We've Been Married For 3 Years — But Just Went On Our First Date
I wasn’t prepared to find myself on a first date with my husband of three years.
Jep Gambardella | Pexels It’s early October 2021. Our twins are three months old, and my husband and I are going out for the first time since they were born. We go to dinner at a fancy restaurant (the kind that provides hot, lemon-scented hand towels to freshen up after your meal) and call it a combined celebration of my 28th birthday and our third wedding anniversary.
In truth, it’s a celebration of much more than that. We are new parents to beautiful baby girls … and we are free of them for the evening for the first time in months. At that time, nothing felt more wild than skipping one of the never-ending feedings.
The prospect of this first date with my husband of three years was thrilling and invigorating to me.
But that morning, doubt crept in. I felt anxious and prematurely depressed. I remember being on the quiet side in the car. I remember striving to keep it together as we were seated and as we ordered drinks. Before my glass of wine had arrived at the table, I had excused myself to the bathroom, where I locked myself in a stall and fanned at my watering eyes.
I told myself to breathe, to get it together, and not ruin this special night. At only three months postpartum, I was still hormonal and emotionally fragile. It was also still nerve-wracking to leave the girls when they were so little.
My husband and I were thriving in the newborn bubble, honestly. We were a great team, and I was proud of how we were tackling the challenges and changes of parenthood, particularly with two newborns. I felt that we were not only doing a fantastic job of coping with the mechanics of it all — the exhaustion, the feedings, the diaper blow-outs, and such — but we were also prioritizing soaking it all in together.
It was challenging, but we were enjoying it all. Which is why my melancholy for that date night snuck up on me. All of a sudden, I was confronted with something that felt very much like a first date.
I felt suddenly unsure that we had anything to talk about outside of our babies. It felt like we had nothing in common anymore, no romance left in us.
I no longer looked or sounded like the woman he married, having stretched to carry our babies and also completely lost my voice (and have yet to fully recover it) at the start of my second trimester. What if he wasn’t attracted to me anymore? What if I’m not interesting anymore? Frankly, I was a little concerned I wouldn’t find him all that interesting anymore with how obsessed with the girls I was.
In hindsight, this anxiety was a personal crisis of identity. Becoming a mother is all-consuming. It absorbs you mentally, emotionally, and physically. There is not an ounce of you left untouched.
The research defines parental identity as a phenomenon that comprises the most important elements of the person's definition of oneself as a parent and the degree of identification with the role of a parent. The foundations of a sense of parental identity are formed as early as adolescence, in the form of plans and expectations for parenthood.
It was always important to me to maintain my own identity as a mother, both for my sanity and the benefit of my daughters. But I couldn’t have prepared for how swallowed-whole I would feel. And I was surprised to realize I hadn’t stopped to consider it in the scope of my marriage.
What if we didn’t know how to talk to each other as husband and wife anymore, having been so focused on honing our roles as mom and dad?
It also bears noting everything began to revolve around the twins long before they were born. First, our conversations and thoughts centered around getting pregnant. Then, we spent nine months preparing for them. Fantasizing about who they would be, getting our home ready, acquiring all of the necessary equipment, going to doctor appointments. The girls were only three months old, but our relationship had, in truth, revolved around them for well over a year.
It's important to me, to both of us, that we don’t let our relationship fall by the wayside amid parenthood. In the months leading up to their birth, my husband and I acknowledged that it would be important to intentionally nurture our marriage no matter how busy and tired we became. He and I are the foundation of our family. Keeping our relationship healthy is important for our children’s health; it leads them by example in developing their relationships in life, and, just as crucially, it enriches our lives as individuals.
So, especially in the throes of postpartum, this first post-baby date felt enormous. It felt like an evaluation that we would either pass or fail. I returned from the restroom, tear-free and with perilous conviction, and immediately felt oddly self-conscious. I remembered our actual first date, after having been close friends for four years, and the uncertainties that swam in my gut that night:
Will it be weird between us now, or will we get on like we normally do? What if this attempt at dating doesn’t work out, and we can’t figure out how to still be friends? How am I supposed to act, normal or more flirty? Does he find me physically attractive … like, in a romantic way? Is he going to kiss me?
Sitting at the table with him in my new body, I was grateful for the dim, candlelit glow of the restaurant. I was grateful for my wine glass, as I had suddenly forgotten how to converse with another human. I was grateful for the menu and the necessity of choosing a meal as I thought of an icebreaker. I didn’t need one, though.
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I don’t remember what we talked about on our date, but I know that we did not have to fight for conversation.
The silences weren’t weird or stiff. We, of course, talked about the girls a bit, but this is what I remember most vividly: I remember feeling as though I were shimmering. I remember feeling youthful, both interested and interesting. I remember looking across the table and seeing him stripped of burp cloths, timers, and wet wipes. I remember laughing, having to stifle our giggles when the waiter made his appearance.
I remember forgetting to check my phone and not wanting to leave that table. A repartee that has always been the staple of our friendship. I remember wanting to hold his hand as we left the restaurant, anticipating a kiss and wondering how quickly my mom would leave once we got home.
I remember floating in the wake of our kindling as we slipped back into our routine with the girls. Preparing bottles, changing diapers, and rocking their tiny bodies in the still-warm glow of the restaurant.
We’re now three years deep into this parenting thing. There are highs and lows to everything in life, and I have to be honest: our lows have been low. It has not been all fancy restaurants and synchronized teamwork. Three-year-olds are a lot.
If you ask me, they’re infinitely more challenging than newborns, and we’re just entering into the eternally chaotic phase (is “phase” really the word when it’s never-ending from here on out?) of parenting where the kids have activities and birthday parties and play dates and it’s time to start thinking about school. I have been increasingly jealous of my alone time the more the girls require of me, and my husband and I have been spending more weeknights separately — him playing video games, me reading — as of late.
We have remained steadfast in our commitment to date nights, and we reap the benefits of it even on difficult days.
I still get such a thrill from breaking free of the kids for an evening or, if we’re lucky, an overnight and luxuriating in all the opened-up potential of the time ahead of us. We still laugh and goof around. We talk about a million things not relating to our kids. And frankly, there are dates that we pencil into the calendar in advance that, on the day of, I don’t particularly care to spend one-on-one time with him (and vice versa). But those are the dates we most need to have.
Research from the Marriage Foundation has found that going out on the occasional date together, without children, suggests couples recognize the need to keep the fire going in their relationship. This intentionality has an important influence on the subsequent outcome of the relationship. The intent behind marriages in terms of whether couples ‘decide’ or ‘slide’ into marriage is also a crucial factor in commitment.
The laughter and the feeling of being hot, flirty, and carefree are amazing. The toddler-free time isn’t so bad either. But the most valuable benefit of the time my husband and I dedicate specifically to each other is that it keeps us consistently abreast of the fact that we are whole people.
We fell in love with each other’s sense of humor, ways of thought, outlook on life, goals, ambitions, and interests. He’s not just a crutch to my parenting, someone to take over for me at the end of the day when I’m touched out and overstimulated. He’s not a place to aim frustration that I won’t unleash on my children.
We are not just cogs in the machine of our family. Amid the chaos of life, our problems, and our feelings, it can be easy to make others two-dimensional. It’s also all too easy to make ourselves two-dimensional.
One of the most surprising aspects of date nights, considering I’ve been with this man for almost six years now, is the consistent vulnerability of it all. Of sharing undivided attention, having no distractions during a conversation, and filling the time and space with just ourselves. And it’s in that vulnerability that I meet myself.
I wasn’t prepared to find myself on a first date with my husband of three years. But there’s nothing like a first date to accentuate your humanness.
Arbor Brookes is a writer of personal essays, poetry, and prose on Medium, reflecting on identity, parenting, and healing. In keeping with the reflective tone of her writing, Arbor is also a photographer sharing her work via Instagram.