For many of us who are caregivers, we may never be empty nesters. We need to invest in our marriages so they stay strong for the long term. Caregiving is also an emotional and physical investment that can leave our spouses feeling neglected.
For example, my son James is a sensory seeker and loves to touch. We even got a double-wide recliner so he could have room to sit with us as he grows. He doesn’t understand the concept of personal space and will often have his legs draped over mine or lean his head on my husband Lee’s shoulder. Since I’m not much of a toucher, I can hit my limit pretty quickly and not have any affection left for Lee at the end of the day. I’m simply all touched out. Even if you don’t have a sensory seeker who loves touch, you are likely using your body to care for someone else in ways that can wear you down, whether that’s lifting, or bathing, or wiping noses.
The investment in caregiving isn’t just physical. It’s emotional as well. You may use up all your patience for the day on your child and not feel like you have any left for your husband. There’s an invisible workload you carry that includes remembering appointment dates and times, giving medicine doses, or worrying about your son’s social interactions (or lack of social interactions).
Caregivers are always on, and while that’s necessary, it’s also exhausting. And often our marriages suffer.
So today I want to offer a solution—setting a feeling-based goal for our marriages. Instead of the goals you may have set at the beginning of the year that were easy to track and see success or failure, this one is about changing the mood of your marriage.
First, think about what feeling you want more of in your marriage. Maybe it’s patience—you want to be more patient with each other. Maybe it’s intimacy. You may feel like you’ve drifted apart and need to get close again. Maybe it’s safety. Something may have happened that has left you feeling vulnerable and unsure in your relationship with each other. If you need help deciding on a feeling, look at the Fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Do any of those stand out to you? Pick one as a feeling you want to work toward.
When I thought and prayed about what feeling I wanted more of in our marriage, I settled on joy. I want to enjoy Lee and my time with him even more. I want to experience more joy with him than I do anyone else.
Once you decide on a feeling-based goal, you can reverse engineer it and figure out how to make it happen.
First, we think about and talk about what brings us more joy. Even this first step can be a little challenging because what brings Lee joy isn’t necessarily what brings me joy. My happiest evenings are spent in comfortable clothes reading a book. Alone. His happiest evenings are going somewhere with people. He especially likes going to movies and community events (like high school football games). If I’m making a list of what makes us both happy, one of the top things is eating out. Since I do the cooking and he does the dishes, so eating out gives us both time off from these tasks. He likes lots and lots of people, but he knows I’m more comfortable with a smaller crowd. So one way to add more joy is to plan a night when we eat out and invite friends!
Then, we create a plan to make it happen. I need to plan a night out with friends. That means deciding who we want to hang out with, finding a night we are free and they are free, getting a babysitter (or my parents) to be with James, and making it happen!
The third step is to repeat as necessary! I can think of other things that would be fun to do together and then make them happen. Maybe it’s a long weekend somewhere. Or lunch while the boys are at school, somewhere new and different. Maybe it’s an afternoon at the beach for all of us. Fun together doesn’t always have to mean fun away from the boys. Maybe I get a board game we would both like or rent a funny movie. Anything that creates the feeling I’m going for.
Maybe the feeling you want is peace. Go through these same steps and decide what would make your marriage and home feel more peaceful. Maybe you want more unity. You may not feel like you’re on the same page when it comes to decisions. How can you create that feeling? And friends, you may need outside help. Reach out and connect with a couple at church who can mentor you. Or see a therapist. Remember, we are in this marriage for the long term, and even though we will go through changes, many of us will always be caregivers. It’s worth the time and money it may require now to keep you as healthy and committed to each other as possible in the years to come.
The best part of setting a feeling-based goal is that your acknowledgement of it and your mental work toward it are a huge part of making it successful. If I just set the goal of more date nights, there’s a clear pass or fail there. Either I’m successful at going on more dates with Lee or I’m not. But when I focus on an emotion, a feeling, there are 100 ways to be successful at meeting that goal. Even just thinking about ways to make him laugh each day helps me meet the goal of increasing our joy. That isn’t dependent on a babysitter or extra money in the budget. It doesn’t require a big chunk of time. It just takes noticing and being intentional. Even that can make a huge difference in our marriages.
Sandra Peoples is a special-needs mom and sibling. She and her family live outside of Houston, TX where she serves her church as the director of special-needs ministry at the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention as their special-needs ministry consultant. She’s the author of Unexpected Blessings: The Joys and Possibilities of Life in a Special-Needs Familyand the host of the podcast, Self Care and Soul Care for the Caregiver. You can connect with her at sandrapeoples.com.
