During what I would consider the beginning of the end of the marriage between my wife and me, it was brought to my attention that I was putting work before my family. While I was surprised to hear this, I could also see that it was true. I was traveling a lot and even when I was home, I wasn’t “at home;” my mind was often on work matters and not family matters. I have no excuses for it. I should not have done it but once it was brought to my attention, I took strides to change and I believe I did (just too late, as I’ve stated before).
During this time I began to think about how I was feeling when I came home from a trip. A lot of times, it was like I was just a roommate in the house. I wasn’t in with the routine, they would have plans I didn’t know about and if I tried to discipline the girls for doing something wrong, I was either told to calm down or my wife would just take over as if I didn’t have a say in the matter (not always, but enough times that I noticed it).
It all kind of boiled down to my wife putting the girls before me. I didn’t like the way that sounded though…I thought I was being a bit selfish. After some introspection, I came to the conclusion that, on a broader scale, my wife was putting our children before our marriage. This fit better. It was rare we ever had a “date night.” Any conversation we had was about the girls and not about us. When we would try to have a conversation, the girls would often interrupt and she would tend to them. Once they were settled, though, we never went back to what we were talking about.
Still, I felt guilty about thinking this. Shouldn’t she be putting the girls first? Shouldn’t I for that matter? Confused, I consulted my therapist, Dr. Google and was surprised to find that this conflict: “What should be first, the marriage or the children?” is a common one. I was also surprised to find that the majority of the articles about it were in favor of putting the marriage first and the children second. Heck, the first 20 results were all in favor of putting the marriage first.
The bottom line message to all of the articles I read (which must have been about fifty of them), is that when you work on the marriage and the marriage is strong, the children benefit. It really makes sense. The children see their parents in a loving relationship and feed off of that. The family unit is stronger and thus your kids will be stronger because of it. Here are some quotes I found to back this up:
“We believe firmly that raising and nurturing Clara to be a happy and secure child lies in the strong foundation of our own relationship,” says Janine. “The stronger our marriage, the easier and more joyful it is to be a family.”
(Which Comes First: Marriage or the Kids?)
"Psychiatrist Michelle Goland agrees: "The mistake many moms make is they believe that if they are a good mother, their husband will be fine and he will understand, but in reality, the husband may feel pushed out of the parenting role and begrudgingly gives up trying to have a relationship with his wife."
(Stop Putting Your Kids First)
"I would even go as far as to say that you are raising your kids with some serious deficiencies if they are the center of your universe. If you don’t show them what a healthy marriage looks like, where will they learn it? If dad doesn’t make it a priority to spend time with mom, then why would your kids do anything different? Our kids need to see that our marriages carry the weight of the family. If that fails, then the family fails."
(What comes first? Kids or Marriage?
I tried to talk to my wife about this but I failed at conveying what I meant. Because I was stumbling around the topic or just poor communication skills in general, I think what came out was that I put her above the girls. That the girls were always second place in my book. Not exactly what I was trying to say and I can see why she may have lost respect for me by hearing it like that. What I meant was that we needed to put ourselves and our relationship before the girls because a lasting relationship can only be beneficial to our children. If we don’t have that, we end up…
…well, we end up with a blog like this and a family broken apart.
The point of this blog isn’t to say that I was right. The point is to send a message to those who are still married and might need this information to help guide you. I wish this was something I had thought of and researched more thoroughly early on in my marriage. It’s an easy thing to think that children should be first. What else would they be? I prefer to think of putting the marriage first more in line with putting your family first, which includes your children but also includes your spouse.
Next time: My First Time
