NINE years today I’ve been married to my partner. Nine. That went by fast. So, is keeping the flame alive in your marriage after twins possible?
Hell yes!
Before our twins were born, my husband was my adventurous, fun-loving, steal-my-heart best friend.
Now our twins are almost 5…and he’s still my adventurous, fun-loving, steal-my-heart best friend.
The reason I’m even writing this post is thanks to a recent conversation with a friend of mine, also pregnant with twins, that asked me this: How did you tolerate your husband when your boys were newborns? Everyone keeps warning me that I’ll be exhausted and things in our marriage will start to unravel. (Sweet motivation for that poor mom-to-be, right?)
When I was pregnant with twins, I too, was warned with similar statements.
“Oh, twins make life so tough.”
“Just wait and see how little time you have together.”
That sounds like a pretty depressing way to go into a new and exciting phase of life.
Determined to go against the grain and not become (apparently) a social statistic, I went, almost overboard, in the other direction to continue to foster my relationship and prove those naysayers wrong.
And guess what? So far, it’s working out pretty well.
Do we have our ups and downs like any couple? Hell yes we do! That is a normal, healthy relationship. Was it hard when we were both exhausted when our twins were newborns and we were sleep deprived? YES! But we figured out a way to communicate and remembered that we were teammates playing on the same team.
But, I will tell you that by doing this one thing, making marriage after kids a priority, things are working out just fine for us.
After our boys arrived, we continued to go on dates, things just looked a bit differently.
How We Kept Our Marriage Alive After Twins:
We shifted things a bit. Instead of late-night concerts and tacos, we ordered take out and picnicked in a park while the boys slept in the stroller. We had more daytime dates, as we were exhausted at night. We opted for playing miniature golf or to a brewery with the boys in a carrier. We’d continue to hike…just with the boys on our backs.
We adjusted our mode of transport attaching a bike trailer for a bike ride to the breweries and took the stroller out to a restaurant patio restaurant. We found there was plenty of room on those patios for a double wide stroller.
If our parents offered to watch the boys during the day, we’d head out on a day date, eating a lot earlier to be home for bedtime.
Looking back at that time in our lives, I am happy that we put the effort into “dates”. As cheesy as it may sounds, it really did help us stay connected in such an exhausting time in our marriage.
