‘I love my children, but I like to have time for myself’

Judith, blessed with four children, once told me: “I love my children to infinity, but I like to have time for myself. Once every two months I book a night in a hotel, alone. I look for a hotel that is easy to reach by public transport and I always choose a city. I make sure that I can always watch something nice during the day. Then I go out to dinner on my own, delicious. Once back at the hotel I treat myself with cheeses, whiskey, sweets, sometimes a joint. I can also shower five times, which is very extensive, because I don’t have much time for that at home. Those trips are wonderful, if only to be able to defecate in peace. That’s really my spa moment. The next day I go home fully charged.”

Just without children

Judith is my shining example. Because admittedly: I was not good at all in spending time without children during the first years of motherhood. Especially when Puk (9) and Olle (7) were still babies, I didn’t dare leave them with someone just like that. The idea alone gave me visions of nannies who would bounce my baby down the stairs. I only dared the grandfathers and grandmothers. And then only in extremely dire need, because I thought it was selfish to demand time for myself and felt guilty about it. Only when I found myself vomiting with the stomach flu and the rest of the family was no longer able to take care of themselves or each other, did I call one of the grandmothers.

“I was not good at all in spending time without children in the first few years.”

That slowly changed when the children started talking and stopped doing brash toddler things, such as crossing the street ruthlessly. A shame, because I now know very well what the benefits are: time for yourself ensures that you get out of the rut and break the routine. You reduce stress and rest from it, so that you can relax better. It gives you energy and makes better choices. Your life will become more balanced as a result. In short, very worthwhile to wave the children goodbye every now and then.

A day off

The first tentative steps I made with quality me-time were a few hours during the day. Since the children are both in primary school, I take one working day off every month. Going to Ikea for some clutter, reading a book in the garden when the weather is nice, enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend: those kinds of things are the perfect way to fill the day. I just love the fact that I don’t have to say anything for a few hours or have to answer an endless procession of questions.

“I just like that I don’t get an endless procession of questions.”

My friend Anne, mother of two daughters aged 11 and 9, has also discovered that being alone during the day: “Everything goes much faster and easier when the children are not around. Just pop into a shop, get flowers at the market, grab a terrace: it all goes so much more efficiently.” She also likes to do something that she loves but that is not appreciated by everyone at home: “I find it very chill to play bad music when I’m alone. My music, which does not bother anyone.”

Nice and unpredictable

Not only time for yourself, time for each other also returned automatically in the course of the mother years. I like to call it: on an adventure with my husband – as far as we can experience that as over forties of course, because with our stiff, tired bodies we are no longer the bohemian types we once thought we were. And that doesn’t matter at all, as long as we ourselves sometimes have the illusion that there is still a lot of (rebellious) life in us.

We recently went to a Bløf concert. The evening went completely differently than planned, and that is exactly what really cheers me up. No rest, purity and complete predictability, but excitement and adventure. At the concert we ran into friends, with whom we ended up in a pancake restaurant cum wine bar afterwards. There was a large group of pleasant people with whom we sat. We had conversations with strangers, ordered another wine and sounded like life. Those kinds of evenings, not knowing where I’m going to end up and who I’m going to meet, I can live on for a while.

“Not peace, purity and complete predictability, but excitement and adventure.”

Anne likes to talk extensively with her husband at such moments about the things she cannot talk about when the children are around. “Extensive gossiping about family members, for example.” Also important: “To spice up our sex life again. It’s nice to really have the time for that without children walking in and out all the time or being awake until late in the evening.”

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out the door

The superlative of quality time, whether alone, with your loved one or girlfriends, is of course a few days away. The first time my husband and I went to Antwerp together, we ate – dom dom dom – a meal with lots of meat and vegetables in a Burgundian restaurant. It was very nice to be able to eat a decent meal, in peace, but it hit like a bomb. The disco? Bye bye! We were in bed at 10 pm.

Fortunately, we also got better at this over time. Hubby has just returned from a weekend in Portugal with friends. He has surfed, cycled, ate well, drank well, viewed the city, all the trimmings. He has extensively discussed his work problems, made silly jokes and played drinking games.

I myself want to go to New York for a few days in December, to visit my brother who lives there. Catch up for a few days, see my nephews, go for a walk and a day in ‘City’, where I can decide all day – yes all day – what I want to do, without having to take anyone into account: I can’t wait for the so far. Wandering for hours in vintage boutiques and looking at a painting for an hour: that’s fun not only for me, but also for my family members who I don’t have to do that violence to. And one day is just enough not to feel uncomfortable.

Load

A few days for yourself, but on a regular basis: it is something that divorced couples experience more often. Especially now that the care for the children is distributed so much more fairly than in the past. When my parents got divorced, I saw my father once every two weeks at the weekend and sometimes for months – that was not very unusual at the time. Now that she has been divorced for a number of years, my colleague Hanneke, mother of two boys, also sees the advantages of children who live with their father half the time.

Hanneke: “Especially because I have time for myself. It does not matter what time I eat and whether it is with the plate on my lap or at the table. Since day one it feels like I can go back to my old life every now and then and I like that. I am charging from those two different lives. My courtship is on the same schedule as me, so we have the luxury of getting away on kidless weekends together. When the children are at their father’s, I always clean up all their toys. My house is then really mine. And when they come back, it’s ours. I do miss the kids, but they also make me very happy.”

“I do miss the children, but they also make me very happy.”

I understand that all too well. With a busy family it is sometimes difficult to get that me-time; it doesn’t happen by itself. Not even the ten minutes a day I need to recharge, because that’s the first thing that goes wrong when the to-do list gets impressively long. With all the things that have to happen one day… Just look at staying steadfastly faithful to your favorite magazine, flipping through a warm bath or spinning off a yoga nidra session undisturbed on Spotify. But even if it’s just three minutes staring out the window with a cup of tea, I do everything I can to make time for it.

Just be someone else

I now have a bucket list in my agenda for the longer moments, because I have learned through damage and shame that an ’empty moment’ can otherwise be lost in blind panic. That happened to me once before. Then I was overwhelmed by the fact that I could do all kinds of things, that I suffered from choice stress and ‘clapped’. Going to the movies on my own? Buy a new dress? Just Netflix all day long? That left me paralyzed, so I just started doing laundry again. That’s why I now have a page with a ‘shopping list’ fun things that I still want to do. That one exhibition in the museum, that new lunch place, a fabric store I haven’t been to yet.

And I notice that my children are also improving. That it is wonderful that they are terribly spoiled by grandma and grandpa. That they watched a movie with the babysitter that they are actually just too young for. That they can be someone else for a while than ‘the children of’. Moreover, the absence makes the reunion extra sweet.

“My coach said: ‘That guilt can also just go to the sauna.'”

“The nice thing when my children are not with me is that they come back again. Because strangely enough, no matter how much fun I have, I miss them terribly,” says Anne. Yes, missing those children terribly: it’s part of it, just like the aforementioned feelings of guilt. But as a mommy coach once reassured me: “Do you feel guilty? Just take it with you to the sauna. And every time you go to the sauna, with your guilt under your arm, that guilt diminishes.” Plus, I learned: time alone is great fun, but hugging your kids again when you’ve missed them or experienced guilt is perhaps the best thing of all.

This article appears in Kek Mama 15-2021.

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