As a marriage author, educator, and mentor, I talk and teach about marriage 24/7. But behind the scenes, I talk and walk not only marriage but also motherhood (including grandmotherhood) 24/7. But how can that be? Isn’t it impossible to wear both hats all the time? I used to think so.
I remember, for instance, whenever my husband asked me to accompany him on a business trip, or even on a date, I felt it required all kinds of gyrations to line up the second-string mommy-substitutes to cover home base. The whole process was always excruciating to me, because I was sure not only that I was indispensible to my children (as in “What would happen to them if something happened to me?!”) but also that no one could execute the requisite duties of mother and homemaker as well as I could. And that included my husband.
I regularly critiqued or shut out my husband from childcare responsibilities and decisions under the guise of concern for him and our children—even as I sagged like an outclassed weightlifter and decried to myself and to my friends how little support I was receiving from the partner who I wouldn’t let partner.
Because, really, who has time to partner with someone else?
Parenting is a busy business that leaves one little time or energy for that kind of thing. I was so busy, so spent; I rarely took off my Super Mommy cape. I can see myself now: wrinkled cape catching in the car door, tumbling into the toilet bowl, lifting or swirling dramatically when I felt the need to fly off the handle.
I couldn’t have come across as very attractive back then; yet, as I recall, it was my husband’s fault there was little romance in the relationship. (Who gave him permission to cast off his Super Husband cape anyway?)
When did my attitude toward parenting and partnering change? I’m not sure the exact day, but I do know why: tough times…really tough times. As is often the case with a crisis, my priorities necessarily shifted, and I began to see the interplay between my husband, our children, and myself in a new light. With time, study, and introspection, it became clear that although raising children optimally was a beautiful and honorable thing, it was not meant to be a one-sided arrangement, and it could not be the only, or even the ultimate, expression of my womanhood.
Equal, if not preeminent, was my responsibility and opportunity to purposefully craft a relationship with my husband of legacy proportion—a partnership, a romance that would immeasurably impact our descendants in the first generation as well as all those to follow.
This meant of course reorganizing my life—learning a whole slew of new skills focused on marriage that would help me become a bit more dependent (a more willing partner), so that my children could become more independent.
I had to learn, with the help of exemplars and mentors, that balancing motherhood and marriage isn’t a matter of two tributaries coming together to create a river. Instead, it’s about recognizing my marriage as the river itself—the mainstream into which and from which all family relationships flow. Watching my husband, for example, mature into his best self under my appropriate influence—and observing his loving response to me because of that—had far more impact on our children’s happy maturation than all my cape-swirling and lone weightlifting ever did, no matter how well-intentioned.
Yes, it took a while (and a near-divorce), but, thankfully, I finally comprehended the most important secret to a thriving family: a thriving marriage. It was only then that I could begin to reap the stellar benefits that come from a healthy, happy marriage.
Here are the exact five steps I took long ago to improve my relationship with my husband, and, consequently, with our children as well:
- Analyze with intent where you and your husband stand in the quality of your relationship. Where are you now in comparison to where you expected to be at this stage of life? Would you classify your marriage as troubled, good, or great? Where will your current relationship dynamics lead you to years from now? Where will they lead your children?
- If you think there is more trust and intimacy to be had (even if you’d classify your marriage as satisfactory), ask yourself how important experiencing that new level of love is to you. Since the only aspect of your partnership that you have control over is yourself, how much of your heart, your time, your energy, and your resources are you willing to restructure or reconsider? How much is experiencing a new level of love for your spouse worth to you?
- Begin a quest for information and mentoring. Develop a hunger for information while realizing that significant, lasting change rarely happens in isolation. Researching the experts is helpful, but bonding with living exemplars/advocates who will be there for you for as long as it takes is a must when it comes to something as uniquely complex and personal as marriage. Connecting with a community of like-minded women who believe in marriage and in your marriage is also a major plus. That is why I founded Wife for Life University, which provides women worldwide with real marriage mentoring, education, and a community.
- Patiently apply the principles you are learning (along with the strategies, attitudes, and behaviors) bit by bit, one by one, line upon line. Though you need to live in the moment to enjoy life, the long-range vision of what your marriage can become must be your ever-present guide. Expect both breakthroughs and setbacks. The secret is to keep going.
- Keep a journal of your progress. Include the triumphs as well as the frustrations so you can purposefully build upon or correct them. Your written reflections will be invaluable not only to you in the present, but they have the potential to educate, reinforce, and inspire the marriages of your posterity. (Marriage and motherhood win!)
More great stuff from Ramona:
Wife for Life University (enrolling now!)
Your Power to Succeed in Marriage Webinar
Image provided by author; graphics by Anna Jenkins.
I admit it! I spent years trying to negotiate the balance of attending to either husband or children, choosing who got the care they needed and who got neglected. I felt like I was constantly choosing between them. Meeting everyone’s needs, including my own, finally came together when I found you, Ramona, and Wife for Life University! I truly no longer see my husband on one end of the teeter totter and my children on the other as I struggle to run from end to end to try to keep both in the air. My roles of wife and mother have finally come together and my perspective is now of a whole family and my contribution as a responsive partner and nurturer. Instead of trying to achieve balance I work on partnering, and everyone is happier. Thank you!
Kelli! I love your teeter-totter analogy. That is exactly how I felt. I also love a cartoon I keep handy depicting a woman (with children tugging at her knees, ankles, and apron strings), who is balancing several spinning plates on head, shoulders, knees, and toes (and fingers of course)! And wait until the grandchildren start rolling in! There is no other answer than to consolidate our focus in my experience; that is, our inner focus, or purpose. The sense of singularity or unity brings the snippets of serenity (I think we’d all be glad for even snippets!) that make the complicated life of a wife and mother not only doable, but, at the end of the day, just a little bit noble, and in the long run, so so rewarding.
This is very helpful for moms to hear. I am a wife, mother, and pastor. I can’t tell you how many wives I have counseled whose marriages are falling apart because they always put the children first and forgot what they love about their husbands and why they married in the first place. Many are sending kids off to work and college and realizing that they are faced with brokenness in their marriages.
Melissa, I so respect your wisdom and experience, and hope other readers will too. Outside or long range perspective is invaluable, yet nearly impossible to generate on our own. Hearing what you have learned about the regrets or heartaches of others during your ministry is another witness and warning that I am grateful for.
What if your husband has a negative outlook on life and in general a grouchy kind of miserable person? Will not seek counseling….just floating along. We both know we are very unhappy, have a couple of kids, but he won’t do anything to change his attitude towards me. I’m the one that has to make the change. It’s difficult in a daily negative, cynical, sarcastic environment in the home and in the marriage. What advice do you have?
Debbie, I answered you in another comment. Meant to hit “reply”! Sorry!
I have a close friend who says that she has spent 35 years planting rose gardens just to have her husband come along right behind her and plow them up. Is that how you feel? If so, my heart is full of compassion for you. That pattern of interacting with one another is so wearing and discouraging to say the least. Without being able to pop in on your home and observe, or without first conversing with you personally (which actually I am very happy to do – reach me through FB or my website), it’s really impossible for me to definitively diagnose the causes or the remedy. However, Wife for Life: The Power to Succeed in Marriage and Wife for Life University are designed to help women diagnose and remedy their own marital maladies. So many women (who used to describe their relationship exactly as you have) would now describe their marriages as exactly the opposite. For example, a tired, skeptical wife characterized her husband as “insensitive, unhelpful, and mean to me; a real jerk” in front of an entire live audience to whom I was speaking once. I blew me away when she showed up a year later at another one of my presentations just to testify that after applying the Wife for Life principles she had learned (which it is a comprehensive body of concepts, strategies, and tactics), her husband was now “the kindest, most engaged and loving husband a woman could ever wish for” and that she “couldn’t imagine life without him.” I know that sounds a little off the richter scale, but I honestly receive these kinds of stories and testimonials every single day. Read some of them for yourself at http://wifeforlifeuniversity.com/ and in Amazon reviews of the book. I don’t mean for this to sound like a commercial. It’s just that as much as I wish that I could give you a concrete list of to-do’s right here in the confines of this post comment, there is too much to share. Please don’t give up. Not until you’ve learned more about how much power you actually have in your marriage. I’ve got a lot about that on my website, which is a good place to start; and in my free webinar, I’ll give you a ton of practical principles and tactics that you can apply same day. Join me too for my class at the Mom Conference. I’m here for you Debbie!
This! This is my daily struggle. I am so lucky to be able to stay home with my young children. I know this. But we all have days and our life seems to be handing out more and more really hard days – just our phase of life I think. After a particularly hard string of days, I just couldn’t think of a single positive thing to report to my husband when he came home after his own particularly difficult string of days where he works hard to make sure I can live my dream of staying home with my babes. We weren’t able to prop each other up in that moment and I realized it was because we are out of practice! Instead of talking to each other at the end of the day, we chuck the kids in bed and then stare at our own screens because we both need a break. I end up resenting him for doing the same thing I’m doing and I know he feels the same. Thanks to my experience with wife for life and with help from Ramona, I know I have the power to make change and break that cycle. And it’s super simple – I just have to reach out to him. He’s ready and willing to be there for me. I don’t want to find myself looking at a stranger in a few years because I didn’t invest the time now. I don’t want him to be out there conquering the world in spite of me. I don’t want to be cranky and cold. I want to be cherished. Thank you for these tips Ramona! Working on it!
Striking the balance between being a wife and a mother didn’t seem as difficult to me until I had multiple children. Once we were in the full swing of things, I didn’t realize how much I clung to my “Super Mommy” cape the way a toddler refuses to let her favorite costume be washed. This evolution was so gradual that it never occurred to me to take a step back and assess my long-term trajectory. I’ll never be able to adequalely express gratitude for the principles I’ve learned from Wife for Life and the course corrections it’s offered, to say nothing about what it’s been like to be with other women striving to do the same thing in settings like Wife for Life University. Thank you so much, Ramona!
Even though I’m a new mom I can very well picture myself prioritizing kids over marriage. They are important after all! But if you think about it, what makes a home happier than a happy marriage?? In my opinion that’s the greatest gift we can give to our children! I certainly appreciate the the fact, however, that this is easier said than done. That’s why I love that this article breaks it down to actions you can take as well as helping you gain the right perspective ☺️
Someone I’m really close to always used to tell me that her children came first, before anything else in her life. She confided that her marriage was suffering, but that she would be able to take the time for it once the kids were grown. Now they are, and moved away, and she is so lonely living with a (really sweet and great) guy who she’s let become a stranger. He’s understandably become bitter, hurt, and resentful, and after all the years of being ignored, he’s learned how to live his own life. They’re in the same house, but they live totally alone in a way. I love them both and it’s always been so sad to see. This article confirmed to me what I’ve been trying really hard to do. I promised myself when I had kids that I wouldn’t repeat what I had seen. It’s so hard not to. Our kids need us so much, and I love them in a way I never knew I could feel. But just like I learned with the second child that I could love her just as much as the first, there’s enough room in my heart to love my husband just as much. I’m not perfect at all about putting it into practice when I’m in the trenches, but I want to get better. I loved this article.