text: What’s that Sinatra song – ‘Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage, Go together like a horse and carriage’…cute song, full of the joys of love, and, er, marriage. But like all good love songs, it seems to end before the kids arrive, doesn’t it? Just as well, I suppose – ‘Love and marriage and kids, go together like a horse and carriage AND DICK BLOODY TURPIN’
  Not that I would wish to compare children to rampaging highwaymen. I mean Dick Turpin by all accounts was single minded in pursuit of his plunder, creating chaos to ensure he got what he wanted, and leaving dire consequences all around him if he didn’t. Nothing like kids at all…oh. Come to think of it, Dick Turpin actually comes out of this looking bit better – after all, he only wanted your money OR your life.
  Seriously though, how the effing eff are you supposed to maintain any sort of grown up relationship with young children? If you google the top ten tips for a long lasting relationship (I haven’t googled this by the way, and if I were to google it, it would TOTES OBVS be for a friend) but just say someone were to google it, while researching a blog article or something, and I bet the top 100 search results would be all spaff like ‘Make quality time for each other’ and ‘When you talk to each other, make eye contact and listen carefully before responding’ and ‘Have a sexy weekend away’ and ‘Don’t forget the romantic surprises, how about a note in the fridge to tell him you love him’ and ‘Do a relationship MOT once every few months’ and ‘Make sure you have time away from each other with your respective circles of friends’ and blah de bloody blah.
  Are you having a LAUGH, internets? Quality time? When, exactly? We used to put the kids to bed at 7 and know we’d at least have a couple of hours to do something together, even if it was only the VAT return…now they are bigger, bedtime is later, and our ‘us’ time is squeezed – and at weekends it’s non existent. Eye contact? We could probably do that, if we slept facing each other and propped our eyelids open – would that count? Romantic surprises? Do you mean the ones that appear from nowhere when you just might be having a bit of cuddle that just might lead to something else and – oh. SILLY ME. Hahahahdebloodyha. What’s next – ah yes, a relationship MOT. Right. So if it’s anything like the car MOT, you remind each other for weeks that it’s due, fail to book it, blame each other for said failure, finally book it, and then wish you hadn’t because you get a whopping great bastard bill to get the stupid car back on the road for another year, oh and a sheet of advisories just to tell you that despite all the cash you’ve just thrown at it, the car is probably going to die in the next 12 months anyway…Nah, not feeling the love for the whole ‘relationship MOT’ thing. And finally, make time away from each other…what the WHAT? If we don’t have time FOR each other, how on this earth are we supposed to make time AWAY from each other? And in all this time making, what do we do with the kids???
  Admittedly this is made more tricky by the fact that we mostly work different hours to each other. We worked it out like that so that one of us could always be around for the kids before and after school, but the flip side is that one of us is working at least one evening a week and often two, and one of us is always working on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Throw in Welsh classes another evening (which are essential as the kids go to a Welsh speaking school) and weekly admin for the business, and it’s not unusual for us to go weeks without having time for a proper conversation. Weeks? Possibly months, come to think of it…
  So, oh grown up ones who are out the other side, how does it work then? Is it just keep your head down and get on with it? Does it get easier? And when? Are we the only ones who are finding that our kids, desperately wanted and loved as they are, are Dick Turpinning things?
  As always – pearls of wisdom welcome!
  …16 months on and this remains as true as ever, so I’m linking up with ‘The Truth About’ over at Sam’s blog ‘And Then The Fun Began’…pop over for a root through truth, truth and more truth from some fab bloggers!