Soul Snacks 💋

3 minute read

Dear Snackers,

A lot of my content is inspired by burnout. I find myself constantly astonished by the back-breaking pace of modern motherhood. I chuckle when I break down the utter absurdity of it, but also, it’s not funny. I know how many of us feel the same way—I hear the validating echoes of my sentiments in my comment sections and DM’s—we are all basically not OK, and yet, despite being under attack by calendar notifications all day, battling both the tangible and intangible items on our mental checklists, we’re also supposed to want to bang at bedtime? Sometimes the proposition of sex feels borderline insensitive—do the men not understand we get proverbially punched in the face every day? Are they seriously proposing a sexual encounter after we just survived a street fight against an entire gang of afterschool activities, carpools, doctor’s appointments, playdate requests, upcoming birthday parties, meal planning and executing, school reminders, sign-up geniuses, seasonal clothing needs, and summer activity forms, to name a few of the things typically dumped on mothers, all whilst working and/or caring for the children? And now you want us to do you? Bastards!

Being swamped makes everything feel disenchanting. Lately, I’ve caught myself doing things with a “let’s get this over with” mentality, which is such a shitty way to function.  When my kids were younger and had less happening on a daily basis, my husband and I spent a lot more time together. Almost every Thursday night, we’d go out on a date. Life was just less busy, so when it came to finding time for our marriage, it was easier. Recently Mike and I were chatting about how we need to carve out more time for each other. It’s not like things have been bad between us, it just felt like life had become so operational and, while some things in life can get away with being operational, marriage is not one of them. You can’t set your relationship to autopilot—relationships require you to be awake at the fucking wheel.

Here’s what we did: we bailed on some other stuff and scheduled time to go out together. Not just once, but like three times in the last few weeks. More importantly, I reminded myself of a core value that I’d let slip a little —I can’t just think Mike is my priority, I have to live that. It has to be real. You have to be willing to cancel or skip other commitments in order to put each other first. It takes effort - it is not complicated, but it is hard. Mike remains my favorite person in the world to spend time with, but if I don’t actually spend time with him or make a conscious effort to be present when we do get time together, I don’t get to actually experience the joy of his company. When I experience the joy of his company, it makes me think about intimacy. When it comes to intimacy, for me, it starts with quality time.

Life is not a joyride. We are busy. We are burned out. We are exhausted. We are dealing with hormonal shifts that effect our libidos (and every other fucking thing in our bodies). The hurdles are real, and yet, the hurdles only feel higher when I am not connected to my number one person. The tricky side of connecting in a heterosexual marriage is that men are quite different. It seems, for them, physical intimacy is the number one way to feel connected, but if we were both the same, then the sky wouldn’t be blue, and the earth wouldn’t orbit the sun, and I don’t fucking know what else, but I know sex is really important to men and, just like I expect my needs to be important to Mike, his needs are important to me, too. I also tend to find that, while I don’t always feel a raging urge to hump something at the end of a long day, being skin to skin is necessary for me, too, otherwise I might as well have taken a sister wife. That skin-to-skin experience that can only be shared with him is special, and it’s important to me to maintain it. 

The mayhem of raising kids is going to add to burnout, and burnout is going to seep into our relationships, that is sort of standard…but I don’t want standard…I want great, and I want real. In fact, the idea of “standard”, when it comes to marriage, is super depressing to me. While allowing the precedence of our relationships to slip amidst the chaos of life sometimes happens unintentionally, greatness only comes from intentionality and effort. Not everything in my life has to be great and intentional, not even close, but my relationships, and especially my marriage, deserve all my intention. In the meantime, where the fuck are we at with female Viagra?

-Caitlin

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