Divide & Conquer

Our parenting strategy—or even, possibly, our life strategy recently--has been ‘Divide and Conquer.’

When I was pregnant and sick, I stayed home basically all the time, and Aaron took Henry to school and to the park. When Mac was a newborn, I was usually on baby duty, and Aaron was usually on big-kid duty. Every night these days, I put on Mac’s jammies and feed him, while in the next room Aaron’s reading to Henry and tucking him in. Then Aaron rocks Mac while I clean up the kitchen. Back and forth, divide and conquer.

Because we both travel for work, we make sure that for the most part, I’m home when Aaron’s working and traveling, and he’s home when I’m working and traveling.  It’s a complex shuffle of schedules and flights and ‘who’s got the carseat/ who’s got Henry/who’s watching the baby/who’s made the plans, ‘ and it works for us, generally.  Back and forth, divide and conquer.

But this is the thing: what we realized this summer is that our plan of dividing and conquering left us a little too divided.

In our effort to give the kids what they needed, to do good work, to be responsible to our commitments and friends and extended families, we got a little too careless about time together—things like date nights and quality time alone without the kids. And apparently half-watching the Olympics and half-reading blogs on the couch at night doesn’t cut it. Instead of giving each other the best of our time, we slipped into giving each other the worst of our time, the leftover time at the end of the day when we were too tired for anything but eating hummus and watching Jon Stewart.

We require a fair amount of childcare for both our jobs and for normal life stuff, like weddings and parties, so we don’t do a good job of arranging childcare to just be alone and out of the house together, even though everyone everywhere, it seems, stresses the importance of non-kid time for couples.

Here's another way to say it: we’re like that naturally skinny girl who has a baby and then has absolutely no idea how to lose the baby weight, because she’s never had to think about it before. We’ve always had a great time together. We fight, certainly, but day to day, we really enjoy each other’s company. We laugh together, we get along well. 

So we got cocky, I think, like the girl who’s never had to diet. We thought we could skate through without all the rigamarole of scheduled date nights. We thought we’d just be fine, because we’re always fine.

This summer, though, we realized that some new cracks were developing, fault lines, stress fractures. We were a little too close to the edge. It was too easy to snap at one another, too easy to fault the other person, too easy to for me take care of Mac and for him to be with Henry and for us to become, as they say, ships in the night.

Enter NYC. Aaron surprised me with a weekend in New York City last weekend. I thought we were going to Chicago for one night, and as we drove toward the city, Aaron exited for the airport and handed me a hotel reservation confirmation. He said we’d be gone two nights instead of one, and he’d arranged for our moms to watch the boys the whole time. Can you even believe it? I couldn’t. I was completely, totally surprised.

We had a fantastic time. A glorious, wonderful, laughing-and-kissing, wandering little neighborhoods, cheesy-romantic-comedy-montage great time. And it reminded us how badly we’ve needed it.

I’m not saying that every couple should drop what they’re doing and pop over to NYC for a weekend. Although I have restaurant recommendations if you do.

I’m saying that this was a wake-up call for us, and we both walked away from the weekend more committed to making our marriage a priority--specifically, making time alone, without kids and without work, a higher priority. We have totally irregular work schedules, and we let those deadlines and commitments drive us too often. And because we’re away from our kids for work, we don’t always want to leave them in our non-work time.

But this weekend, we were reminded that before we were business partners and co-parents, we were a couple in love, and we still are that couple.

We came back resolved to spend our time and our money and our childcare more carefully, and to give time alone together a higher priority than we did in the last season. Our friends with older kids remind us that we’re in the thick of it right now, and that there will be seasons when it’s easier to find alone time, when you’re sleeping a little more and the baby isn’t just about to injure himself at every possible second. That sounds heavenly, and at the same time, I want to do what we can even now. I want to make time and take the energy to make our marriage great even in the little kid season, instead of muddling through to the next one.

We came home full and happy and aching to see our boys and so thankful for our moms and most of all, so connected and committed to making time together a priority.

We may still, on occasion, divide and conquer with the kids. But now we know better than to let it divide us.

Happy 11th anniversary, Aaron! 

Next week, I'll post NYC highlights and restaurant recommendations. XO