A Dad’s Beautiful Perspective on the Importance of Date Night
In an article recently written on Direct Advice for Dads, new dad, Matthew Jones, AKA our hero, explains the importance of giving your relationship time and being able to identify when you and your partner are simply coasting and in desperate need of a date night!
“When it starts to feel like you and your missus are just two room-mates jointly caring for a small human, you need to call time-out.”
Matthew tells the oh so familiar story of he and his partner caught in the throws of “tired, grumpy, excited, irritable and completely in love with our child” phase of new parenting, when he recognised that “not only were our emotions out of whack but our relationship had taken a whack too. Occasionally I would look at my partner through the craziness of the first few weeks and wonder who she was to me now. We both honestly didn’t know whether the other was the glue holding our sanity together, or the hammer hacking chunks off.”
Luckily, these clever parents recognised their relationship was hitting ground zero and needed some nurturing, some time for them and some time to still be present in their relationship. Whisking the kids away to the grandparents, Matt and his partner set themselves up for a rocking parents-only night of pizza and a crappy marvel movie!
“Our romance restarted there and then, not in the physical sense, but the emotional.
At one point I was watching her watch the movie, her eyes sleepy, her mouth curling into a smile at Tony Stark being an arrogant dick. Suddenly I saw her again, not just as the mother of my child, but as the love of my life. It’s important to make time with your significant other during the first few months with your newborn.”
Shut the front door romance isn’t dead! Hallelujah!
As Matt goes on to explain “It won’t be easy, you probably won’t feel like it, and it may seem strange to ‘date’ your partner. It likely won’t resemble anything close to your dates pre-baby, but it is crucial for your relationship. Whether you accept it or not, your relationship has irrevocably changed, and you’ve both changed as individuals. It’s like you need to get to know each other again.”
This message is so important, not just for the dads, but for the mums too! You were a couple before you were parents. Your unique perfections and imperfections your partner fell in love with, they fell in love with you, and those unique and beautiful beings are still present, they’re just masked by 3am feedings, bottles, boobies, burping, nappies, goo-goo’s and ga-ga’s and earth shattering fatigue! Find a way to give each other time, to step into the people and identity still jumping around inside that can sometimes get pushed aside stepping into the role of mum and dad. It’s a role we whole heartedly embrace but someone once told me and I believe it to be true that if the relationship, if mum and dad are ok, then the rest of the family is happy! Easier said than done but definitely worth the try!
