We’ve just instituted ‘date night’ in our house so I read this piece from Sandra Tsing Loh on her divorce with amusement.
Which is to say I can work at a career and child care and joint homeownership and even platonic male-female friendship. However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of weekly “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures the messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that “spark” again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.
The father of my children and I have had three dates so far, and during those evenings we have eaten some lovely home-cooked meals, seen some very good DVDs and spent many moments rather too joyfully reprimanding one another for overly familiar outbursts of uncouth behaviour. “But honeeeeeeeeeeeey, it’s date night”. Given that date night has been fun we consider it a significant success.
I would like to write more about the real negotiations behind co-parenting, co-housekeeping, co-income generating. I think there would be merit in it but I worry that too many people I know off-line read this blog and it may not be fair on my partner. Anyway, go read the fearless Tsing Loh. She has some wonderful phrases in her article, this being one of my favourites: Exhibit A of lazy, undisciplined attachment parenting.
We have rather low expectations of date night. Date nights at home tend to be woefully unsuccessful, because I think they should involve turning the tv off and actually communicating, whereas my partner thinks having the tv off in the evening is some sort of human rights violation. Going out, even for an hour, is much better for us, but we have a good supply of babysitters.
Sometimes a lunch date is good too. It’s easier to have a conversation when you’re not struggling to keep your eyes open.
This is why I read parenting blogs – I’ve had your experience, bluemilk, and kate’s.
We’ve found a bottle of wine and board game seems to be reasonably successful, but it still requires sufficient energy to want to do more than stare blankly at the idiot box.
I too, would like to write more about our parenting/working/house-running negotiations. This is a distinct disadvantage of “out” blogging. I sometimes think, though, that it is the most valuable thing I have to offer – just like parenting, the more ideas we all have to consider, the better off we all are.
Great article. I’d also like to blog about our negotiations but won’t because I’m not anonymous.
My grandmother was a firm supporter of the kind of serial monogamy Tsing Loh talks about. She used to say people should have three marriages: one for fun, one for children and one for old age. I think she might have been onto something.
Tsing Loh’s article drove me batty. She had absolutely no examination of the underlying assumption that she would be entirely responsible for finding the “spark” again, which goes along her apparently unquestioned acceptance of all the kid-related work. It wasn’t just the spark that vanished, it was any semblance of partnership, play or fun.
I don’t accept any part of that model. We go out about three times a month. Most often it’s a quick dinner followed by our drum lesson, and then a stop at the bookstore for coffee. Sometimes he sets up the babysitter, sometimes I do.
We also try – we both try – to make small times at home more fun. For example, I see him in the kitchen now mixing mojitos, just because it’s the weekend our daughter is out with friends unexpectedly.
Just because it didn’t work for Tsing Loh and her apparently self-absorbed husband doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Jay – it’s not working for Tsing Loh and for most other women. It seems the unquestioned acceptance of providing 80% of the child care is the norm.
After reading Maushart’s ‘Wifework’ I have to say I agree with her in that marriage is a dud deal for women for the most part. The shared care and responsibility of a marriage is an anomaly rather than the norm. Women are still doing the majority of the emotional work for everyone.
I’m much happier single than I’ve ever been partnered.
guess relationships are just not for me.
we don’t have any ’spark’ around here, but we don’t have all that timewasting emotional sturm und drang either.
I sort out the childcare – I sort out the kids. In practical terms, I always have, only now dad one in particular no longer makes any pretence of contributing, and no longer wants to waste half my day demanding gratitude every time he engages with one of his children.
and dad two can do his usual back and forth between “don’t fence me in babe, I’m a free agent, and a thousand women want me” this week to “I’m a devoted and loving dad” the next.
both my long term partnerships were tediously full of whining about ‘his’ level of responsibility, whining about my lack of pandering to his ‘needs’ ( why not do more sit ups? you could do them when the kids are asleep. You could do them with the kids sitting on your legs!) and endless criticism.
Now first dad’s stormed off into the sunset to sulk, we all function very happily in this little citadel of ‘lazy, undisciplined attachment parenting’. And other dad thinks its so great he keeps coming over and hanging around in his devoted dad mood, and has to be sent home when the little one ( his reason for being here) is asleep.
It might not be ‘fair and equitable’ but the level of control I have makes up for it ( and I would argue, actually makes the children’s lives far more stable and comfortable.)
We haven’t had a date since Lily was born. I still feel odd leaving her with someone else – especially since I am forced to during the day to do my thesis. But we probably should…
This is a curious thing, this date night. Cristy, as a working mom I never craved time away as time with the little one was so precious.
I find the pressure to have a date night annoying. Is my marriage going to fall apart without it? Am I really missing out?
Rachel, your marriage may be just fine. My (not a) marriage would be cactus without regular reminders of what it is that we see in each other. Perhaps if we had better memories, or had spent more time dating before we had a baby that would be different.
The best kind of dates are the “kid asleep in stroller while on a family outing lets take advantage of it and have a date” dates. But my kid doesn’t nap very often anymore.
In keeping with the point of the exercise, we take turns organising date venues and babysitters (we do one each, and then swap next time). The Bloke did recently give me travel Scrabble for my birthday, and when I opened it I managed to refrain from saying “Why??” It’s been nearly a month and we haven’t played yet. I offered one night, but he was tired.
I don’t want to be flippant about date nights, because I can see a number of reasons why people might desire them, feel they were called for and see an advantage in them. But to me, they feel like a symptom of a problem – a patch for a distance you don’t know how to diagnose.
I will grant that I am commitment-averse, and so is my partner. So maybe that’s why we wouldn’t want a standing date-night – because we both worry a little about how we would get out of it when it is an obligation.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say – because I was going to talk about the little day-to-day things that I find far more meaningful than any dinner together – but maybe what that amounts to is that we’re doing “date nights” a tenth at a time, on a daily basis. We do make a point of coming together at the end of the day for a beer or a snack or a cup of tea. But I think that if one of us had to say, “let’s codify this into a daily expectation or one big weekly expectation” that would be a warning bell for me, that the requester is not only not getting what they need, but is scared that un-codified efforts for the relationship will not be naturally reciprocated.
Holy depressing, batman. What jumped out at me from the article was not only that she was doing all the “wifework” of the marriage but also:
* the statement that she hadn’t had dinner out with her girlfriends in 10 years. Wow. How on earth does that happen? I mean, not having a date in 10 years I can see, but not getting out yourself?? Is this just my naivete as a new mom speaking?
* the repeated references to “mac-n-cheese” kids being somehow a failure of her mothering, and definition of perfect child-raising as including “fancy schools, tae kwan do lessons, and home-cooked organic food” … now, I am a big fan of lessons/activities and home-cooked food – that’s how I was raised, and I thrived on all of that stuff – but I wonder if part of the problem here is her “keeping-up-with-the-Joneses” obligations multiplying past any hope of being able to fulfill them. Further to the previous point, I wonder if some sort of insistence on things Being Done Right or Must Be Done By Mom Or She’s A Bad Mother is at least partly to blame for her never getting out of the house on her own. And then I wonder if that’s blaming the victim somehow, because how helpful is it to add one more expectation (the expectation of rejecting expectations) on the pile? But still – surely it’s possible to opt out of all that competitive BS? Balancing what makes your kids happy and what makes you happy is hard enough.
found your blog searching ‘tsing loh’ and think its interesting. i think date night is a good thing for healthy relationships. either together or apart (a girls night out..). i’m a feminist too and read that article with quite a reaction. i wrote a whole entry about marriage and postmodernism. *laughs*. anyway, i will be sure to check your blog again.
So many interesting thoughts here on long-term relationships and Tsing Loh’s article both. Thank you.
I think we instituted the date night concept because apart from anything there had been such powerful competition for my partner’s time in the evenings. I wanted his attention, our daughter wanted it, and I also wanted his son to have it. In the end we felt a special night a week set aside for spending time together after the kids went to bed rather than cleaning the house or withdrawing for some time alone to our various computers was needed.
I must admit I was bothered by Tsing Loh’s article, but not bothered enough or not bothered enough in a specific way to blog a response to it.
I also blog very little about my relationship with my husband because that would involve sharing more about our personal lives than I think is fair to him or to me, especially given that our respective families read my blog. If I had the energy, perhaps I would start up a completely anonymous blog and write about it, but I don’t.
Wish there was an anonymous way you could share these thoughts and feelings about relationships after children… I’ve mastered the sling and the breastfeeding (just as my toddler is outgrowing both!) and now the magnitude of the challenge involved in achieving a “good relationship” has just hit me full force. How is it done? Is there a “What to Expect from the father of your children?” guidebook?
I found this blog post while Twittering around. I think it addresses my barrier to date night — $$, babysitters and creativity.
http://www.momadvice.com/blog/2009/07/9-unique-ideas-for-frugal-date-nights.html
However, I’m still pondering that I take on the planning and thinking about us spending time together. Perhaps the next quiet evening, we’ll talk about it.