My husband said that about the kids last night: “They’ll take us down, if we let them.”

We have always had a sort of “us v. them” attitude toward the kids and parenting, haha. Last night it involved the 14yo complaining about our choice of restaurant for dinner (or about wanting to go to a restaurant at all) and then the 10yo refusing to go to bed and trying to sleep with us/me. We stood our ground – we WILL eat in a restaurant that we like, we WILL have a normal conversation, and we WILL sleep together in our own bed. We will be victorious! And the kids will deal.

It’s not that we don’t put our kids first. We do, but the flip side of that is that we are very SELFISH, in some ways, about our own individual interests and about our marriage. We do not have babysitters and don’t go out on “dates” alone together, except maybe once a year. In all of our 14 years of parenting we’ve been away from them overnight, together, maybe 3 times, and then only one night at a time. This is not so much a philosophy – it’s just that we’re boring and cheap. So we make the kids do what we want to do. Or we don’t do it. We have a vision of our marriage that goes beyond these childrearing years and we are keeping our eyes on the prize.

My 10yo says my husband can’t be my BFF, by the way, but I disagree.

Still, the longer I am married, the less I think I have to say about “marriage,” per se. It’s a crap shoot. A lot depends on personality – or two personalities. On how we were raised (good or bad), on how we see ourselves, on what we want to get out of life and how we want to go about getting it.

But I do not think marriage is damaging to women. I think it is empowering to have a life partner who fully emotionally and intellectually supports you – it frees you up to be who you’re supposed to be. I think it is empowering to be in a positive sexual relationship. I do think parenthood is damaging to women in economic and social terms. And parenthood can be damaging to marriage. And even if the marriage fails, well, you are still a parent, so you can’t blame the kids. Not out loud.

A lot of marriages are imploding around us – good people who I care a lot about. It makes me sad to see them in pain and worrying about the effects on their children. Each case is different – anger, betrayal, addictions, bad choices by one partner, mutual declarations of unhappiness and boredom, married for wrong reasons in first place, stayed together too long for wrong reasons, or who knows? You can never know what’s going on behind closed doors.

But of course, each time I hear such news, I turn inward a little bit and ask, what’s going on here with us? What have we got here and how did it come about? What choices go into making it happen and how much of it is just pure luck? After all, I could be confident in my personal “views” on marriage all day long, but that doesn’t control what goes on in another person’s mind and heart. How can I speak for him? How can I trust?

All I do know is that in 22 years of marriage, I have never wanted to be away from David (well, maybe for a few hours). I have never thought about leaving him – or needing a break from him – or regretted marrying in the first place – or thought I married the wrong person. I’ve never needed “time to think” – I’ve never thought being married was the hard part – and I’ve hated every time I’ve ever been away from him, for a few days or a few weeks. And we’ve never gone more than 5 weeks without having sex (that was post-baby, by the way, when we couldn’t make it to the doctor-recommended 6 weeks).

I cried when he traveled to China the first time because I didn’t like having him on the other side of the globe. I cried when he went there the 2nd and 3rd times, too, although those times it was because he was leaving me with alone with the kids

Anyway, I’m also having some in-my-40s-now sex-crazed prime of life thing going on. haha. It’s not that extreme, since, as I just mentioned, we’ve never gone long without sex, so even the “down” times were never really down. Just that lately… Well, I’m not complaining and I hope it lasts. This past week he went to San Diego for 4 days, though, and ALL I could think about was him returning. And the great part? That’s all HE could think about either. We hardly spoke for 4 days – too difficult to have a real conversation with kids & family members & work, etc. But he got home around 6pm the other night and we both were DYING to put the kids to bed early… Downside of older kids = they don’t go to bed early

Hey, speaking of older kids & being alone. I know I just said we never go on dates or get babysitters, but this past summer I left the two kids alone together for the FIRST TIME! It was during the day. For about an hour. But I caught a whiff of that freedom. We are working up to leaving them at night now. Before you think we’re total wimps about it (they are 14 and 10, after all), we have been hesitant just because they fight a lot and also we live rurally, with no neighbors to see what’s going on… Kind of creepy out here at night. But we’re gonna do it one of these nights, I tell ya.

We were just talking about some friends (more friends) who are getting divorced – they have very young kids & are doing the split-week thing, etc. etc. I told David that raising kids is so hard, that I feel like my REWARD is knowing that I get to be alone with him again in a few years, when they are grown. If I didn’t have that, this whole raising-young-kids thing would be a real drag. To me, anyway.