Keeping your marriage alive after having children without date nights.

It’s a tough one isn’t it? You swear while pregnant you’ll never let it happen to your marriage and 6 months later your finding yourself sexless and very very tired.

Being a parent is tiring, Being a parent who works full time is tiring, Being a stay at home mum is tiring. No matter if you go to work everyday or you work at home everyday. Your going to be tired. Throw in never being alone with your spouse again and you’re left scratching your head. Wondering how this is going to survive.

The only time hubby and I get to be alone is when our daughter goes to sleep at 8pm every night. But by then we are both exhausted. Once he gets home we are in full parenting mode. Dinner, bath time, dishes, reading, bedtime.

Not that we care, but we are not one of those famlies who have people to mind the kids while we venture off for a few hours and enjoy some alone time at a fancy restaurant or cuddle down in a movie theater. So when it’s bed time all you actually want to do is sleep or catch up on a few episodes of a new TV show that’s taken you 3 months to make it through season 1 because your TV only knows care bears from 7am till 7pm.

Here are some of my top tips for keeping things alive

1. Turn the TV off! Some nights we literally just lay in bed with no phones, no books and we just talk. It helps us feel connected.
2. We go for alot of family walks. Walking together somehow brings out our deep and meaningful conversations. Walking is where we make our biggest plans.
3. We eat together every single night.
4. On a weekend while bub naps we will take a shower together. (with the monitor beside us of course) we just enjoy being together we cuddle while the water runs and if it leads to sex great! If not, just having that skin to skin helps us feel close.
5. We text everyday. Some couples get into the habit of ‘not needing’ to text while their spouse is at work for 9 hours because they live together. We don’t text all day but a few times a day we will text.
6. We say I love you every night before we go to sleep.
7. And lastly we always choose being together over being apart. Movie and Netflix? Yes please!!

Even after 7 years together I’m still very in love with my man. It’s the small things that makes the big things work. We very much get into ruts and don’t always communicate the way we should, and we become boring parents from time to time. But we talk about our future plans almost every day so we always know where we are going and what we have to look forward too. Most importantly so when/if it gets hard we are reminded what we are working towards. It’s not always easy but it’s so worth it for the family we have created the rest will flow when the time is right!