Every time I do a poll or a question box on instagram I get flooded with questions about marriage and homeschooling.
Anecdotally you will hear many women share how their marriage suffered during their years of homeschooling. After more than six years of homeschooling, I will be the first to day that it is hard work to balance all of the things homeschooling requires of you as a woman.
It is hard to homeschool and be a good friend. It is hard to homeschool and keep a clean house. And, it is hard to homeschool and keep a strong marriage. But even though it might be hard, it isn't impossible!
The State of Your Marriage Matters
Homeschooling is like that needy mouse in the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie". You give a little bit of yourself to it, and it asks for more.
Homeschooling can become an all consuming vortex as it asks for more of our mental focus, our energy, our free time, our identify, our hobbies and more.
That's not always a bad thing, if you're able to keep homeschooling in it's balanced, rightful place and prioritize the things that really matter.
The state of our marriage impacts our whole home.
And marriage matters. It's easy to forget or neglect your spouse and your marriage in the chaos of the homeschool lifestyle.
But if you listen to the stories of homeschool graduates who have had a bad experience being homeschooled, more times than not, the marriage in the home was not healthy. The state of our marriage impacts our whole home!
Creating a "Shining Barrier"
One of my favorite books, A Severe Mercy, talks about creating a "shining barrier" or a wall of protection from threats to your relationship.
The main couple in the memior believes that "creeping seperateness" is the biggest threat to their connection, and that seperate interest leads to increased self-focus and division. "Self is the ultimate danger to love..."
Homeschooling is one of the biggest things that can seperate a couple. The wife becomes completely foucsed on child-rearing, curriculum and crockpots.
If the husband works away from home it can truly feel like you're living on two different planets--one where mom and kids are engrossed in fractions and maps and venturing into other worlds through shared stories and where dad isn't a part of any of it.
A Severe Mercy says that "creeping seperateness and sharing [are] opposite sides of one coin" and that the way to be couple-centered, rather than self centered is through the act of sharing in everything.
They make a pact or committment to be constantly growing together, rather than apart. So if one person is interested in something, the other becomes interested too.
You read similar books, attend the same lectures, pursue hobbies together, etc., and that in doing so, you raise a shining barrier, or add so many threads of a shared life into your bundle that the strands become a bond of oneness, too strong to ever separate.
This has been a healthy practice in our marriage and has led us to learn so many new things. I now love professional football, and my husband now knows way more about Charlotte Mason that he probably could have imagined.
Becoming True Partners
One of the things that has sustained our marriage throughout homeschooling has been becoming true partners.
We work together to maintain our home. We are co-parenting our children. We share equally in the work and don't see one person's job as more important than the other job.
We're building a life together. It's not that one of us is creating the family culture and atmosphere that the other gets to orbit in and out of.
"We're building a life together. It's not that one of us is creating the family culture and atmosphere that the other gets to orbit in and out of."
Fair Play cards were really helpful to us in navigating how we wanted to share in our family life together. We're not doing things 50/50 but we are on the same page for how we want to acomplish tasks and how we want to show up for our children. (FYI, I don't love the Fair Play book, but the concept was helpful for us!)
This also means that the kids don't view me just as their teacher and dad just as fun. My husband doesn't blame me when something isn't done around the house or when our kids show a gap in their understanding. We're a team.
Maintaining a Strong Connection: SPICE
In our natural family planning class they talked about "SPICE", an acronymn for connection within marriage.
It is not always easy to get away for a date night, to find times to do a weekend away or attend a marriage retreat, though that is the recommendation I see over and over.
But you can always be investing in your marriage in the little day-to-day ways. This SPICE acronymn has been helpful for identifying areas that need more nurturing and have helped us strengthen our marriage in a wholistic way.
S- Spiritual: Pray together. Attend church together and dialogue about the service. Share about what you're thinking through, reading and learning. The best way we like to do this when we have low capacity is to go on a walk or go on a drive. A walk always allowed our kids to be preoccupied (or in a stroller when they were little), especially when we stopped at a park. A long drive with an audiobook gives us the same opportunity to talk without as many interruptions.
P- Physical: There are lots of ways to nurture physical connection within a marriage, but one of the key elements is creating healthy habits so you're not always "too tired." Both spouses can work to help with the heavy lifting of home and children demands to create that space for connection where you're not both dead tired. Simple acts of affection, like hand holding, cuddling and greeting one another when you've been apart can go a long way.
(A little something from Mentionables might be fun too!)
I- Intellectual: Share what you're learning (and homeschool moms--we get to learn a lot!), debate current events or share your dreams and hopes for the future. Read together. My favorite thing is to ask my husand obscure, ethical would-you-rather questions. We also like to discuss the design of our dream home or what we might be doing in 5 or 10 years. Keep dreaming together and learning about each other.
C- Creative: Find ways to nurish your family life apart from homeschooling. Talk about what you want your family culture to look like and how you can implement those ideas. Pursue new interests together or work on a project around the house. Add elements of uniqueness and surprise into your days, like special notes tucked in hidden places, picking up a small gift for them when you're running errands, making a favorite meal together or traveling together.
E- Emotional: Be interested in each other. Make time for conversations. Seek restoration even when there is not resolution to a conflict. One of our favorite things to do is to sit down with tea and have a weekly meeting, where we check in on one another, go through our upcoming week and really take time to talk.
Homeschooling When Marriage is Extra Challenging
I can't speak to your own marraige, but it is my hope and prayer that if your marriage is going through an extra challenging time that you would seek out help.
Marriage is complicated and wonderful and heartbreaking and healing and difficult and lifegiving. And sometimes it is all of these things at once. I hope this gets your ideas going and you can find something to implement into your own home and marriage!