The Importance of Dating Your Partner Again When You Have Kids
You’re tired. Life is full. The demands are coming at you from every which way. The thing that drops off the immense to-do list is the one you can most easily take for granted: time with your spouse.
Life with young children is exhausting and frantic (and often hugely pleasurable). What is the importance of dating your spouse again when you have kids? Dates with your spouse can wait, right?
Marriage and Divorce Facts
In 2020, there were 103,592 divorces in England and Wales. Look at the data a little closer and you'll discover that, in 2020, the average duration of marriage at the time of divorce was 11.9 years for opposite-sex couples, a decrease from 12.4 years in 2019. Families with a single parent make up just under 25% of families with dependent children.
Then if we take a look at the main reasons for separation and divorce, we can see the challenges to a marriage are varied and complex. It’s great that you can take your marriage for granted, but you shouldn’t. You need to focus on your marriage and not leave its success to chance.
The Importance of Dating Your Spouse Again When You Have Kids
Many of the root causes for the reasons listed for marriage and divorce stem from irritability, frustration, stress, lack of appreciation and discontent. All of these can be assuaged and averted by putting the same care and attention into your relationship as you did in the early days.
Dating in the early days of your relationship was immensely different from what it becomes post-kids. Dating back then involved thought, time and excitement. It involved planning. It was thought through and, importantly, intentional. It didn’t just happen.
Post-kids it’s easy to fall into a rut. You’re both tired. You both need to focus on the (rightfully) demanding little beings in your home. At best, a date night can become an evening uninterrupted by trips back up the stairs to resettle the baby. Even if you do go out, the conversation falls on reactive discussions such as your child’s problems at school.
But here are the reasons why, in amongst all that, you need to find a babysitter and prioritise date nights:
1. Romance Dies – Keep it Alive
Romance may be fuelled easily in the early days of a relationship but to stay that way it needs a helping hand. To rekindle the spark you have to find the spark. Do the things you loved, focus on each other, and woo your spouse again. Intimacy is a fragile concept, it needs nurturing.
2. Your Other Half Needs Attention
When children come on to the scene, your priorities shift. This is as it should be. However, your spouse is still important and they need to know that. In fact, it’s even more important when children are in the picture quite possibly eating away at a parent’s identity and sense of self. By intentionally booking a date night you are providing clear evidence that the individual who is your spouse, not just ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, matters. After all, once the kids have flown the nest you still want to know who you are as a couple.
3. Dating is Fun
Family life can be filled with fun and laughter. However it’s pitched at the right age for the kids at the time. Dating your spouse, doing something together as adults without the demands of parenting is a different kind of fun. And we all need some fun in our lives.
4. It Costs Less Than Divorce
It’s a somewhat unromantic notion, but dating your spouse is the cheaper option than marriage counselling or divorce.
The average cost for a divorce in the UK is around £14,500. Throw in complicating factors such as animosity, problems splitting assets, or care of the children, and you could be looking at even more. That’s before the additional costs of running a home singly. Dating your spouse on the other hand needn’t cost an arm and a leg – just the cost of a babysitter and your imagination.
5. You’re Modelling a Healthy Relationship
Kids are, by nature, ego-centric. They won’t necessarily get the importance of your marriage while they are tiny. However, as they grow you are laying the relationship foundations for them as they mature. They need clear role models of how to make a relationship work and how to sustain it. If you want your kids to have healthy relationships as adults, you need to model one.
6. It Alleviates the Mundane
Yes, there are highs to parenting. There are those moments when it’s euphoric as you watch your child reach a new milestone, or achieve something for themselves. However, a great deal of parenting is mundane, monotonous and repetitive. Inject some spice into life through different experiences and dating can alleviate the mundane and make it less feeling like Groundhog Day.
Date Night Ideas
The good news is that dating your spouse again needn’t be expensive. We know that having young children tightens the purse strings. Of course, dinners out and cinema trips are lovely, but try to shake things up with a variety of ideas. Here are some of our favourite:
• Pack a thermos of hot chocolate and sit on a bench overlooking a beauty spot.
• Check out a new pub with local ales.
• Enjoy a treasure trail around your local town.
• Play a game of tennis or badminton.
• Take a cooking class.
• Try a cheese and wine tasting evening.
• Pack up a picnic and hire a boat or go for a walk.
• Go dancing.
• Have a go at pottery or another craft together.
• Visit a comedy club.
• Get a couple’s massage.
• Go to a museum or art gallery.
All That’s Left is to Book the Babysitter!
Now that you understand the importance of dating your spouse again, the only thing you need to do is book the babysitter. Get out your diary, choose a date and start wooing your other half again. Just don’t forget to make it a regular thing.
We believe your little ones deserve the very best care. That's why our local network of babysitters are personally checked and picked by our family for your family www.sitters.co.uk.
