Love and Marriage

My fellow blogger Childfree Chick recently posted something on her blog that I couldn't have said any better myself:

"What I want from marriage is companionship, TONS OF SEX (I love sex), an abundance of alone time with my husband, excessive vacationing, significant disposable income to invest in a gorgeous home or two, and a comfortable, secure life. I want him to be my first priority and I to be his."

This is exactly what I want out of my marriage, too, and it pretty much describes how my husband and I live and what we're headed towards.

One of the things I love most about being childfree is the fact that my husband and I have the ability to completely focus on our marriage. Of course we do have jobs and other responsibilities, but in the personal half of my life, my husband is priority #1, and vice versa.

We are a pretty tight couple. We socialize together, we order pizza and watch TV together, we go to ballgames and concerts together, we have cocktails together, and we take lots of fun and relaxing trips together. We can talk to each other as much as we want without being interrupted, and pretty much have as much quiet alone time as we want. We're really close and I don't see that ever changing. Obviously we have problems, but we deal with them openly and work them out because our marriage is the most important thing in our lives.

Would that be the case if we had children? I'm sure we'd still focus as much as we could on each other, but I'm scared of what "as much as we could" means. When kids come into the picture, they tend to steal the show (as they should, if you're going to be good parents).

Goodbye to snuggling with pizza in front of the TV on weeknights, watching Entourage or some equally kid-inappropriate show for hours on end. Goodbye possibly heading up to the bedroom to take a little break from that, and then coming back downstairs for more. Goodbye alone time, goodbye romantic vacations, goodbye nice apartment for two. Basically, goodbye to everything that has defined us as a couple up to now, and everything I love most about my marriage.

Could we deal, as a couple, and stay strong, if we had a kid? Sure, maybe. But why would I want to take that risk? Besides, even if we still had a good marriage, it would be vastly different from the way it is now. And I like the way it is now.

So, no kids for us.