THE HOLD TIGHT

Rachel Derby - 3 Apr 14

I’ve just got back from a night in Amsterdam with my husband. No kids. Just us. Bliss. This doesn’t happen very often these days.

We lingered over coffee, which never had chance to go cold. We drank in bars, without the worry of a 5am wake up call. We walked arm in arm, minus two gorgeous but grizzling girls in tow. We finished meaningful conversations, with no risk of continuous interruption. And maybe, most cherished, I actually had time to stare at Michael’s face and remember how much I fancy him.

After we got married, before our lives became consumed by parenthood, I told him I would try my best to always give him my love, my body, my time and my attention..”even when we have children”. At some point before then, I must have caught a whiff of the strain kids can have on a relationship because I promised not to forget “our” love within our new family’s own.

Well, I failed.

When I try to explain it, it’s like this. My love for him gets lost sometimes in a huge fog of motherhood. A thick grey fog. I promised myself it wouldn’t happen. But it did and it continues to. Sometimes when we sit down at night, I am so drained by what I have given as a mother, I have nothing left to give as a wife. Zilch.

I sit there, tired and numb, on the sofa in one big fuzz. Everything feels blurred and I can’t quite get a full grasp of my feelings and yearnings and needs as a wife, friend and lover. And I can’t always drag myself out of that fuzziness. I cannot summon the energy to talk or play around or have sex like we used to. Even to just connect sometimes.

Instead, I get tetchy and selfish and asexual. Christ, I even begrudge making him a cup of tea at the end of the day, because I just want to make myself one! Mean huh?

When I come out of the fog, it dawns on me how much I miss him. I miss us and how we used to be. I don’t doubt my love. I love my husband immeasurably. It’s just sometimes I simply cannot find it within myself to put that love into practise. I don’t blame my girls or begrudge them the time we loose as a couple. My family means the world to me. And I try and think that it’s all pretty normal and in some ways unavoidable. But I don’t believe it’s any excuse for me to happily accept it.

As “newer” parents (our girls are 1 1/2 and 4), we seem to have reached the point where couples with teenage kids feel it necessary to take us to one side and gravely impart “Make time for each other now or one day when your kids have grown up, you will realise how little you suddenly have in common.”

Other couples are more brutally honest and admit how they are in the process of putting their relationship right again. Something that, by all accounts, isn’t easy. After all, where do you go when your relationship has revolved so much around your children who love you, need you, rely on you and drain you for so long. When they’ve grown up and don’t need you as much. When you suddenly have the time to talk and the attention to devote once again. A perfect situation – as long as you actually remember who your partner is and how you fit together.

So we try to remember this advice and switch on the searchlights through the gloom. We have evenings in where we take turns to cook meals from different countries and dress like we are going out on the tiles. We steal nights out (I don’t like the term “date night” but that’s what they are) and weekends away. We have impromptu moments of heartfelt discussion, playful banter and drunken laughter. We fight through the tiredness and have sex, reawakening each other. All of these, moments that catch me off guard. In a “God yes! We’ve still got it!” sort of way.

I store these moments for when the fog gets thicker again. When we can’t steal days out alone; when I can’t give him my full attention; when I forget how much I fancy him. They are subtle little reminders that we are doing ok; that nothing has actually changed. And they are so beautifully reassuring.

We have to work hard at our relationships, no doubt. We need to put in the effort when we can, whilst not beating ourselves up when we can’t. So we keep helping our relationship heave it’s way out of that fog. Because one day, those precious little girls of ours will not need their nappies changed, clothes washed, dinners made, teeth brushed or stories read. And it will be sad in many ways. All but for the fact, our lives will become more about the two of us once again. About long conversations, lazy sunday paper reading, meandering walks through new cities, afternoons in bed and lovingly made cups of tea.

Until then, we bunk down and hold tight.

Rachel Derby

Writer of stuff, daydreamer and lover of Paraguayan margaritas. Rachel lives in Winchester with her husband Michael and their girls May (10) and Rosalie (7). Supporting amazing teachers and amazing children.

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