"The greatest gift we can give to our children is a healthy and loving marriage we share with our spouse."
This saying is not unheard of, neither is it unfamiliar to us. But the truth, is life is just so busy. And parenting? Busier. There is just totally no time at all to do anything. My husband and I struggles everyday to try to find more time to finish our work, spend time with our baby (5 months now) and even finding time to sit down to have a quick dinner together can also be challenging.
My everyday conversation with my husband has evolved to a new different direction. From sharing of my day-to-day business or work updates or future plans, or expressing my little gestures of love by telling him my 'I love you' 100 times a day or even sometimes taking out time to buy his favourite egg tarts to surprise him etc.. Now? No time. Now? We mostly discuss and talk about the baby. Or when we should do the what. Our 'I love you' has decreased to 2 times a day and is considered a fantastic number.
Our conversations becomes more and more transactional.
My husband will somehow always be distracted and divert our conversations to our 'things-to-do' list. I would be sharing about an recent evaluation I may have recently, and he will suddenly go like, 'Do we need to buy diapers?' then another 2 mins later, he will spring out another 'Hey diapers all sold out on Redmart. I will try Cold Storage.' It came to a point so bad that such repetition of always wanting to complete 'The Baby List' became really loud and obvious between us. I realised that we were talking often but not connecting. And it really took a toil on our relationship with each other.
It is not easy at all for especially if you are First Time Parents. You will often feel like you need to be googling, researching, trying to juggle work and remembering the things which we need to prepare for the little one. And honestly we do not even have enough time to rest or sleep, whats more to talk about taking care of ourselves or meeting our spouse's needs.
But, we decide that we have to learn to prioritise.
Because if a husband and wife do not learn to prioritise the important things or first things first, when their children grow up, the couple will find that they have lack of topics to share with each other. And to came to realisation that their 'romantic love' has diminished. That they have evolved from a intimate relationship to a professional working home relationship; always capable of discussing about children matters only.
Now, my husband and I have set a day to just spend time together WITHOUT THE BABY. It could be just 3 hours. We would spend time to do things which we used to do before having our son. Like just cuddling on the bed, binging on Netflix or just snuggling each other to sleep is also a thing for us. Because we are just so extremely exhausted day in day out. And such set aside moments really make us feel blessed.
After like 3 hour with each other, we usually feel more ready to give to our son again. And to be prepared for another challenging week ahead.
SO, husbands and wives. Remember to go dating. Even if it is one hour a week, that one hour should be given to love and to focus on each other. Because the last thing our children needs is a set of parents functioning only in the matters of the house but unable to show the exemplary of a good and strong marriage.
Remember, the order of priority is Spouse first then the child.
