With kids at college, second honeymoon begins
“I was 21 when I had my first child and 23 when I had my second. My stepmom always talks about us being babies. She’ll say, ‘You were babies having babies.’ Our son is 21 now and our daughter is 18. They’re both off at college, so it’s different around the house.
“You hear of people like us who got married young, had kids young, their kids move out, and then they don’t know each other anymore. It can create an awkward environment for a marriage. Alan and I had a lot of open discussion about it leading up to this point. We were like, OK, the kids are both going to be out of the house. So what do we want to do, as this is like our second honeymoon.
“One of the things we came up with is once every two months, we take a trip together. We go somewhere for a weekend, just to reconnect away from home. We also have date nights, which we’ve actually done pretty steadily for the past 12 years or so.
“It did get a little scary leading up to our daughter moving out. You kind of start thinking, what are we going to talk about? What if we run out of things to say to each other? What’s interesting is that we’ve noticed how refreshing it is to have uninterrupted conversations. Don’t get me wrong. We are incredibly blessed with two great kids. They love being with us and we love having them around. But it’s different now.
“Alan and I have dinner together every night. We’re able to have conversations about what’s going on at work, our hopes and plans for the future, just whatever. It’s kind of like we’re dating again.
“It’s funny. We used to be those 20-year-olds who had young children. Friends our age at the time would invite us to go somewhere, and we were like, ‘No, sorry, we’ve got kids.’ But now some of those same friends who are in their 30s and 40s can’t go do things because they have kids. And we’re like, aha. Now the shoe is on the other foot.”
— Michelle Carlson
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