Marriage or life partnership is hard work. Balancing your needs as an individual with the needs of your relationship requires attention to your schedules and developing habits to carve out the time to nurture this connection. When raising a grandchild, niece, or nephew, there are even more demands on your time and energy. All too often, your relationship moves to the back burner of your life.
However, it’s critical to remember that nurturing and strengthening your primary relationship (marriage or life partnership) gives you a firm foundation from which to function. You will have more energy to invest in the needs of your grandchild when you are fulfilled and secure in your marriage.
Four Tips to Strengthen and Support Your Primary Adult Relationship
1. Don’t make your marriage all about the children.
When raising children who have experienced loss or chaos before joining your home, it’s easy to get caught in the cycle of meeting their needs as they arise. This can often lead to living in a “put out the fires” mode – jumping from one urgent crisis or demand to the next. Communication between adults becomes strategizing about needs, schedules, and emergencies. Often, partners begin to see each other as mere teammates rather than intimates.
To avoid this pitfall, try to engage in activities or hobbies you enjoy and can do together. This can be gardening, joining a cooking class together, or going to a book club with others in your tribal community. Attend each other’s work functions to support your careers or accomplishments. The point is to find something that the two of you do together – outside of the role of caregiver for these kids – that builds the connection between you.
2. Make time for your relationship.
Establishing healthy habits and boundaries for your relationship is a crucial coping tool when raising kids with big emotions and needs. Scheduling time in your calendar for your relationship is an excellent habit to set in place no matter how long the kids have been with you.
Some couples schedule regular Date Nights. Others go to marriage counseling together. Still, others plan regular “grown-ups only” events like concerts or day trips. The goal is to establish a regularly scheduled event that you can anticipate as a connecting point for the care and nurture of your relationship.
3. Take daily, short breaks from the kids.
Your grandchildren, nephews, or nieces require focused attention daily – especially when they are trying to heal from the trauma they’ve experienced. Protect your relationship by taking short, daily breaks from those demands. These breaks can be little bursts of re-fueling, like 30 minutes of yoga, stretching alone in your garden, or prayer and meditation to re-focus your heart and mind.
When you commit to these regular breaks from the kids, you are refreshing yourself to leave space for your partner and your relationship. The kids’ needs can be overwhelming, and when you don’t take a few moments to break away from their issues, it’s easy to resent your partner for needing you too. These short daily time-outs can buffer you from feeling frustrated that everyone needs a piece of you.
4. Have fun together as a couple and as a family.
There’s almost nothing sweeter than the sound of a child’s laughter. When you can find the time and space to laugh together, you are building bonds between you that strengthen the messages of trust, security, and safety.
Build time into your days and weeks for family- and couple-fun. Whether it’s a Family Game Night or playing volleyball in the yard, your grandchildren need to see you laughing with each other. Enjoying your partner’s company tells the kids that adults can be safe, which is a critical message for children who lived through chaos or abuse in their early years.
Be sure to also find time during the day to enjoy each other as adults – share inside jokes or celebrate each other’s accomplishments in front of the kids. Your foundation of friendship can be an excellent buffer for the hard days when it might feel as if nothing else is going well.
Modeling the Joy of a Healthy Relationship
You have the unique opportunity while caring for your loved one to show them what healthy, loving, and committed adult relationships can look like. It’s an incredible privilege to offer these precious kids a different picture of a healthy marriage based on friendship, respect, and joy.