Nurturing Your Relationship During the Busy Years

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two twenty. We will be talking all things couple them in this episode. You know, when people are raising families and building careers, time for your partner might be somewhat limited. I was at a lunch recently where a couple of us at the table had children and a couple did not, and a little a young lady across the tab able sort of asking, you know, we were talking about how we're spending her time, and she's like, oh, and your husband, what about that? And the lady next to me like, oh, yes, that person. So it can get like that occasionally, but we hope not because it turns out that spending time together is helpful for building a long term relationship. And it turns out there's actually some interesting research into time use, finding that while people are spending more time with their children now than in the nineteen sixties, and that goes for both men and women, interestingly enough, they are spending measurably fewer hours per week with their spouses in loan adult sort of time. So you know, there is a real change going on there that people are spending more time with their kids and less time with their partners, and of course that can make it challenging to keep your relationship going strong. So we're gonna be talking about ways to keep your relationship feeling connected in the course of the busy years. So, Sarah, a quick recap of how you met your husband and how long you've been married. Yes, so we met in two thousand and two, right in the beginning of med school. We were dating by the first test, and our first date was like labor day. So we are coming up on next year will be twenty years of knowing each other. That also means that I was like basically a child when I met him. I mean, it didn't seem that way then, But I'm like, wow, I was twenty two. That is quite young, closer to Anneville's current age than my current age, if that gives you any perspective. And we got married in two thousand and six, so we are fifteen years married. Yeah. So we met in early two thousand and three in New York. I was living there and went to a bar one night to meet some friends and he was there with them as a work event, and started dating shortly there after. Got married in two thousand and four, So it has been what does that make seventeen years since this fall? And yeah, you have a family if people whove been married a long time too, right, your parents have, Yes. I was just going to comment that that was a quick courtship on your Oh yeah, we got engaged in our one year anniversary of meeting and then got married about six months later. Oh, that's so cute. My parents have been together. They're going to kill me. It was either seventy four or seventy five. I always messed that up. My husband was born in seventy four. I think it was seventy four anyway, so that would that would give them I think forty eight years, which is a lot or forty seven years. And my husband's parents had got married in nineteen sixty nine and they were nineteen years old. Oh that's so cute what people did on then they're still together. We celebrated their fiftieth anniversary and yeah, they looked like not even fully grown on their p What is you obviously met Josh when you were a baby, as you said, But I mean when you do meet people that young, and it's like you had to grow up together. And I guess obviously some people grow up not together then as they realized more of who they are as adults. But it's really wonderful when people did manage to go through that early adulthood and realize that they do want to continue to be together. And it's interesting. Sometimes I'll hear stories about, you know, divorce where people will talk about how they were young when they met and they just grew apart. But that's of course valid. I feel though in our case to some extent, you know, meeting so young, we've influenced each other's paths, Like we've probably become very different people having been together for that long than if we just met each other yesterday. So I guess sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Thus far, it has worked for us, which I'm grateful for. Yeah. Now, my parents got married in nineteen sixty seven, so we celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in twenty seventeen. We all rented a beach house for a week and my brothers and me and my brother's older brother's family. My mother in law and father in law were married for a great many years, over forty years until he passed away. So you know, it's great to have those that model for staying together for a very very long time. And even my husband's siblings of all, they're all still together more than fourteen years. My older brother has been married for over twenty five years now. And I'm as we're recording this, I'm going to go this weekend to my little brother's wedding, which is also raciting. He's actually been already married for about ten months, but they got had a COVID wedding when it was by zoom, so that was slightly you know, as you did. But now we're going to have the celebration and that should be really exciting. We're very happy to have her in the family. But you know, a couple of time can be challenging, and we want to stay together and have these sort of fifty year marriages that last till you're dead. So how do we how do we get to our ourselves to that point? You know, I don't know how you guys feel. I feel like we're in a high stress stage at the moment between the five kids, including the toddler. The dog, which is more of a source of stress than perhaps other people have experienced a dog to be. But you know, I'm not much of a dog. Personal'll put that out there. So it's been an adjustment for me. Career stuff as usual, the home renovation, putting a home on a market. It's just a lot of things, you know, And I mean feel very lucky that we have good systems in place where stuff happens and it's not a disaster. Like you know, we didn't have our van for ten days because our van was hit in the target parking lot, causing some serious damage to it. We had our you know, as we're getting the house ready to put on the market, had the hurricane come through, and you had a leak associated with that that we just got fixed, you know, But that was involved a lot of work with that and you know, great, when you're roof repair run thousands of dollars more than you originally anticipated it would run these sorts of things. It's just like constant stress, right, And so you know, I love my husband dearly, but it's like, when all this is building up, it can be hard to be in a good mood with each other. We try it. But I actually read a book a couple of years ago that I thought had an interesting take on this, which is that it helps to just recognize that these stressful periods are not going to be the best times of your marriage. That if you hold out the expectation that they are like, then you'll just be bitterly disappointed, which adds to the trouble. But if you know that this is the years where you're sort of like, okay, we're just getting through and when good things happen, if we're still enjoying each other, then that's that's good. You know, we're hanging on, and there's something just to be said for that. So not to imply that things are in any way troubled, but you know, I found that very comforting that, you know, I like, all if the expectation is only that you are hanging on and in fact, many things are going really quite well for us, then we're good. I mean, what do you think are you Are you guys in a particularly stressful time or now that you don't have a toddler anymore, is it it is a little easier. Don't get me wrong. I mean, Genevieve still knows how to throw a tantrum. That seems like a toddler sometimes, so it's not like we're on easy street. I think one thing that has helped us is that if there's a particular time of day or routine that's a pain point, really taking a deep dive into what makes it suck and being very explicit about whose job is whose and just dissecting it. And I feel like we spent a long time on like bedtime, and then we spend a long time in mornings, and sometimes you have to circle back to each of them. I feel like we are and it also may be the ages of our kids and then being able to do more things. We're in a somewhat less stressful phase right now. Like I feel like we have a good amount of all the kids going to the same school definitely helps one drop off. Having like enough backup childcare absolutely helps, and I think we've gotten a little bit better at like I will just say to him, you don't like when I remind you that we have to leave in five minutes ten times, So I'm telling you right now that it's like seven fifty five and you have to leave it eight oh five, and if you take the kids to school late, you're gonna have to walk them to the office and whatever. And then usually that's like then I can like disconnect, and he can usually succeed because I think when he knows he's not gonna get any prodding, then he's like, oh, yeah, okay, so and probably the same thing goes to me. It's just harder to identify my own things that I struggle with. Like maybe probably sometimes I would try to like fit in a shower after a workout, like in a timeframe that didn't really exist. And now I've gotten more like realistic about what that looks like. But it took like really like deep diving into like if six forty five to seven fifteen is a very bad phase, how can I minute by minute make it less? So doing that and then like looking at bedtime, that kind of a thing has has I think helped make the moments that can kind of make or break your days sometimes feel a little bit better and that helps our relationship. Yeah, definitely examining the pain points and seeing what you can do to solve them. Our morning is like currently one long pain point. But is that sure? What could be done about that? Until we don't have three children and four children in three different schools that have entirely different start times, not much to be done about that at the moment. Hopefully we'll figure something out. So one of the rules from Tranquility by Tuesday, which is the book I'm writing now, is three times a week is a habit. And I actually profile a couple that had been trying to figure out how to have more couple time, and they had in the past had it because they had very young children who went to bed at like seven thirty, and if they didn't go to bed till let's say ten thirty, is like they were both there from seven thirty to ten thirty, even if they weren't interacting the whole time, It's just they had some element of time that was just built into their day. And of course then children grow up as children do. They were you know, staying up later that time disappeared, and plus some workshops schedule shifted, so people were starting to work earlier, and so as like the evening went from three hours that you could potentially have together to like five minutes basically, and so it just was no longer an option. And so they were trying to figure out how to you know, not be like ships passing in the night. And so they identified three specific times of the week that it worked for them to have even just like a fifteen minute conversation or to sit together and do something that's not involving the kids. And so that might be helpful for people to think about, are there three moments within the week that you can consciously connect in whatever way that is. But you know, it might be sitting together and having a drink after the kids go to bed, even if it's not that much time. It could be that you, you know, walk your dog to if that's what you have. It could be that you sit on the porch together at a certain time when the kids are occupied, or you know that one day your sitter stays late for you know, thirty minutes, or if you do have older kids, maybe we can leave them home alone and you go quickly out to do something for just even forty five minutes that go for a run together could be an option, but figuring out where that can happen can can be really helpful for people. So Sarah, you're I mean, what are what are your sort of because you also don't have really weekday evening times together. No, Well, I will say, we are continuing to work on bedtime, and when we get the kids to at least read in bed, it doesn't necessarily lend to like super private time, but at least we could like watch a show in bed, which we actually got to do on Sunday night. It was like a miracle. So I do think that like again really honing in on those rooms, if we make it so that like the kids know after a certain time they're reading, that will lengthen our window. And even if it's not every day, because it's not feasible to do that every day, but if they know, let's say, like Sunday is for extra rest, then we might be able to carve some time there. It is really really hard though, and I think for us we've made more use of like babysitters and mini trips and stuff. Let's take a quick break and then maybe we can talk more about like the kind of date night aspects of things. Well, we are back talking all things couple them, how busy people can make time for their partners during those years when it seems like every minute is spoken for. So when you guys do date nights, what do you actually do? We've been trying to sort of think past the dinner out. Not that there's anything wrong with a dinner out, but it doesn't always always work for evening time. So what have you been up to? So, to be fair, we didn't do date night for like all of the pandemic recently, but you know, back in the before times and now what we're sort of starting again a bit. We did go out to dinner the other day with our friends, which you know is social and fun. And we did this beautiful outdoor place. It's called Yacht in Fort Lauderdale. Yot lovely anyway, So that's, you know, obvious but fun. We used to have a parenting book club that was like kind of a social thing that we would do together with friends at different people's houses and we would discuss some sort of like kid related topic. But we didn't always you know, spend much time on that. We've gone to Miami Heat games. Before we I used to go to movies, so we were actually getting really into going to movies right before the pandemic hit. I would totally I have friends that do like a nighttime yoga class together. I don't know if I could convince Josh, but I would totally be into that. I've also had friends that talked about like massage dates, like, oh, like go get a massage at like five pm or something and then like head out to dinner afterward or something. So yeah, I mean, oh, and of super mundane one. Sometimes if there's like a boring thing we have to buy, it could be really fun to do that as a date night. I like have fond memories of like going mattress shopping. Mattress shopping. I remember we were just so I think Genevieve was like one years old or like some hard age. We were like so giddy to leave the house and like go to like mattress stores and try out some totally get it, and then I think it out like ordering a Casper mattress. Of course, of course, so yeah, we we are going to be doing a double art museum date on an upcoming Friday. The one that we're going to closes at five, so that requires an early day, and so would block the calendar from like three thirty on Friday afternoon, go there and then we will, you know, go to the second one right afterwards, the one that has later hours, and so that you know, would be three thirty to seven thirty. But it's something that would be definitely not going to do with the kids. They'd be like one museum is bad enough, What do you mean I'm going to two? So yeah, that's it going to be hopefully a good one. You know, some couples come up with some sort of hobby they can do together, like you said the yoga class. I've definitely heard of a few people who have hired trainers who come to their house and if there's a time that the two of you could do, like let's say you start work at nine if you're bit working from home, and maybe have your sitter come at eight or something, and then you have that hour, they could do a training session, forty five minute training session the chower. So that could be something that people do or a hobby. My parents do crossword puzzles together. It's very cute. So nobody likes to do puzzles with me, but I'm throwing that so maybe that's something somebody else would want to do. Like literally nobody else in my house wants to do my puzzles, but whatever. We had a crossword phase that ended way before, but it was fun. It was definitely fun. And then watching TV shows together. And by the way, this can be even fun when it's a little bit asynchronous, so I have to admit sometimes it could be hard to find that time when I'm still like awake enough to actually watch a show when he's here. And so in the last episode of Best of Both World I mentioned Loving White Lotus, Well, we watched it together but apart, like we were kind of like, okay, I'm on episode three, and then he would catch up and watch it, and we watched it pretty quickly, but I don't think we saw any of it actually together together. But the fact that we were both watching it like concurrently kind of meant we could talk about it and even that was kind of fun, and that led us to start watching another one together. But not that I'm saying like that, it really counts as time together when you're watching TV diysynchronously, but you know, if you were in a long distance kind of a situation, or you know, maybe maybe your husband's on a business trip. Netflix does have this cute thing where you can like watch like simultaneously and then like text each other while it's happening. So that could be kind of fun. Sure, why not? Wait? Many years ago we watched the Jon Stewart The Daily Show. But when that stopped, we find another one that we didn't find obnoxious. But sometimes we watch, you know, football together. We watch Texas A and M football and our family and there's a tradition that when the team scores, you kiss you're sweetie who's there? So if there's a touchdown, we're supposed to kiss. They're not really doing that well this year, so there's less kissing. I hope that there's if you're into that, you want to have a highest scoring team, but you know, different years don't work out as well. Their quarterback was injured. It is so funny. And then another thing that we like to do together that's like kind of maybe boring or business like is just like planning. So like we have taken some dinner dates where we just sit there and like plan the next few months and what we want to do long term travel planning. And then every quarter we like do a little mini financial plan where we look at all of our accounts, see where we are, see how if we earned or lost since the last quarter, and what's going on, and make any adjustments. And I actually find it really kind of fun because it's more like future focus, Like, okay, we always do a little even though I have no real desire to retire early, we like to complete this like fire calculator every time, so we're like, this is how long until I don't really need to work? And it's voluntary. Well that could be fun. I mean, it's very future focused. It's good about talking about the future that exists. That's good. I like that I do. We don't really do that, but you know, maybe someday we will. Could be fun. But you know, as part of people are listening to like, well, we don't have a hobby we could do together. I think it also is sometimes helpful to realize that the other person doesn't actually have to meet like all your needs, like either for fun or you're all your emotional needs. Either. That's what friends and family and you know, a therapist if you want one or need one that could be a great outlet for those things that you don't necessarily want to dump all of them on your partner. You know you can. We certainly had things we tried to do together that just didn't work out, usually because of me not wanting to do it. So I learned to scuba dive when we were first dating. I got certified. I realized I hated it, so that was the end of that. We you know, I tried to learn skiing. I'm not really a big fan of being cold, which it turns out you're cold and diving, you're cold and skiing, and then you know, I don't like being cold, So I'm all of these things just I didn't like. And so fortunately, you know, my husband has other people he can do these with. I mean, so diving now, our twelve year old Sam is certified, so the two of them, when we go on vacations somewhere tropical, he can, the two of them can dive together and go skiing often with his brother. They do at least one weekend a year where they go skiing. So there's other people who can do some of these things, and even just I'm not much of a movie person. And so the upside of having older children is now those you know, he's got a reason like, oh I didn't I didn't really want to go see something with like a cultural phenomenon like you know, Avengers in Game, Like I didn't want to go see something like that. And now there's multiple children who would want to go see Avengers in Game. And so back when that happened like two years ago. Sorry, that's such a dated reference, but a lot of people aren't going to movies now, so it wasn't going to be a current one that I could pull up as everyone had to see. But yeah, so it's sometimes you have to sort of acknowledge that your spouse isn't really or they might do stuff, but they might not really want to And if you can find somebody else who is happy to do it with you, maybe you can find other things that you and your spouse love to do together and just let it go on the things that they don't. Yeah, I wouldn't want to see that movie either, So there you go have, you know, cartoon dumb cartoon movies the reason to bring the kids. So we wanted to spend a little extra time on this week's question just because it was a bit of a doozy, but so did you want me to Yeah, I think summarize it, don't read it, and definitely leave any details out, leave any details out. So this was, yeah, a bit, a bit of a long one. It comes from a listener who has a big job, has two young children, in her late thirties, so probably very typical of all our listeners. She says. Her closest friends are very similar, highly educated, highly intelligent, married women with young children. She says, so many of her friends have wound up in very traditional relationships and have defaulted too very traditional gender roles, very deeply asymmetric division of labor. And if there are two careers, his has jolted forward and hers has very much slowed or in many cases stopped altogether. And she says, many of these women she's known for a long time. They seem very ambitious at the beginning, and so the thing that is bothering her is that they sort of brush it off. That you know, people make excuses, she says, for their husband's being not involved. You know, the pandemic has brought this even more into stark relief. Asymmetry in childcare a household duties. She says, what annoys me most is that their wives so often make excuse for all the above. He earns more than me, so it makes sense for me to care for the kids. Or he hasn't had much practice looking after more than one kid at a time, Or he's so stressed with work that he needs to go out cycling for a bazillion hours for his own well being, he needs a good night's sleep so he can go to work fresh. She accepts that not everyone needs to be highly ambitious or a career driven. But it's not simply of you know, whether somebody is in a big job or not. It's just why is this split as it is? And she's saying she has a more even split, But she's wondering, is this something that can you know? Should she have these people in her lifelong term when they have such different approaches to things. She's worried about how they are passing along the message to the next generation. We have two daughters we are trying to raise in a way that it affirms their worth as individuals and the right to have fulfilling, equal relationships. And so I'm distressed that my friend's kids are being raised in a way that reinforces the old gender stereotype. So I guess it's just a I don't know if it's even a question. It's just a complaint about the state of the world. Those are all valid thoughts, but my first instinct is that you know, none of us get to decide how others live. And they may be happy, I mean, if they're not and they want advice for how to even things out, or you might even talk to them about how nice it is. You know, if there's a specific instance where you're so grateful that your husband is an equal partner, I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing that when it makes sense. But you know, we can't control how other people parent. We can't control what other's division of labor are. Maybe you know there's some woman out there that's, you know, very much leading unconventional role and it's just not in your friend group yet that is just as asymmetrical, and I think that's okay if that's right for each family. And maybe the friends that you have happen to be content with a status quo, I mean, maybe they're not. That might be something you could kind of subtly try to figure out and if they're not, hey tell them to listen to our podcast and join our Patreon and we will support them. But I also think, like to some extent, like, yeah, my first thought is just you probably want to add some friends to your circle. I don't think that means you have to let go of the friends who don't necessarily do things exactly the way you do, but that you're not going to be a change agent here and keep your friendship. Yeah, I think there's I mean, there's two questions here. I mean one, if we're just looking at the friendship, I mean, you have to it's really hard to have a friendship if you are constantly judging someone. So you either just have to let it go and decide that that is their life and you have yours, and it's as long as you are happy with yours that it doesn't really matter what they do, as long as they are not in a situation that's you know, abusive or anything like that. If it's just different than what your setup is, oh well, you know you can decide are you happy to have this person in your life or are you not? But if you are happy to have them in your life, then you can't really continue a friendship and be you know, constantly trying to change their situation. Is there an issue for a great many people that are you know, ambitious women who are then derailed by a family situation where a partner has just decided that it is not their thing to be an equal partner. Yes, And I think it's worth those women asking if that is the example they want to set for their daughters. I think it's worth the men and those families asking if this is the example they want to set for their daughter. Is this what they would like their daughters to wind up in as a situation, And in many cases they might not. And so that's something that everyone can acknowledge that children learn from what we show. You know, one of the reasons I am very interested in still doing things professionally is that I want my daughter to see that it is quite possible to raise children and to have a career that you care about. It is very very important me that she see that. And so regardless of whether I had to work or don't have to work, I want to because I want to, and because also I want her to know that that's absolutely as valid for women to do as for men to do. You did I wish everyone felt that way, of course, but I can't make everyone feel that way. So that's my take on that. And I think your kids are going to pay very much less attention to you, know, if you're concerned that what your friends are doing are going to rub off on your kids, obviously the most salient example to your own kids is going to be you, by far. I mean, Genevieve says she's going to be a doctor, and that's because she sees me doing it and her dad doing it, but also like that's a normal thing to do, and I guess I don't know, like it didn't even cross her mind that that was a gender thing. We got her pink scrubs for Halloween, and now she's like decided, and I think it's because she has that example already, you know, in her life. So the people who are going to be paying the most close attention your kids are going to pay attention to you. So I guess if that's a concern, I wouldn't worry about it too much. And it can be a point of conversation like that could help you bring up hey, like to your daughter, like would you want to live like that? Do you want to look for a partner that's like dad and who's awesome and lets me enjoy my career and my family. I think very often people do look for partners who have some element of the parents that they experienced as well. It is highly unlikely that if your daughter has experienced a father who is deeply involved in her life, that she will tolerate anyone who doesn't have that sort of set up in that mindset, because it just won't even make sense to her. She'd be like, well, like, it just won't make sense, and so she will see it as like a personality problem of somebody, So she wouldn't even want to be with that person. And so I think you know you Again, as Sarah was saying, you provide the most salient example you can talk about these things. But you know, if you want to have friendships with people who live differently, you can probably do so without it causing you know, your daughter to question everything she's seeing at home. Well, we're also all for you adding more friends that are living that's true ones. So if all your friends are, you know, in a different sort of life circumstances than you, it would very much help to find some other friends who are in the same life circumstance with you. So again, one of the reasons we, you know, are create a community of out and best of both worlds. As we know that a lot of women may be around groups of other families in different situations, and so if you are looking to connect with women who are in professional careers and have young kids and are doing both and enjoying both, you know, keep following us. We'll bring you all together, all right. So our love of the week Sarah, Real quick? I did we even write these down? I don't know that I did. Do you have something for this week? Let's see? Yes, okay, even though this is not the fall episode. I bought a Helm's tooth pattern cloth pencil case. It's very luxurious looking and every time I look at it, it it just has a very cozy, fall classy look to it. It's by the brand Notique and ot Iq, and I love it. Oh that's great. Well, I'm going to sing the praises of these giant plastic bins that we have been cleaning out the house, for getting our photos taken, for listing the house. And it's impossible, and you're living in a house to like get rid of everything that would not want, you know, wouldn't want to have in a real estate photo, even something like a waste basket, like you have to have one, but like you don't want to photograph it. So anyway, we have been putting a lot of the kids' books and toys and various things in these bins, and then the bins can just like be moved out of the room for the photos or they can just be like stacked over to the side for you know, if people were looking at the house or something. And we were never going to be able to get rid of all the clutter ahead of the next few weeks. But we have these giant plastic bins, and that is the solution that we were having to go with. So I'm loving my giant plastic bins. Love it all right. Well, this is some best of both worlds. So we've been mostly talking couples and how to have time to gather, things you can do to make sure that spending time together is still a part of your relationship even through the busy years. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com. Are at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together