Why Do Parents Need a “date in the Morning”
When you have babies and young children, people give you so many tips – breastfeeding, bottle feeding, sleeping together, using an infant straitjacket, getting an electric swing that is as loud and as fast as a rocket – that you can. I don’t even remember everything. But one thing I remember that everyone insisted that we make time for a “date” at regular intervals. In theory, this is a great idea, but as soon as I put the baby to bed, changed into nice clothes and greeted the nanny, I just wanted to climb into bed and fall asleep. “Date on date” meant we just nodded over the linguine and regretted staying at home with ice cream and Netflix.
But wait, what if you swapped date for date morning ? This is a proposal from Esther Perel, a renowned sex and relationship therapist.
Hayley Nachman, writing for ManRepeller , reports on an interview with Perelom about the total havoc that having kids is wreaking havoc on your relationships (and, in fact, your immediate family and the community). In short, American families raise their children in difficult circumstances – isolation, extreme fatigue, and over-scheduling, among other problems. The average parent doesn’t necessarily have the resources to turn this whole culture around, but there are a few minor tweaks we can make to hang onto our sanity and our relationships while raising our kids.
One of these tricks is rethinking how you want to spend limited time with your partner. These four hours of babysitting doesn’t have to be between 7-11 pm. Maybe from 8 am to noon! Or from noon to four! Or whenever you feel like you’ll get the most out of your kids-free time! Perel shrewdly notes that what young parents miss most of all is a leisurely morning coffee and a long lunch. If your new normal lifestyle wakes up at dawn, like some kind of prisoner under the thumb of a tiny sadistic guard, you can spend your budget on babysitting in the morning rather than at night.
Perel briefly: “Fuck a date, especially in the first year. You are so worn out that you have nothing left; you just do it because you think you have to do it and you already have a nanny. ” If you’re fortunate enough to have a grandparent to sleep in, or if you’ve got a nanny scratch, for heaven’s sake, get in that saucer – get some sleep and go out for a brunch (and then write it down in grim detail). If your kids can sleep elsewhere, so much the better.
When my children were 4 and 1 years old, my husband and I wondered what we wanted to “pay off” – meaning what aspect of childcare we are most willing to rent out. For us, it was a dinner / bath / bedtime / dishwashing regimen. So, once a month, the nanny came to us from 5 to 9 on Sunday evening, when there was live music in the local bar. We listened to music, got a cheap dinner and returned home at 9, to sleeping children and a clean kitchen. We do this less often now, but the anticipation of those Sundays saved me in those cruel early years. This was our “early evening date.”
So, at the risk of adding to the tsunami of advice, let me suggest something: think carefully about what you think can help you the most, not what you need. And if it’s a date morning so you can have some more hot coffee, so be it. Fuck a date.