How Parenthood Strengthened My Marriage

Your marriage can still thrive even as your family grows.

I am a mother of 3 kids. My husband and I will be celebrating our 8th year wedding anniversary in a few weeks. Our weekly schedules these days consist of work, taking care of the kids, and taking care of the house. Oh, how I miss the days when it was just me and him, and we had all the time in the world to do what we wanted to do. I absolutely love being a mother and having a beautiful family. But in all honesty, marriage was a whole lot easier without children. Children change the entire dynamic of marriage.

The biggest changes and struggles I noticed in our marriage once we had our children was that we had considerably less time alone. My husband and I have best friends since we were in middle school. We enjoy spending time together. Before we had our first child, we would always go to the gym together during the week. We stayed out all the time, just enjoying life. Between working and having a good time, we were barely home. Fast forward to today with three kids, we have to change how we spend time together. We don’t get to go to the gym together often. Most of the time we have to go separate while one of us stays home with the kids, and that’s if even one of us is able to go. Instead of having multiple date nights per week, our date nights now usually occur only once per week.

I am in no way complaining about having children. While children can add stress to a marriage, it can also make the relationship between you and your spouse stronger if you allow it to. Some couples allow the stresses and changes of life weaken their marriage instead of seeing stress as an opportunity to work harder together as a team. I refuse to let the stress of raising children ruin the most important relationship in my life.

If raising children has taught me anything, it’s taught me how to be flexible and selfless. Not only as a mother but as a wife. Just as much as I craved alone time for myself, I had to learn that my husband wanted alone time for himself as well. So we had to work together to find a schedule that would allow us both to have alone time that we both needed.

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