5 Ways to Transition from Mom to Wife at Night

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How do you transition from mom to wife and enjoy good time with your husband at night? Sheila Gregoire has some great suggestions to share here on LAM today while I share my tips to give you more energy by nightfall over at her site, To Love Honor and Vacuum. 

5 Ways to Transition from Mom to Wife at Night

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The following post is by Sheila Gregoire.

You’ve spent all day picking Legos up off of the floor and sweeping up cracker crumbs. You’ve been kicked and pulled and drooled on.

You adore your little ones, but you are exhausted.

And now it’s evening. You finally get to stop being primarily a mom, even if just for a few minutes.

But making that transition from mom to wife isn’t that easy. Too often we don’t even try. When the kids go to bed we clean up the house, check Pinterest for more ideas, menu plan, and then fall into bed, exhausted. In the process we all too easily lose our own identity, leaving our husbands on the sidelines.

Once you’re a mom, though, your marriage matters more, not less, because now little people are counting on you to keep it rock solid. And if you put your husband on the back burner, you lose out on a sounding board for your own problems, and you lose out on one of the best stress relievers–sex!

5 Ways to Transition from Mom to Wife at Night

So let’s take a look at how to make that transition from “mom” to “wife” once the day has wound down.

First, a tip: You don’t have to do all five of these ideas–though you can if you’d like to! Think of the ONE that would help you the most and DO IT! That’s more likely to have lasting effects than trying to make a whole ton of changes at once.

Here we go, ladies. Here’s how to revel in being wives again!

1. Get the Kids to Bed at a Decent Time

You need a few hours at night, without the kids, just to be YOU again. Creating a bedtime routine for kids that works is one of the best ways you can invest in your marriage.

A good bedtime routine often takes 45 minutes to an hour: you give the kids a snack, and then a bath. You put on pajamas, snuggle with them and read some books. You sing a song, kiss them goodnight, and leave them to sleep.

You’ve given them tons of love. It’s okay now to let them be. If they get out of bed, put them back. If they ask for water or anything else to delay, be quick about it but don’t give in and go lie down with them. Let them learn to sleep!

Recruit help from your hubby, too, to handle bedtime with some–or all–of the kids. Just make sure that you get the kids to bed at least two hours before you’re wanting to go to sleep, so that you have some time at night. When our girls grew older, we still insisted that they be in their bedrooms by 9:30, just so that my husband and I could have the evenings to ourselves.

If bedtime routines aren’t working for you, ask some older moms what they did. Getting kids to sleep well is one of the hardest parts of being a mom, but don’t give up. Get some advice and keep trying. It matters.

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2. Take Half an Hour of “Me” Time

Once the kids are in bed, take half an hour or so just to yourself, if you need it (and you likely do!). Read a novel. Have a bath. Even read the novel in the bath! Take some down time where you can relax with no one pressuring you to do anything.

One warning, though: try to set a time limit, or half an hour can easily become three hours, and suddenly you have no time for your husband. Think of this as your “transition” time for the evening, not your entire evening. If you need more time to yourself, then talk to your hubby about how to carve out larger chunks of time during the day or on weekends to rejuvenate.

3. Put Aside Housework and Concentrate on Your Man

As enticing as it may be, evenings are not the time to catch up on housework. It’s more important that you relax with your hubby and feel rejuvenated than that all the laundry gets folded. You’ll have more energy for that laundry tomorrow if you spend time with your husband tonight.

Watch a show on Netflix together. Play a 2 person board game. Even have dinner together! When our kids were smaller, Keith and I would sometimes have a snack with them at dinnertime, but we’d wait until they were in bed to enjoy supper together ourselves, with candlelight. Then we’d have a chance to catch up, sharing our “high” and “low” moments of the day. We’d know what was going on in each other’s hearts, and it helped bring us together.

4. Signal to Your Body, “I’m a Woman and I Love It!”

If you want to get romantic tonight with your hubby–and I hope you do–here’s something to remember about a woman’s libido: it’s almost entirely in her head. If your head’s not in the game, your body likely won’t follow. Your husband could do something to you one night that has you in raptures, and three nights later, he’s doing the exact same thing, move for move, and you’re lying there wondering, “will he just get it over with because I want to get to sleep!” It’s not about what he’s doing; it’s about what you’re thinking.

So if you’re going to get frisky, you need to do something about it!

Preparing for sex involves reminding yourself that you’re more than just a mom. Stimulate your senses and pamper yourself. Stash away some dark chocolate that you get out only when the kids are in bed. Put some cedarwood, sandalwood, or ylang ylang essential oils in a diffuser. Choose pajamas that are silky, not baggy, ratty flannel ones that say “no trespassing”. Light some candles and put on some soft music. Take some moisturizer and rub it into your skin. Even ask your husband for a massage! Let yourself feel feminine, and you’re more likely to enjoy him being masculine.

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5. Head to Bed Before You’re Exhausted

Finally, make it a habit to head to bed together before your eyes are actually closing. If you wait until you’re exhausted, then even if you have the most romantic of intentions, when your head hits the pillow it’s likely lights out. But if you head to bed while you still have some energy, you can snuggle together, talk a little bit, and then let the evening go where it takes you.

Here’s the bonus: when you make love, you tend to sleep better! You get to sleep faster, and you sleep more deeply.

Think of those few precious hours you have between the kids falling asleep and you falling asleep as your protected marriage time. You were a wife before you were a mom, and you’ll be a wife after the kids leave the house, too.

Enjoy being a wife, even when the kids are your main focus. Make that transition from mom to wife at night. It will give you more energy for them, but it will also ensure you don’t lose yourself in the process.

Sheila WC 100Sheila Wray Gregoire is the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and 31 Days to Great Sex. She blogs everyday at To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Download her free ebook, 36 Ways to Bring Sexy Back to Your Marriage, right here!

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8 Comments

  1. Love this article and in fact I wandered over to her site and now her books are sitting in my Amazon cart waiting for payday.
    I actually did much better at this when my kiddos were littles. Early bedtime equals more Daddy and Mama time. But teenagers stay up forever…LOL! And between working, homeschooling and driving the Mama Taxi, there is precious little time left in the day at all. But this was a great reminder about what’s important and how to carve out a little time for your man, especially for one that answers to Hercules. Thanks for tackling the taboo subjects and reminding us to make our marriage a priority.
    Blessings,
    Kristy

    1. Teens do stay up forever. We’re working on that too. On the flip side, with an older teen you can leave for an overnighter a little more easily. 😉

  2. You are so right about the going to bed before you get to tired. Probably an overshare, but my husband getting a vasectomy has been a huge libido lifter for me lol and atleast 3/7 nights I have good intentions but end up up to late and I’m asleep before he gets out of the shower

  3. This was such a wonderful article! As a mom of Young kiddos, I struggle with bedtime and then wasting the time after. This is much more constructive! I did balk at “it’s almost entirely in your head,” though. As a Catholic who has never been on contraception, practices fertility awareness (even before marriage), and knows a lot more about my body than most doctors I’ve seen, there are A LOT of things that go into whether or not you feel sexy… I’ve been charting and journaling symptoms, fertility, bloodworm results, general feelings and irritations for over 7 years, and kept up to date on fertility issues, the biology of sex, and over all hormonal and circadian health, and No, it’s not almost entirely in your head when you don’t feel sexy. It could be a variety of things. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to put your will to work and *decide* to be a gift to your spouse. I agree that sometimes you do just need to “change your mind.” As a culture that is now three generations steeped in readily available chemical contraception, we have no concept of just how incredibly SMART God made our bodies.

  4. Great tips! Our kids are older now (10 & 11) and stay up later but I already do some of these things. I feel like it was easier when they were younger though! It is hard to stay connected with hubby with so much to do but being intentional about spending alone time with him is so important, thanks for the reminder! 🙂