a lot of other ways, but I think having kids condensed those life lessons down into a period of about two years. We’re always learning, always evolving, always moving forward with our kids and, like everything else in our lives now, we have to learn things a lot faster or we’ll never keep up.

This past weekend was my birthday and some sweet friends threw me a birthday party Friday night, so we sent the kids up to my parent’s house for the weekend so that Chris and I could celebrate with friends. When we dropped the kids off on Friday afternoon, my parent’s gave me my Christmas present. A new set of golf clubs and bag!

I really do love to play golf, but since having the kids, it’s gotten harder for me to go out and play. With the kids at my parent’s house on Saturday, though, Chris and I decided to take advantage of the babysitter and break in my new clubs. We played nine holes of a small course, just the two of us. We laughed and made fun of each other and just really enjoyed being together.

Chris especially liked the golf ball I was using…

It was a really great afternoon. After golf, we went over to a friend’s house for a beer and later met up with them for dinner at a sports bar to eat wings and watch football.

There really wasn’t anything romantic about this weekend. No candlelight. No flowers. No restaurants with tablecloths. It was just a fun day with my boyfriend.

I think that’s something else that having children has taught Chris and me. We’ve learned that extravagance doesn’t necessarily equal love. Sometimes, it’s the absence of extravagance that equals love, actually. It’s being able to spend a day with your partner of twelve years and still feel like you’re on a first date. The state that my marriage exists in is not passionate, and to some people that might be a sad statement. But to me, it’s just where I want to be. We have peaks of passion and valleys of hard times, but our day-to-day love is steady, strong, comfortable, and easy. Like slipping on my favorite pair of jeans. And I love that after all this time and with an active family of our own now, we’re still able to stop in the middle of it all and just enjoy each other.

I’m a lucky, lucky birthday girl.

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