I heard this statement a lot – “find balance between your marriage and kids” which sounds a lot of sense to my ears BUT it seems impossible to my brain. How can you balance the amount of time a mom spends to clean up the unnecessary discharges of her baby’s butt in a day? How can you balance the amount of time a mom put up with millions unreasonable question of a 3-year-old? How can you balance the sleep hours of a busy mom of three under 5? How can you balance the hours a mom spend to help the kids out with their home works? How can you balance a sex life while the little living creatures could easily creep on your bed at anytime they want?
BALANCING sounds unrealistic to my relationship with my spouse. I could never expect him to spend as many hours as I spend with my son. I would never be satisfied by comparing how much “me-time” I have sacrificed for my son to how much “me-time” my spouse have sacrificed for my son. Simply because we fill a different role for our son. As his mother, I am responsible to fill his mental provision and security needs, such as: character qualities building, academic studies need to be developed in her children. Whereas, my spouse, a father, is responsible to fill his physical & financial provision and security needs, such as: developed defence skill, sports buddy, the source of family’s financial support. And we both work together to build up my son’s spiritual needs. Thus, we could never be able to compare our deeds to one another equally. We both hold a totally different important role to my kid’s development. So in this case, I would never be able to find the silver lining of BALANCE within our relationship.
The moment we’re focusing too much on the word “BALANCING” the more frustrated we are from falling behind further the target. Here’s the case, “BALANCE” is talking about an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. Balance is correlated with the word even. And when we started to zoom in to the amount each one of us have put up with our kids to date, don’t be surprise to find out the truth of an UNEVEN result. And, most of the times, this is the thing that made people struggles to maintain their sparks and romances between spouses. One blames another, and the other defences themselves.
There’s NOTHING WRONG with each individual, they are just measuring things with the wrong scale at the right time.
So, in my house instead of “finding the balance between marriage and kids”, we would come to a place of “AGREEMENT”. WE STOP BALANCING THINGS, WE MOVE TOWARDS AGREEING ON THINGS. We put aside our own scales, we sit down and talk through the issues (eg: time management, sex life, emotional breakdown, financial difficulties, child’s behaviour), we analyse the pros and cons, and come up with absolute solutions. In other words, we both agree on a certain approach to our problems. And, I, personally, found this method really helps me to boost a confidence inside of me; which sometimes is hardly found in a stay-at-home mum. That I have a quiet powerful voice which could impact my spouse, my kid and the world. And this is my SUPER POWER. And yours too super mama.
One of our agreements that we always keep for the past 3 years of our journey together as as a parent is to DATE one another once a week. And I am glad we did, because without it, I would probably forget how to smile and laugh. X
Love,
Kenny
Andri : shirt (
mamaonrepeat.com 