Moms, Don't Let Your Husbands Get In The Way of Taking Mommy Breaks!
As I was reviewing the survey responses to “what gets in the way of taking regular mommy breaks”, I noticed the word “husband” kept popping up. Not once, not twice, but multiple times. I was so surprised to hear this. Out of all of the barriers moms have to taking regular mommy breaks, our husbands should not be one of them. My husband is not a barrier to my regular mommy breaks (and there is a reason why as you keep reading) and yours shouldn’t be either.
April 2017, when I declared my goal of taking a mommy break once a week for a year, my husband was quietly supportive of the idea. He did not express opposition to the idea but he also did not jump for joy either. In that moment, I knew that I could be successful with taking a mommy break once week for a year as long as it did not get in the way of his own self care pursuits. You see, my husband and I are both social butterflies. We both LOVE to be “out in the streets” and hate missing out on events and activities that we really enjoy doing. I had to be as intentional about making sure he was focusing on his self care needs as I was on my own self care needs. During my year long journey, I learned that football Sundays and Saturday errands were great opportunities to take a mommy breaks!
Moms, I do not want your husbands to be a barrier, so here are three steps you need to take to make your husband less of an excuse to not taking regular mommy breaks:
You must… you must … you must articulate how urgent regular self care is to your emotional, physical and mental well being! Your husband has to equate regular mommy breaks to you being a better mom… better household manager… and most importantly better wife! When your tank is empty everyone is impacted… and more often than not our husbands get the short end of the stick (which is not fair). Articulate your mommy break imperative to your husband with no excuses!
This may throw him off a bit, but you genuinely need to know his self care goals because it matters. It is important that we as wives articulate that we understand that their self care is as important as ours. It’s our obligation to our marriage covenant. Dads need daddy breaks. If your husband is not taking care of himself, he can’t take care of his family, effectively lead his household, and most importantly take care of you. Ask him what he needs every week to get rejuvenated and restored. It will not only make him feel like you value that he is taking care of himself emotionally, physically, and mentally, but it will also inspire him to ask you the same (so be prepared to answer!)
The worse feeling in the world is when one spouse is always out kicking it, always having fun — “doing them” and the other one feels the burden of making sure a ball is not dropped with taking care of the house or the kids. That’s not playing fair. Don’t argue about who gets to go out. When there is something that both my husband and I want to do separately on the same day and time, our rule is to get a sitter. When the sitter fund is running on empty, we split the weekend and let one person have Friday and one person have Saturday. (Of course this should not get in the way of regular date nights 🙂 )
Moms, we have to push through so many barriers to taking regular mommy breaks: kids' activities, mounting to do list, out of order house, meals planning, prep, and cook. You don’t need your spouse to be added to the already long list of self care barriers. You need your husband to be a cheerleader for your self care and you be a cheerleader for his. Don’t let him be an excuse to not taking care of yourself the way you deserve to be taken care of! Your husband’s self care matters and yours does too!