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I have been improving down 15lbs descent gains in muscle and been working on my frame and being the leader..... The question i have is how do you guys handle small children ages 4-12... its hard to have a date night every week , we don't have the ability to meet during the day ..... We had an event and went away this weekend and had great sex... I would like that to increase but honestly at this time i don't see the logistics of that happening... I would like it more during the week... Is it just a fact that during these years its just harder to make time or am i missing an opportunity that others have figured out?


[–]thewholefnshow5476 points7 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Bedroom on one side of the house. Game/Nintendo room on the other side of the house. Get a nice soundbar or stereo for your room too. Install locks on your door. Kids occupied, tunes on, doors locked.

If you build it, they will come.

[–]anythingincRed Beret6 points7 points  (3 children) | Copy Link

children ages 4-12

Bedtime is 8PM, aim for 9 in the summer. That leaves the adult several hours to be adults, pretty important for both of you as an individual and a couple. If your kids stay up late you are hurting everyone involved.

  • You've handled your shit today, run some game this evening,
  • Put the kids to bed
  • Then either give the wife some decompress time, or go build some rapport over a glass of wine, or start to get frisky, or whatever, depends on the circumstance and your read of the evening.
  • 30 minutes+ after bedtime you're in the clear, lock the door.
  • For young kids, get a baby monitor, not so you can constantly observe and ruin immersion, but so you don't have to worry about them until you are alerted by the monitor.

Be quite! What was that?! Kid awake?

Curveball that mess by getting a monitor.

On a meta and more important note:

Do not loose your identities as individuals and a couple and an intimate husband/wife. Once the kids become the center of your relationship and your identities are sublimated to "mom" and "dad" then it is difficult to "feel sexy."

[–]thewholefnshow5473 points4 points  (2 children) | Copy Link

Bedtime 8pm.

I have always thought of the children's bedtime as a beta tell. If your wife puts the kids to bed early that a pretty solid indication that she wants to spend alone time with you. She keeps them up late, bad news for daddy.

Couple that with the facts that most studies indicate that young children need 12-13 hour of sleep per night and you can really see where you stand.

[–]anythingincRed Beret4 points5 points  (1 child) | Copy Link

Great point, and we often see here the extreme practice of the wife literally going to bed with the kids to completely cut off the husband.

[–]RuleZeroDADRed Beret1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

The family bed is verboten.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Hey man, I could link you to 10 posts to my site, but I'll let you search and just have a man to man talk.

Where I'm coming from

  • Married 8 years
  • 7 yr old son
  • 4 yr old daughter
  • awesome sex life
  • enjoying every moment with wife & kids
  • still pursuing my own goals.

The way to achieve this is through intentional, dedicated, strategic balance.

There is no room for I deserve more or If only I didn't have kids as that is just wasting time.

So what to do?

Work around it all.

You've got to take the kids out, have fun, coach their teams, educate them, and just be a present father.

While you're doing this and you see your wife making their meals, taking care of them, tending them when hurt, etc.

you have to keep in mind that this present woman who tends to these children, she is not wife or Mother, she is woman and you must treat her accordingly.

My wife and I can't always get a babysitter, so we'll make our own date nights, we'll have sex in different locations in the house when the kids are asleep, we'll sneak into the room for a 2 minute hardcore make out session then come out and sit with them on the couch and enjoy a family movie, all the while smiling at each other.

You have to make due with the resources you have. You have to view your family as fuel and not an anchor.

This post touches on the topic: The Burden of Family

[–]ford_contourRed Beret4 points5 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Lots of great advice in this thread already. I'll add my cardinal rule:

Four minutes is a lifetime.

Unless I have made a commitment to be somewhere, I can make four minutes for one of my kids, when they seek my attention.

I can be four minutes late to work with no consequences - I generally don't, but I could.

Four minutes to a 1 year old is literally forever, to their tiny brains. I hold my son "literally forever" every other night as part of his bedtime routine.

Four minutes may as well be forever to an older child when holding a hug.

Other than before work; I am never the first one to break contact when hugging my own kids. Children are rank amateurs at "pay attention to me" chicken. They get bored of a hug in like three minutes, tops.

Knowing they can have an "infinitely" long hug from their Dad (when he's not committed to be somewhere else) makes a huge difference in their confidence and even increases their independence.

Edit: Shameless plug for /r/redpillfatherhood

[–]red-sfpplusHard Core Red3 points4 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Kids are 8 and 7. During school in their rooms by 7:00pm on school nights with lights out by 8:00. Gives them an hour of private time and time to read. No electronics at all during the week. Between school, sports and Kumon there is not time anyway.

That gives the wife and I at least two hours to play but I have a flex job that is travel and work from home and I prefer morning sex after the gym. It works

Where we live there are multiple "kids night outs" at the local gym, school, etc on Friday and Saturday night. Cost is usually $20 per kid from 6-10 or 6-11 where we can drop them off and go out.

Really being a nuclear family means you also do a lot of dates with your kids. Why not? The only time we use the kids night out is if we want to go to a fancy place, wife wants to wear a short skirt or we want to go and drink. Otherwise we focus on activity dates which with kids is super easy and fun. Keeps us active.

On the weekend we have sports most of the day anyway. We go out at least three out of four weekends a month. Typically Saturday nights.

Finally stop making sex so complicated. Once I stopped trying to get my wife to O all the time we bang all the time for 10 minutes and that is it. Lock the door to the bedroom and fuck her in the bathroom. Send the kids outside to play. Use your imagination. It doesn't always have to be one or two hours of LOVE making. That is reserved for a certain time of the month.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

My kids are in the younger end of that age range so I don't know if it ends. Immersion is more mental--it's the process of getting into the instantaneous flow of sex.

One way is by removing things that prevent you or your wife from entering the flow. Or adding things that encourage it. Mostly we don't have a lot of time for dates and I've worked more on banishing "distracting thoughts". Sometimes it's so simple that you feel stupid after the fact. Like my wife will often freeze and ask "did you hear that"? It's because she's always concerned that the kids will walk in on us. So I do things to put those thoughts to rest so she can relax like make sure she sees me lock or barricade doors.

She also has trouble putting her tasks and projects out of her head. Things she has to remember to do tomorrow that she's worried she will forget and such. There are a few ways to deal with that like having a notepad handy to jot things down or setting up a family calendar and strategically debriefing in preparation.

Some other options are to add sensory inputs that crowd out distractions and clear the mind (music, porn, books, dirty talk). That's also sort of where I think the date nights and mini-vacations factor in.

Practicing mindfulness meditation helps you learn to be aware of the distracting thoughts and declutter your mind faster. Keeping a solid information sorting routine in place helps too. Putting things out of your head and into a reliable data storage is also a big part of the Getting Things Done method.

[–]freshona1 point2 points  (1 child) | Copy Link

Smaller kids go to bed, older (9+) already know about sex and ergo know better than to disturb closed doors.

And if she's sleepy, you give her amphetamines. (This is the joke.)

[–]RuleZeroDADRed Beret1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

The amphetamines also help with her big ass. (Also a joke and true).

[–]Big_Daddy_PDX1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Lots of good insight in here, but here are my thoughts.
Yes, it is a challenge to manage with scheduling and still keeping the experience fresh. I wonder if aiming for doing something every night is too optimistic? Focus on quality interactions, not quantity.

With the right training & leadership, there isn't any reason your 12yr old shouldn't be able to be the babysitter long enough for you and your wife to leave for a few hours and come back when everyone is in bed.

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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