Prioritizing Partnerships
Set aside 30 minutes a week for you and your partner, and you may be surprised to find out who benefits most…
Some of us may crave time for our partnerships, but become riddled with guilt about leaving the kids, so date night can evolve (or rather devolve) into… family night or a night where partners go out to talk mainly about the kids and the plans and tasks that relate to them – bleh, for some partners, the perfect night for others. As parents, we can become so focused on the kids, that we whittle away at dedicated time for our partnership and intimacy and replace it with kid-focused time – whether we are with the kids or not.
I used to turn every date with my partner into a skillful planning session: checking boxes, delegating tasks and sorting through decisions that I thought needed attention. We were getting shit done! Weren’t we? At the same time, our relationship was slowly choked and starved of necessary nutrients. I ultimately came to realize that my focus on productivity and our kids was a veneer for blocking intimacy and connection. I was nervous about how to reconnect with my partner after a long lapse in our closeness and squeamish about how to re-capture our romantic connection. Instead, I hid behind a list of things to do that I insisted were urgent.
I now know, after working with hundreds of couples in therapy (and working with myself), that this defense is a relationship and intimacy blocker, and I wasn’t alone behind this self-erected efficiency shield. With urgent matters that I asserted had to be discussed always filling the space between me and my partner, I didn’t ever have to drop in and face how hard it was to jump tracks from “tasker” to lover.
Even if you don’t mind drifting from each other, parents who are over-focused on their kids without putting nutrients into their adult relationship have kids who a) mistakenly think they are the actual center of the universe and b) become anxious because they can feel that something is out of balance with their parents. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, kids can absolutely feel subtle tensions and disconnection quietly growing between parents.
So here’s the deal. Your partnership guides a whole ecosystem. It’s the soil in the garden of your family. What grows out of it is only as good as the quality of that which fertilizes and nurtures it. When it’s well-nourished, everything inside of it grows healthier too, especially the kids. Ironic? Yes… What it boils down to is this: pay less attention to your kids and and more attention to your adult connection so your kids can settle, thrive and relax.
30 min of quality, kid-free, connection time each week restores you, your relationship and your kids. And even as they protest your leaving, they secretly hope you will choose each other for at least a bit, over them.
Try this:
Language: “Dad and I are headed out for a grown-up playdate together today. Did you know parents need playdates together too? I see that you are disappointed to not be included. You are allowed to be disappointed if you need to be while dad and I go have some fun together.”
Attachment: There’s lots of talk about parent-child attachment, but lovers need time to attach too. Their connection does not hold together just because they live together. When kids come along, the sustained starvation of connection and slow-growing deprivation between partners is almost inevitable if the relationship is not intentionally fed with time and closeness. Kids don’t know it but deep inside, they crave, relish and grow more secure when they witness their parents take care to love one another. Conversely, kids who get the lion’s share of attention (while their parents' connection is underfed and grows brittle), eventually grow anxious with the imbalance.
Boundaries: 30 minutes/week. No strategic planning. No list making. No phones, and don’t be afraid to set a timer. The best way to get in sync is a simple neighborhood walk together, a non-talking snuggle (rather than a wall of words, which sometimes can be a shield) or a structured personal check-in with each other. All it takes to restore and maintain your partnership intimacy is 30 min per week of devotion to your connection.