The Drama with Date Night for Married People

Oh hilarious.
This morning my husband gets that he has been super focused on his book and work lately and not present with me. He asks me if we can have a date, the kids will go to the hourly drop off child care place that they love, Super Fun, dinner and maybe a movie, and I am delighted. "Ok it's a date!" He says with bravado, and I am grinning like a silly woman...it wasn't always this easy to get a date with my husband.
Ben, in his Star Wars underwear, perched on the arm of our couch, pipes up, "But Mom, if you and Dad are already married, why do you have to go on a date?"

A giant Man Committee in my head shouts "YEAH!!!! WHY? We did the courting! We wooed and won you over, why do you married women need us to do that darn date stuff, and PRETEND we are having a date?" I laugh as I hear men groan around the world.
I ask Todd if he heard and we chuckle together. Then I get to answering my son's very good question.

"Well, Ben, it's like you and a friend. You make a friend, and to be REALLY good friends, you need to spend time together and play, laugh, learn what the other person likes right? Well, Mommy and Daddy need to do that too. We spend time where Daddy only focuses on me and I only focus on Daddy...no interruptions from Bronson, laundry or the phone."

He nods understandingly. But I appreciate his question. Men from all cultures have it that when they woo and date a women, once they get her the ring, marry and give up all other temptations from other women, gosh darn it, then that should be enough! It just doesn't make a bit of sense to men that they should "have to" keep trying to win their women's affections when the winning has been won. In other words, game over. I imagine that men say it to each other all the time at Bachelor parties... "Game over man, You're DONE. After tomorrow you only have one women for the rest of your LIFE."
The courting and hunt for a woman is done after marriage. The game has been played. Most men want to just kick back and enjoy their life, retire the tux and the suit and tie, have time with the Misses be watching TV together, maybe a drink together, and straightforward roll in the hay. No fuss no muss. Why not? He earned it!
The whole idea of a "date" with a wife just doesn't make any sense. Especially to couples without children. Why get all gussied up for each other when we can just stay home and strip and get straight to it? Total insanity! A date is what you do when you want to get to know, romance, woo and entice a woman. Your wife, well, you know her and she's supposed to be a sure thing now, right?

And for married men with kids, well, a date is just frustrating. First of all, there is the hassle of the babysitter. Usually the wife takes care of it, but the man always gets bothered by who or what time or driving her home or something...and then there's the cost, sixty bucks for some teen or college girl to come over and get the kids ready for bed for an hour and then sit on her butt and watch TV for the next three hours. What a rip off.
Second, there's the getting dressed up thing again, which is a pain, and that look your wife gives you like, "You are going to wear THAT?" Men never had to put up with that when they were actually dating...the women got whatever shirt the man damn well felt like wearing and looked DELIGHTED to see him, yes, in THAT.
Thirdly there is the cost of the dinner and maybe movie too, all in all it could be almost 200 bucks for a night out and sitter and in a day or two the wife will bitch about how badly we need money to save for college. A guy just can't do enough.
On top of all that, unless we throw a few more hundred dollars out there and get a hotel, the supposed "sure thing" for a married man with children is definitely not a sure thing. The kids might be a tangled mass, sleeping in our bed, one might wander in just as we are starting to get to bed, or as soon as we get home the wife might remember that she needs to make brownies for tomorrow's potluck or patch together that costume the kid needs. The man's shoulder drop, defeated again...duped into playing the "game" of Date Night that he just can't win.
To a man, the whole Date Night concept can be a big farce. Sure, some get excited about the movie out and the good steak, but their idea of the date night is totally different from the wife.

She wants to relive the romance, the starry eyes, the candle light. She wants to feel whisked away to a fantasy place that smells like flowers and spices while he stares into her eyes and her eyes only. She wants to feel adored and desired. Even if he has to pretend, she doesn't care, just muster up your attention for one night once in a while and look into my eyes and find me Fascinating, dammit!!! She really doesn't care as much about the point of the date, warming up for the jump in the sack...no she really wants the experience of the desire and romance beforehand. The married woman often feels like she has been duped...all that courting and romance in the beginning and NOW look what I get. What a farce! I've been tricked!
She really doesn't get why her husband doesn't WANT to do a Date Night with her. Why he is not excited to get dressed up, oogle her in her perfect dress, kiss her neck as they go out the door, hold her hand and rub the small of her back as they wait for a table. She doesn't GET why he doesn't WANT to go on a date, whatever it costs, to spend time alone with HER, he used to practically drool when he saw her dressed up! Logically too, she doesn't get why he doesn't want to keep the marriage blooming and growing, thriving instead of surviving each other. The wife with children is desperate for date nights to "get away" as well, but may also feel guilt over leaving babies or small children. She may worry so much that a date night is just too stressful, so she gives up. She resorts to taking scraps of connection, like an ice cream outside on the porch to look at the moon and talk for a half hour after the kids go to bed. "Ok", she sighs in her head, "I guess that was a date."

That is the real point. That a Date Night really is whatever the couple creates that it is. And it doesn't have to be "settling". We can actually be thrilled about an ice cream and the moon. I will never forget the date Todd took me on recently to watch the sunset over a huge lake and eat chocolate and drink a glass of red wine and talk about everything and nothing. Last year, the time we took to ask each other what the perfect date night would be for each of us was a huge shift in generosity for me. When I heard him describe in detail, going out for a nice casual dinner in comfy clothes, talking about our books, going to a book store and checking out the latest books, then maybe a coffee or dessert too, that was a great night out too. And it included learning something new as well. I resisted it, because I wanted Date Night to be all about ME, but I have to admit I loved the idea of that evening too.
When we did that Date Night, and I actually enjoyed it, something shifted for Todd too, he saw I was willing to acknowledge his desires and his desire to fulfill my desires...well, let's just say we have a lot more Date Nights now! :)
So, a Toast to Friday night Date Nights everywhere,however they are, creating moonlight and merriment, married and in love.

Zen Honeycutt

Instant Rage

It's Sunday late morning and rather than sitting peacefully at church like most families in southern Orange County I just flew into a rage.
My toddler ran screaming after me down the hallway as I went to fix something for lunch and it occurred to me that my husband is doing nothing and POOF! Instant rage.
I start yelling about how We Need To Eat ( I wonder would they all just starve if I didn't cook?? I am so annoyed by my husband's lack of initiative around meal times. Totally annoyed) and WHY did he throw all the leftovers into one bowl??? The rice, chicken and brussles sprouts are all a mixed up mushy mess and the kids will NEVER eat them this way. I am irate with my husband. How hard is it to separate the leftovers???

Then Bronson is pulling on my legs and whining some more. I have had it with him too. At two and a half and still nursing I am over my threshold for tolerance. Sometimes it is perfect and fine, a bonding moment in the middle of the night...but now, when I am trying to make lunch, it's just downright annoying. I need to have a life, to not be tugged at, to care for myself and to have some moments of quiet time when I am not being demanded of, whined at, pulled at, crawled on, boogered on, talked back to, tattled to, pleaded to for food, screamed at for attention and actually hit by my toddler when he is mad. Enough is enough!
I holler at my husband for not thinking about Bronson's needs. He is two year old, who has been sitting around all morning with his brothers,awake for nearly five hours now, and simply watching TV, or watching his brothers play DS games or playing XBox is insane. A two year does not have the attention span or interest in those activities like an eight or six year old. So out of total boredom he comes whining after me for some sort of attention and to latch on like a tick on a dog. I have had it.
Plus how much is enough? Is ANYONE monitoring the amount of time the children spend in front of theses electronic boxes? Even though I bought a timer??? Obviously NOT! Obviously I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING!!!!

Pretty soon I am slamming pots on the stove, resentfully cooking this mush of a leftover lunch, grabbing a bowl for myself and heading to the office to eat alone because I can't stand the thought of sitting and digesting food in front of my husband.I eat with a clenched stomach. I hate to admit the mushy mess actually tastes better than my original dish. Damn him. My shame at my rage is setting in and I continue to hide from him and my children and myself. Except I am still with myself. When I sit dowm to write something inspiring about parenting, I feel like a total fraud. I want to blame him now for my lack of ability to write authentically. Not very Zen.

Or actually, exactly Zen...the identity I mean, not the philosophy. I do this. This is what I do. I don't plan my Sunday, or I do but then I am not aware of it or I don't communicate it with my husband with real times and simple requests like " Sweetie, Please take the boys to the park by ten AM". No... and I lay around, watch mindless TV, have breakfast in bed because my husband is cool like that ( see he did do something...) and let my son nurse whenever he wants because he is so ridiculously attached...but until I am just sore and irritated.

Then, when it suddenly seems like we should all be doing something different, suddenly, like one second it's fine to be playing video games and the next second it's been waaaaay too long...suddenly, because that switch has been flicked by Judge Zen in my brain, the sentencing ensues. The gavel comes down and everyone is condemned to a session of yelling, accusing, demanding, commanding, threats and punishments. I exert my control and everyone pays. And I am justified because I ( Capital of capital I's) DO EVERYTHING. And I am overwhelmed and deserve to blow off steam.
It's horrendous. It's a miracle I am still married. It's a miracle my kids love me anyway.

Why share this? Why write out my very un-Zen like ways of parenting that are definitely not inspiring? One, I am committed to being authentic. Two, I am guessing one or two others do this. Someone might relate. Three, I get out of my system, I work it out and get clarity when I share, and get to create something new.
I don't want to be this way and yet in the moment I see no other way to be. I don't think about it, words are just launching themselves out of my mouth like fighter jets, angrily attacking anyone with earshot.
The magic comes when I do think about it and get present, when I face my part of it. When I can see the pattern and see what is missing that I can put in to have our Sundays afternoons work.

Like.... a plan and a specific time for when the boys go to the park or pool with Daddy. Or food prepared ahead of time and a simple request for my husband to reheat it at a certain time. Asking nicely might help. Putting one of the boys in charge of setting the timer for their video game playing might be a start. Setting rules like our friends where they earn a minute of video game playing for every minute of another activity like playing piano, reading or making art. Or how about I actually stick to my own schedule for writing, making art or girl time? I haven't been to the gym or made art in months.

All this requires that I ( that's another Capital of Capital I's) be responsible...which is exactly what I was raging at my husband for not doing and exactly what I wasn't doing either.
So sorry Sweetie. Please stay married to me. I love you and the kids so much.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Cleaning Out : Communication and Taking a look at Ourselves

We had one of those nights, as a married couple. You know, the kind where as a wife I am stewing, overwhelmed, resentful and sputtering obsecnities under my breath. My husband is confused and has almost completely given up.
We lay on the bed for the first time together all week.
Todd has been staying up late doing research for his book most nights, I was "checked out", either out one night or watching TV or working late the other night.
I stare at the black TV at the other end of the room,shiny dead and heavy. I feel the weight of many days of built up information, thought,concerns,guilt,frustrations and issues boiling inside. As I begin to share them with my husband, I don't make eye contact. I can't look at him and be as angry as I want to be right now, so I indulge my bitterness and continue to stare at the TV.

"I can't stand the mess anymore,"I am spewing..."There is no place to put it all anymore.The knobs on the cabinet over there has been missing for months, there are 8 boxes of papers and toys that I don't know what to do with...the kids are constantly hungry and making messes and I am the only one who does anything about all this, it's all on me and I can't stand it!"

My husband,smart man, just listens. We have done some courses about men and women and he gets I am just "emptying the trash", so to speak. He is holding the basket and catching it all for me. Not easy for him, as his instinctual urge as the man that he is, is to fix it,but a generous and loving act that enables me to get it out, Get it ALL out!
I keep going. I've got more...."The car is rattling, you are always working or writing and ignoring me,the shed is stuffed full, I want a garage, we still haven't opened a bank account for Ben,taught him about money,Ben got picked on at school today..."
I essentially make me husband wrong for everything ( allll his fault!)until his part in it dwindles and it just becomes about some things that are just the way they are...and have nothing to do with him.
Then he speaks. He says he hears me. Gets me. And he promises he will be present.
I breath and look at him.His eyes are promising and loving,asking me for trust.
I do.

The next morning, as he is cooking a beautiful breakfast I start putting dishes away and again cannot close a cabinet drawer. Instead of my thoughts going to blaming him for it like I have been for the past few months,silently, I open and close it again,investigating...and I hear a crunch of paper behind the drawer. I reach my hand back there and find a brown paper lunch bag and pull it out. I reach again and there's more...and again and again...paper bags, ziploc bags, tin foil scraps, pretty soon I have a mountain of garbage in front of me and I am incredulous that it all fit in there...and begin to giggle. I make the connection between me cleaning out the junk in my head last night and what I am doing right now with my kitchen drawer. In both cases I was blaming him, when in actuallity it was all just my own crap! By the 7th brown paper bag I am lauging so hard tears are coming to my eyes. My husband is smiling to himself as he flips the bacon. Yea that's right...his nodding head says. I am just bubbling over with laughter.
In all there were 7 paper bags, 9 ziploc bags, 3 pieces of foil, a fabric rice bag, two large plastic trash bags and an entire plastic tablecloth. Hilarious! Astounding!
All that, like all the rambling, accusations, resentments,stories I have made up about how woe is me...all was cleaned out in a few moments.
I am free. My husband is vindicated. I kiss him sweetly before we eat his gorgeous generous breakfast.

Sometimes the solutions to our upsets are right before us. And always, they have much more to do with us than them.
Just share,listen, look and then laughter will come.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

P.S. I wrote this a week or two ago. Since then all of the issues mentioned here, and then some have been or are being completely handled. I created trust and love for my husband and he created taking care of us. And he has. Thank You Todd.

Romancexting...Renewing a Marriage from Afar.

It's 5 pm on the fifth day of my husband being away. An unmade dinner calls to me like a lonely cowboy from the kitchen. My boys disagree for the twentieth time about the placement of the castle of pillows they are making in the living room. My 5 year old Bodee suddenly screeches bloody murder at Bronson, the almost two year old, who has other ideas for the pillows. It's a matter of life or death and at this rate Bodee is going to bust an eye socket or internally combust.

So I drag myself from the bed upon which I had a brief flirtation of a rest...
settle the conniption on my way to the kitchen, pick up a squashed black olive from the night before and start the picnic dinner for the concert on the lake where I said we would meet some friends.
I don't want to though. I am tired, the kids are rowdy, and I am not inspired to get the kids into the car for the fourth time today.

I hear my phone beep as I pull out the fixings for dinner.
I check it and it is a text from Todd. A photo of the very spot we met 12 years ago and " I love you". He is in New York City for a writers conference ( which is going fabulously ) and he has left the conference on a break, walked or taken the subway twenty blocks uptown, in the heat, to just BE at the spot we met 12 years ago, Lincoln Center, swing dancing at Mid Summer Night Swing. It means that much to him, and he knows it means that much to me.
My eyes fill with tears. My heart fills with love.
I can't imagine a more romantic thing to do, a more romantic way of being, than who he is right now. I blubber a text back about how romantic he is and how I can't wait to kiss him...
I remember my committment to him to be supportive. I told him before he left "Don't worry about us, I will have FUN with the kids, just love them and we will have a great time."
He said. " Great, that's the best way you can support me."
I text about the fun things we have done and are about to do...
My body feels light, energized and ready to go.


When we arrive at the concert on the lake, the band just starts the very first notes of the swing song "In the Mood", our wedding song...a wild coincidence.
I call him back to hear his voice, tell him about the song, and I get that although we are 3,000 miles apart, we have never felt closer or more connected.
After 12 years of knowing each other, it's those little moments of anticipating what the other person might like...of creating a special moment by a sweet gesture, a thoughtful glance or note...photographing a special spot and sending it by phone...a romantical text...earlier he texted me the spot where he proposed...it's those moments that renew our marriage daily.
We are not "Sexting"...we are an old married couple:) (just joking) but we are create romance through texting..not sure if the word Romancexting works, but what the hell. It works for me!
The marriage feels new, alive, vividly colorful and intense.

And at the same moment I become aware of so many times when I don't take the opportunity to create these kind of moments or when I don't recognize when Todd is doing those things...I am just too busy being busy. I realize that there are many many times when Todd is being romantic in his own ways...in ways that I am not looking for so I often don't notice. I suddenly see that my story about him not being romantic is just a bunch of hooey. He is. He is beyond what I could even hope for. I was just busy seeing him another way, so I could be right ( oooooh I love being right!) and perhaps get attention....and I get that that is not the kind of attention I want. This kind is waaaaay better.

In the South Coast Plaza mall, where I took my kids to change things up a little while Daddy was away earlier in the day, there was a store under renovation and the blank wall had a giant cursive quotation on the wall "Change the way you see the things and things change."

There was nothing wrong with him. It was all my perspective. My perspective of "he isn't __________" created more of him being not ___________. I could fill that in with lots of judgments and assessments....

The funny thing is, this time, I didn't control, strategize, beg, plead, hint, convince, demand for him,tell him or try to fix him to be as romantic as he has been on this trip away. All I did was support him, in what mattered to him. I created the space, structure and support for him to pursue his dreams. And what showed up was the Man of My Dreams.
That's a marriage that excites and delights me... that's miraculous... no matter how far apart, how tired... that's freedom and bliss.


Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com


Thanks for reading my shares about my life...when I share this it become more real for me, more miraculous. I invite you to look in your life too..where might have you been too busy to notice something romantic your partner has done...or where are you supporting your partner in having a life of their dreams...and what miracles have shown up from that??
They are there...miracles show up when we take a moment and honor those moments.
Thanks for reading and being a part of me honoring one of those moments in my life.