As proud as you are of your beautiful family, you can't help but reminisce about married life before kids.
Back then, candlelit meals and romantic getaways were the rule rather than the exception. Your idea of a perfect date was snuggling on the couch in your quiet, empty house while watching an old movie and munching on popcorn.
There were no colicky babies to comfort, no rowdy children to discipline, no sibling disputes to settle, no teenage curfews to enforce. While your friends were schlepping their kids to soccer games and dance lessons, you and your spouse had the luxury of time, and you gladly spent it together.
Incredible as it may seem, moms and dads can get out of their parenting rut and recapture the romance of coupledom. Local marriage counselor Jill Peyton says it isn't necessarily easy, but if both partners are motivated, they can rediscover the passion that brought them together in the first place.
"Valentine's Day is the optimal time for couples to think about rejuvenating their marriages," said Peyton, who has five children, nine grandchildren and a husband of 46 years. "It's a time to reflect on the good things as well as the dissatisfactions and discontentment that many couples are experiencing."
Peyton considers herself a love therapist. As the creator of a program called "Love Therapy for Married Couples," she coaches couples on how to revive their relationships, even when the demands of child-rearing and bread-winning seem to get in the way.
Take kissing, for example. Peyton calls it a lost art, but she is convinced that daily smooching can help couples reconnect.
"You should kiss every day," she said. "I'm talking about nonsexual kissing -- kissing just to be together and connect. Before we get married, we love to kiss and when we get married, we just kind of put it aside."
Couples, she said, need to make a concerted effort to have alone time, whether it's to talk over a cup of coffee or schedule a regular night for a date.
"You have to have a date night," Peyton said. "It could be once a week or once every other week. Don't just talk about it, you actually have to do it."
A date can be dinner and a movie, a picnic in the park or an overnight stay at a local hotel. It can even be a romantic meal at home, with arrangements made for the kids to be elsewhere.
"Couples end up with distance between them because the kids are such a distraction," Peyton said. "It's a good distraction, but it can consume more and more of your time if you let it."
Peyton and her husband, Tom, know that distraction from firsthand experience. With five children, including one with a developmental disorder similar to autism, they had their share of marital misery.
"I couldn't figure out how to make my marriage work right," she said. "We were growing further and further apart. And my husband refused to go to counseling."
It was at that point that Peyton decided to return to college to study counselor education. She was able to take home to her husband what she learned in school and later in her profession, and working as a team, they saved their marriage.
"One thing I learned that helped turn my marriage around was how to express my own feelings," she said. "A lot of people don't know how to do that, and it's a very necessary component in any relationship."
As part of her practice, she helps couples get their marriage back on track by teaching what she calls the "Six C's of Unconditional Love" -- constructing separate identities, communicating respectfully, controlling feelings and behaviors, learning conflict resolution skills, attaining communal spirituality and cultivating intimacy.
Master the first five steps, and intimacy -- including sexual intimacy -- will grow naturally, she said. "The intimacy will come and very definitely leads to a deeper sexual intimacy, which is a very important part of intimacy," Peyton said. "But sexual intimacy need not include sexual intercourse. It can be just touching and petting and kissing."
Peyton runs a series of six-week workshops whose members run the gamut from couples who are relatively new to marriage to those who have been together for years. Though not necessarily on the verge of divorce, all have one thing in common -- they want to recapture the love and passion they once had.
"In one group we had a young couple who had been married for less than a year and we had a couple on their third marriage but who were determined to make it work. They range in occupation from lawyers to small business owners to blue collar workers. Not everyone comes because their marriage is threatened; they just want to improve their marriage in some way."
Each session is devoted to a particular step, with couples assigned homework from Peyton's "Love Therapy for Married Couples" workbook.
In the first week, for example, couples work on their individual strengths, the idea being that if they love and respect themselves, they can more easily love and respect their partner. The second week is dedicated to communication, which entails learning how to listen and speak to each other in a way that won't lead to arguing.
"When couples get stuck, they tend to keep arguing about the same things over and over," she said. "When you're doing 'couples dialogue' you are forced to listen because of the way the dialogue is structured."
"As couples learn to take care of their own needs, they also learn to ask for what they need from each other, thus building trust and commitment," she said.
After six weeks, groups take a two-month break, then re-assemble to discuss the state of their marriages. Most couples report a growing closeness.
"Their communication skills improve," she said. "They say their intimacy grows, and not just sexual intimacy. They talk about how much closer they are because they can share information, knowing the other person is listening."
Couples also report more kissing, more dating and more going to bed at the same time.
"All these things will help turn a shaky marriage around," Peyton said. "But it takes work. No change happens unless you want it to happen."
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