11. Time
Remember earlier when I said that just because you have kids doesn’t mean you stop being a married couple.
So you have to make time for each other, even if it’s just an hour or two alone, where you just talk and reconnect I promise you it will be more than worth it in the end.
I know a couple who are always working and the reason they trying to provide a better life for their kids but they never see those kids. So who are they working for?
Some people have said who am I to advise other’s on time management when my time is split into four and I say quite easily John Harold Phillips and it’s because of my situation that I am able to do this.
My relationship with my wives is important to me so every second I spend with them is precious which is why no matter how hectic our day is we always find a little us time.
Even if it’s at the end of the day after we’ve put the kids to bed and we’re cleaning up the house that is alone time in that time we talk we share little stories, we kiss and sometimes we make love and other times we just lay in each other’s arms and be content with each other.
I mean every day and in just the littlest ways you have to remind each other that you exist as more than just parents, as more than a married couple, you need to remind each other that you chose to be together and the reasons why.
Diana isn’t easily impressed so with her it changes but the one constant is that we are alone when we do this, sometimes it’s going out for dinner, sometimes it’s simply letting the children sleepover at a friends or at one of the other wives and us just being alone together. Sometimes it’s just a look and she’ll walk up to me kiss me and tell me that she loves me and that’s it it’s that simple.
With Roxanne’s job it was kind of difficult to schedule time, but after we moved her schedule became more regular but back then the only time I could find to spend with her was in the early hours of the morning when her shift ended so one night when she came home she found me in the backyard barbequing and that became our thing day or night, sun, rain or snow we’d do that we’d just sit in the backyard eating and talking.
Lina, Lina’s dad is pretty strict and she didn’t get to enjoy some of the things we take for granted so the way we get to spend time together is always dinner and a movie, but because she spends all day with the kids when we treat her and I say we because in almost everything we do it’s a team effort. So we’ll get her up nice and early and treat her to something and then at the end of the day I pick her up for our dinner and movie night.
With Jennifer it’s different because before you get to her you have to go through the kids. So when I want to do something for her I first have to do something for the kids, which means that I have to first impress sixteen children and only after that will she allow me to spoil her and with her it’s going to an amusement park or funfair or a circus and that is what she likes.
The point I’m trying to make here is that you need to make time for each other and you need to do something every day even if it’s something small that reminds you of the reason why you fell in love with that person and that reminds them of the same thing.
It’s pretty hard to surprise John and he really doesn’t mind being the one that initiates the time alone because he says he has so much to be thankful to us for. We gave him a home, a family, companionship and most importantly our love and understanding and I agree with him he owes us a lot.
So we each have our own little things that we do to thank him for all he does and to remind him of how we feel about him.
For me it’s little notes, when we were dating and even after we got married he left me these little notes, with poems, stories and the words I Love You all over the place.
So after we got married to Roxanne, I started doing it because now it wasn’t just us (me and him) and I knew that he still felt guilty about taking a second wife even after I’d given him my blessing and reassurance. So I started leaving the notes to do just that and I’ve been doing it since then. I’ll leave him little notes everywhere, in the house, in his car, in his lunchbox and even in his clothes.
Just a little reminder to let him know that I still love him even to this day, he is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I’m so grateful that he chose me.
After reading Diana’s words I don’t know if I can add on to that.
But I’d like to go back to something that he said, when he explained about our barbeques. The way it started was that I was working late shifts and I hardly got to see him because by the time I got home he was asleep and the next day he’d be at work while I slept.
So one night I come home and I make my way to the bedroom expecting to crawl into bed with him and sleep but when I get there all I found was a note that said to meet him outside so I go there and I find him sitting on the back porch barbequing. He hands me a glass of non-alcoholic champagne and invites me to sit. So I sit down and we just chatted about everything it felt like we were a couple on their first date and it’s the same every time we do this. But the thing for me which showed me just how much he loves me was that it was raining when we did this and he had to be up in the next three hours. Instead of sleeping he spent time with me.
Which is why for me the thing I do to show him that I love him is to give him a night off.
Okay before I explain why I do this let me tell you something about John he is always sharing, sometimes we joke about how he should have become a teacher instead of Diana, so whenever one of our friends says their having a problem nature takes over and he begins to share.
He doesn’t call it teaching or preaching because he is not ordained or certified to do this and he doesn’t call it lecturing because he only shares when asked to do so.
So we had a friend who’d asked for advice and he’d told him that Time Alone was very important so his friend went out and did this.
But then not even two months later he shows up with the same problem and John asks him what happened and he tells him that they went out on a dinner date just the two of them.
Then John asks what they talked about and he says the children and it was the same thing for all their dates alone so John tells him that the next time they go out he should treat her like it was their first date and he was trying to learn something about her and not even two weeks had passed before he came back and told John that it had worked perfectly.
So this is why I give him time alone by himself because this is a man who has to be a husband to four wives, a father to sixteen children and a friend all at the same time, sometimes he just needs to be alone and yes it was by his own choosing but that is beside the point the point is that it is my gift to him to show him that I love and appreciate all that he does for me and our family.
Flowers that’s how I show him that I am still committed to him, our family and this marriage and the back story behind this is that on our first date he brought me flowers and that may not seem special but he was the only suitor I’d had who’d done this, all the other’s had just assumed that I would be grateful for their attention so John was like a breath of fresh air because he understood that I wanted to be wooed and shown that I was wanted not just because of how I look or because I was a status symbol but because I was someone worth wanting.
Movie night we send the kids to bed and sit in front of the TV and just pig out and we talk about everything except what’s going on in front of us.
Well I think I’ve covered everything I can think of with regards to the marriage issue so let’s move on.