Saturday, June 18, 2016

5 secrets to staying married... and in love


You don’t have to raise a diabetic child to know that marriage is hard work.

But for those of us raising a child with unique challenges like Type 1 diabetes, the divorce rates skyrocket past 50% into the 70-80%s. These are sobering statistics.

Todd and I have been married for sixteen years this month. We have survived job changes and multiple relocations, tragic death in the family, physical and emotional pain, and for the last three years, raising a precious eight year old boy with Type 1 diabetes (whose main goal this summer is producing a movie called “Metal Bomb”). Despite it all, I call Todd my boyfriend because I still have a crush on him.

Along the way, we have figured out how not just how to stay married, but how to actually stay in love. This month on Raising Moses, I will share with you our:

                 5 secrets to staying married… and in love.


1. Time


Daily check-ins and weekly date nights are the best secrets for staying connected.

Around 6:30am, before our kids get up and after a few quiet minutes apart, Todd and I meet back in our room to talk, pray, connect. Its 10-15 minutes of check-in time before we are off to our jobs and our busy lives.

When he comes home in the evening, we do another check-in. Sometimes it’s right when he gets home: I’ll rub his shoulders and we’ll talk (a win-win: he gets the back rub and I get to talk). Then “battle hour” commences - dinnertime with four kids. If it’s a sports night or he gets home late, we connect after the kids are in bed. We sit in the rocking chairs on the porch with a glass of wine and jazz playing on Pandora. With summer finally here, this has been a favorite time for us. Sometimes we leave the kids in the care of our eldest daughter and go for a walk around the block.

On the weekend, we prioritize date night. We’ve been working on cheap dates, like a long hike or a trip to the bike store or a free outdoor concert at the park. I’d love to do fine dining every Saturday night, but it’s just not in the budget. We still prioritize time together once a week, for a few glorious hours of uninterrupted conversation.

2. Prayer

Todd and I pray together. Every morning.

It wasn’t always this way. It took lots of “discussions” to find a way for our marriage to mirror our personal spirituality. Todd and I call ourselves followers of Jesus, and part of our faith is regular conversation with God. But we approach God differently: I try to please, he wrestles with God. We study the Bible differently, too: I spend three months on one verse, he reads a Psalm and writes all over his Bible. Prayer is something we finally agree on.

Sometimes we pray for other people, sometimes we just cry out to God for help. It has profoundly knitted our souls together in a mysterious way. We have prayed our way through change, struggle, diabetes and celiac disease and hypothyroidism and the death of our invincibility. Prayer has broken our hardened hearts open to each other. It’s opened a floodgate of tears. It’s forced honesty in the presence of an all-knowing God. Prayer (and its Recipient) is what keeps us married and in love.

Sometimes the intimacy of prayer has other benefits…

3. Sex

Just do it. Really.

Sometimes sex is a four-course meal with fine wine. Sometimes it’s a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. But just like pizza, even when its bad, it’s always good. Making sex fit into the insanity of life keeps us married… and in love. It changes us from grumpy and cranky, overtired and overstressed, snipping at each other and our kids to… well, exhale. Its all going to be OK, at least for a little while.

I know I’m oversimplifying a complex subject. But simply put, sex is what makes you lovers and not just parents. It keeps you married and in love.

4. Teamwork

We work as a team. We thank each other frequently.

We trade off who changes the insulin pump and the Dexcom glucose monitor and who has nighttime duty. (Blood sugar highs and lows make for lots of sleepless nights.)

We alternate who puts our younger two to bed and who finishes the dishes. I read to the kids; he snuggles. I drive the kids to sports; he picks them up. We help each other when the other is behind on his or her work. We do the bills together. I do the cooking; he makes the money. It doesn’t work without the other. We’re a team.

5. Asking (specifically) for what I want

A wise woman told me never expect Todd to read my mind.

Todd lives his life by a checklist. I just need to add my needs to that checklist. When I ask for something, I add a time and a date, like putting a request on his calendar. “Todd, I am feeling very behind on housework because the kids had a lot of doctor’s appointments this week. Could you help me fold laundry tonight while we watch Netflix?” It’s not that Todd is lazy and doesn’t see my needs. He just needs a specific request so he can add “love my wife” to his check list. He often responds like this: “I need to do payroll tonight. Can we do it tomorrow night?” Yes, of course.

I’m still learning to ask for help. I often don’t know what I really need, or I’m afraid to ask. Asking (specifically) for what I want decreases the disappointment and resentment between us.

                                                                               ***

The “secrets” of our marriage aren’t anything new or surprising, nor is this an all-inclusive list. But time, prayer, sex, teamwork and asking for what I want keeps us married… and in love. It’s all the little choices, day after day, that keep us weathering this storm of life, especially while caring for a child with diabetes.

Be encouraged that you can stay married and in love, too.

                                                                              ***

What keeps you married, despite the challenges of life? Please share your own secrets. 


1 comment:

  1. Good list!! Glad to see you blogging again! Just catching up on blogs in bloglovin' and ta da!

    ReplyDelete