Who do you love?

Earlier this week I was intrigued to hear ads for today's Oprah show talking about a mother's controversial confession and how that related to her having a great sex life. So I tuned in to see what this confession could possibly be about. Now normally I don't watch Oprah, not because I don't like her show, I actually think she's a voice of sanity in the daytime wilderness, but because I'm usually playing with kids or taking them out somewhere at that time (aka post nap time). But I was glad that I tuned in to this show.

It turns out that the mother involved, Ayelet Waldman, is a writer whose recent article in The New York Times caused something of a fury when she declared that she loved her husband more than she loved her kids and that, while she loved her kids, she was in love with her husband. Of course out of the woodwork came those moms that can't stand a mom with anything other than complete love and devotion and a plan of ultimate sacrifice of their entire life for their children. And the battle was on.

First of all this is an article about sex and its place in mother's lives. For most mothers, let's be honest, sex has no place. Waldman writes of this:
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But the real reason for this lack of sex, or at least the most profound, is that the wife's passion has been refocused. Instead of concentrating her ardor on her husband, she concentrates it on her babies. Where once her husband was the center of her passionate universe, there is now a new sun in whose orbit she revolves. Libido, as she once knew it, is gone, and in its place is all-consuming maternal desire. There is absolute unanimity on this topic, and instant reassurance.

Except, that is, from me.

I am the only woman in Mommy and Me who seems to be, well, getting any.

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Too true. Very few moms are getting any. And they don't care. To hear the moms on Oprah tell it sex is a chore, something to be done while watching TV, another to do on a already long list. I can understand. I felt the same about a year ago. Between having two kids and dealing with Q's autism I had no libido, no desire, and no burning passion except if it had to do with my kids. And really not so much even then. When DH and I almost imploded last summer I knew something had to change. Why is Waldman getting what she needs and wants? She's in love with her husband.

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Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I'm not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.

It is his face that inspires in me paroxysms of infatuated devotion. If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

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Whoa. That is just not said in most of the two parent family households I know. And yet, while I wouldn't exactly say I love my kids more than my husband (I think it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges really.), I think I know where Waldman is coming from. It's about where your center is. What drives your family? Your love for your kids or your marriage and your love for your spouse? In my household it used to be the former, now it is the latter. And I love my kids and they get tons of my time and energy and attention but now, my husband and our relationship gets some of that time too. And if that means that DH and I are having a discussion about something and the kids want to play, they may have to amuse themselves for a few minutes while DH and I debate the meaning of life. And there were times, when DH and I first started to really talk again, that I felt badly that I was ignoring my kids. But now I see that it is so much better for all of us. DH and I get to have a healthy relationship which keeps us all together and happy. And Q and C hopefully will learn what it really takes to create a healthy relationship and take that with them into their adult life.

When we started having these conversations and spending more time together (date nights and long discussions over glasses of wine) I totally fell back into passionate love with DH. I mean I read trash novels precisely because I think that kind of love is possible and desirable. While I am not interested in true confessions or getting into descriptive details, I will say that once that love was real again, sex became much more enjoyable and indeed necessary to maintaining that connection. But like Waldman, I find myself one of the few moms out there that is regularly getting any. I am happy to be where I am but I wonder about many of my friends and how they feel about their husbands and their marriages.

So many of the other moms on Oprah seemed to think that this kind of torrid relationship wasn't possible if you have young children and that after the children are grown, then they would be free to rebuild their marriages and rediscover their love. Only I don't believe a word of that. I've been there, done that. And if DH and I hadn't decided that we would no longer put our relationship on the back burner, we would no longer be married. I still have very young children but my marriage cannot wait for them to grow up. What's more, my sense of self and identity cannot wait for them to grow up. I have to be who I am now, and though part of that is their mom, that is not all of who I am. And I don't want my daughter to think that being a mom means that you must give up everything else including a wonderful, loving, and sexual relationship with your husband.

Why am I sharing this with the world? Why do you care what my marriage is like? Mostly I am writing this to get people thinking about it. Let's debate this and spark conversation about it. There is so much talk lately about the importance of marriage, yet for some reason that talk says that the biggest threat to marriage is gay people. I think that one of the the biggest threats to marriage is making your kids and childrearing as a whole so high a priority that you forget the person that you first fell in love with. It doesn't matter whether you're married with kids now or just planning to be that way in the future. I don't agree with everything Waldman says or how she expresses it, but I do know this: if you are truly in love with your spouse or if you were ever truly in love with your spouse, don't let go of that. Don't let it lie and think it will still be there when you have more time for it. Don't transfer that love to your kids, or even your job, and expect to still be happily married for many years to come. And you should be having sex, great sex, and it should not be a chore or an obligation. And if you have a special needs child, like I do, this only makes this more important, not less. You have more grief and frustrations and joys that you need to be sharing with your partner.

I wish someone had given me a wake-up call about this a long time ago. But I am profoundly glad that I have come to realize that I do love my husband, and that our relationship is the most important relationship in my life. I don't love my kids any less and I don't think it makes me a bad mom at all. My great hope is that one day my kids will find their soul mates and be happily married for many years, just like I plan to be.