Date Night!

Our daughter has had severe separation anxiety (particularly with me) since she was a toddler. Before Mike and I got married (almost 19 years ago!) we talked about prioritzing our marriage and how we would do that. Obviously, you don’t know what you don’t know but we still do this. That does not mean we don’t love and adore our kids. From the outside looking in you’d think our kids come first not us. For us, our relationship is foundational to the health of our family; including our children.

Because of M’s separation anxiety it meant not a lot of time out of the house. When our kids were little bedtime was at 7 so we had 2-3 hours to cook dinner together, watch TV, or just catch up. If we were able to get out it was for a 5 PM reservation so we could be back by bedtime. Our “date nights” looked a lot different than a lot of other parents we knew.

Today, our kids both went to the Washington Husky game (not together, lol). So, we went out, by ourselves, for the first time in months. We went to an ok restaurant, with ok food & ok service but we were together. And, we didn’t talk about the kids the whole time. We so rarely have a night off. Generally, we are driving someone to a field or a gym and with a high-schooler now, a friends house.

We’ve started talking to the kids about the importance or these nights for their parents. It’s hard to wrap their heads around the fact that their parents were people before they were alive. That’s ok. But, we feel it’s so important to show them what a loving relationship is. Maybe they will choose differently when they are older. But, maybe they are both starting to see it’s a good thing. Only time will tell!