How Dog Walking Helped My Marriage
The thing about teenagers - they never want to go to sleep. Littler people are great - predictable bed time routines plus a voracious demand for sleep. The net result is the adults in the house having a decent chunk of 'off-duty' time each night.
Not true for teenagers. Nor bizarrely are they ever awake at reasonable hours either.
This causes a problem - when do the adults in the house have time to connect?
My wife and I struggled with this dynamic for awhile - wanting to recognize that our kids are aging. But also feeling like we were getting more distance introduced between us.
Here’s what we have figured out and a habit we introduced.
First - every night after dinner, but before bed time routines start, we take the dog for a walk.
Of course, the dog is thrilled. These same children, that don't want to sleep, are of course old enough to supervise themselves for 20-30 minutes.
The point of this walk is to have uninterrupted time to debrief the day. A download of the good, the bad, logistics etc. It’s a catch-up status meeting. But the point is that it keeps too much water from going under the bridge.
We pair the dog walking with a second meeting. Every Sunday after lunch - we have our business meeting. The goal of this meeting is to review the schedule for the week ahead and align on what needs to be done, by who and when.
Sunday dinners are a family wide review of the week ahead. Strangely our kids have come to love this preview of coming attractions and demand this be the topic of dinner conversation.
So with regular catch-ups and coordination checked off, that leaves relational development and deepening. We work really hard to get 1 date night in a month (and ideally every 2 weeks). I keep track of these dates in a spreadsheet so too much time can’t slip by - it helps to have a natural prompt so you don’t have to remember to do something.
Date nights are meant to be a 1 - 2 hour block of time where we can pursue each other. Ask questions and understand who are spouse is and is becoming. It's unhurried and allows time for rabbit chasing in a conversation. It is not about problem solving.
This cadence has been really helpful for us and maybe will be for you too.