'Husband. Wife. Roomates?' Mom's Take On How Marriage And Kids Change You Goes Viral
Blogger gets real about how life changes after marriage and kids
“If someone told me years ago that my relationship would one day change, I would have laughed and said no way…
The long date nights have gone.
The sleep-ins are non existent.
The surprise weekends away, we can no longer afford them…The long hot showers, are now lukewarm and we’re tag teaming kids in between.”
Mel Watts of the blog The Modern Mumma, wrote a little something about relationships on Facebook yesterday that seems to be resonating with a lot of people. Because oh my god things change after you’ve been together for a while.
“The late nights are now laying there silently with our backs to each other hoping the other one will get up for the crying baby,” she writes. “The text messages that use to read about how much they love you and why. Now they’re more likely ‘Babes got my period, get pads – wings. Don’t forget the bloody wings. Hazelnut magnums, not the minis that means I have to eat three, I’d rather just eat two big ones. And whatever you and the kids want for dinner. Can’t cook dying.'”
When someone asks me how I met the father of my children, I get a far-off look in my eye, and almost transport to another place. We were dancing on a boat in the East River, with the Manhattan skyline behind us. Dancing. Until morning. No kids waiting for us at home. I still remember the outfit I was wearing, that I probably couldn’t get one leg into anymore. Ten years, two kids, and what feels like a million years ago, when I think about those first dates before we fell in love, it’s like a whole other world. We’re not in that world anymore.
And that’s okay.
There’s so much that changes about your life, and it’s not just marriage and kids that does it. I think we’re all guilty of being wistful for a time when there was less responsibility, less wrinkles, more fun. Why wouldn’t we be? It was just easier. Most of us can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in a relationship where there weren’t other little people to consider at all times. Where you could just 100% focus on your partner. “The children have become the number one priority and at some point we need to learn to put our relationship towards the top of that priority list. I think in time it will become that way again,” Watts writes. “You have to make it past these difficult times to get there. It’s not that its even difficult, its just different. And sometimes different is really hard.”
So how do we deal with all the changes and somehow still attempt to keep the spark alive. Watts suggests it’s about living in the moment, not the past: “Once you stop comparing yourselves to your old selves it becomes easier.” I’ve been jealous of my past self before. Isn’t that crazy?
“SO heres to grey pubes [not yet] and sexless nights. No round two’s and nothing tight,” she writes. “I wouldn’t want to be old and saggy with anyone else!”
There’s that.
