For This House
Your haven for home & heart
Your haven for home & heart
If you’ve ever played tug of war, then you know how hard it can be to pull against someone. Your arm muscles ache, your hands get rope burn, and chances are someone’s foot gets stepped on in the process. Tug of war can be a fun game, but it doesn’t make for a fun relationship. I read this quote from Chip Gaines early in my marriage, and it’s been one that I try to keep in mind, especially on difficult days.
My husband and I have been married for over 5 years, and in May of 2023 we welcomed our first baby. This little girl has us wrapped around her finger and is one of the best things that has ever happened to us. But becoming parents has also been one of the biggest challenges in our relationship.
We read all the parenting books. We took all the birth and parenting classes. We had all the gear and we felt as prepared as one can to welcome our baby into the world. The thing we didn’t expect was how it would rock our relationship with each other.
Up until this point, our relationship always came easily to us. It felt natural. We have been dating for over ten years, we grew up with very similar backgrounds, and we both knew we were willing to put in the work to make it work.
While adding a new member to our family is fun and exciting, it was also new territory to navigate. For the first time in years, we both felt we had to truly work at our relationship. Sleep deprivation, hormonal shifts, and a season of life where everything is new was a lot to handle all at once.
I don’t do well with change, and we were in a season of A LOT of change. I found myself getting frustrated more quickly and snapping at my husband. Our communication took a hit. We were learning the new normals and figuring out this whole parenting thing. We were both emotionally and physically tired and a lot of times turning on a TV show or scrolling on our phones was our go-to activity during our free time.
It was a rough season. Our connection was faltering. We weren’t being intentional in our relationship. A lot of times, it felt like it was me versus him. Then I was reminded of the quote at the beginning of this blog. A similar saying goes, “It’s us against the problem, not us against each other.”
This was so helpful and I often reminded myself of those words in hard moments. We realized that we needed to put in the work. We both wanted to build a stronger relationship instead of sitting idly by. We wanted to be more intentional with our time together.
One thing we did together a lot before having our daughter was walking on our local trails. While we tried to keep it up with a baby, a lot of times it was easier to just skip it and stay home. But while we were walking one day, we talked about our goals. We both wanted to get back into our routine of walking together.
We decided to set a goal of walking 385 miles together in one year.
This was one of the best things we could have done. Setting this goal made us much more intentional about making time to walk together, which has been so good for our relationship. We not only get fresh air and exercise, but we also spend intentional time as a family. Our baby loves stroller rides and it’s a nice way to occupy her while also getting some quality time in with each other.
We aren’t on our phones during these walks. We have meaningful conversations. We joke, we laugh, we catch up on our days. We noticed that we feel much more connected with each other when we’re able to go on these walks throughout the week. We didn’t realize how impactful the goal would be at the time but it has been so good for our marriage. We still have our rough days for sure, but these days are easier when you feel connected and like you’re on the same team.
If you will be welcoming a new addition to your family soon or have recently become a parent (or experiencing any other busy season of changes) and are feeling some disconnect with your partner, I would strongly encourage finding an activity you can do together, without distractions like screens.
Walking is a great option, but there are plenty of others too: working out, playing a game, solving a puzzle, or making dinner together are just a few. It truly has made such a difference in our marriage to spend that intentional time with each other.
We still have lots of miles to go in order to hit our goal, but I love being able to work towards this goal as a team. Here’s to many more miles together!
