I’ll get straight to the point: So-called “date nights” are a farce, façade, fiasco, fraud and fake—that is, a thoroughly inadequate substitute for an authentic marriage.
First, spending three to five hours a week in the roles of husband and wife is NOWHERE NEAR SUFFICIENT to maintain a vibrant marriage. Five hours over approximately 112 hours of waking time per week is 4.46 percent. And let’s get real…the people in question usually leave their phones ON during these games of “Let’s Pretend,” and their children KNOW their phones are on, and so they call to report emergencies like, “Mommy! Danny isn’t playing fair!”
I often ask people who are married with children to estimate the percentage of overall waking time they spend in the roles of husband or wife (as opposed to the roles of mommy and daddy). The average answer is ten percent, which simply means that PARENTING RULES THE TYPICAL AMERICAN FAMILY. That further means that the typical American child rarely sees what a functional marriage looks like. For one thing, being truly married is not something a husband and wife do ten percent of the time. It’s eighty percent!
Parenting is a part-time job. When it’s full-time, it becomes EXHAUSTING, which is the word used by many parents when describing their parenting experience.
