Who’s Your Valentine?‎

Hey, moms? What have you got planned for Valentine’s Day? Do you like to bake heart-shaped cookies and have the children help you decorate them? Or will you attend a Valentine’s Day party at which the children share Valentine cards with all their friends?

But wait! Isn’t Valentine’s Day about romantic love (and things like roses, chocolates and poetry)?

As moms, our focus is so often on our children as we prepare curricula, teach school, grade papers, worry over how each child is doing, etc., that our husbands are sometimes forgotten in all the busyness or become an afterthought when determining our priorities.

Ladies, let’s use this Valentine’s Day to refocus. How about putting some thought into what we can do to please our husbands? How can I show my man that he is the most important person in my life?

Keep in mind that a strong marriage will be better for your children, for from it they gain a stronger sense of security and a better understanding of what it takes for them to have a strong marriage. Therefore, time spent on your husband is not really time taken from the children.  Everyone wins!

If you’ve never read (or you’ve forgotten) Dr. Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, I suggest you start there. The best way to show your love to your husband is to communicate it in his love language, for otherwise, he might not understand. To do this, you must first know what his love language is.

Dr. Chapman talks about the five languages as being quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, gifts and physical touch, and that there are even different dialects within a language. At first many women think that their husbands’ love language is touch, because it seems that they are so interested in the results of that. But to know the difference, you’ll need to read the book.

However, while we’re on that topic, how about putting out some extra effort in that area? Intimacy in the bedroom is important to any marriage, but it sometimes gets put on the back burner (or maybe off the stove completely) while the seemingly more urgent things get handled. After all, we’re busy raising, teaching, training our children, right?

Think about this: in most cases, your husband was around before the children. The hope is that he’ll be around after the children are grown and gone. However, if all your attention is going to the children now, he’ll probably focus on his work or hobbies or whatever makes him feel successful. When the children leave, you may find you no longer have anything in common or, worse, that he’s no longer there.

A good marriage needs to be cultivated over the years—yes, especially the years of raising children.