Love Code

Alone time is just flat challenging.

When my husband wants to get intimate his code to me is, “I want to TALK to you tonight.” I’m not sure how the word “TALK” became code, but it’s our word. (Well, it WAS until today.)

As you can imagine using such a common word can be confusing at times, so eye contact and tone inflection are always considered in the exchange.

Although we tricked the kids for a while, the older ones caught on, and now groans of disgust break out when one of us says, “I want to TALK” to the other. And this is unfortunate because sometimes I REALLY need to talk to my husband, not “TALK” to him.

I’ll say, “Honey, I need to talk to you tonight.”

Husband: “Oh good!”

Older kids: “Oooooh, gross!! Stop it.”

“No! Not that “TALK.” The other talk, we need to talk tonight about something important,” I say regardless of my true intentions.

Whether we need to talk or “TALK,” we shut and lock our bedroom door, and pray the kids don’t burn the house down. The other night we needed to talk, and I won’t tell you whether we were talking or “TALKING,” and you understand that NEED is the right word for either. We just needed to lock the door for a bit as parents do.

So the preparation looks like this…

Me: “Let’s get everyone settled so they won’t notice we’re missing. You make sure the middle ones are bathed, I’ll read to the little ones, finish the kitchen, start a load of laundry, and then we can settle them in front of a movie. They’ll never notice we’re gone!!”

As you can see the effort involved makes getting ALONE a great effort, but because we’ve made it a game, we take the challenge often…However…

It’s important to me that the kids NOT NOTICE we’re missing, because even if we’re talking with the door shut, they might think we are “TALKING” with the door shut and I am a good Baptist girl and it completely mortifies me that my kids or anyone else for that matter know when we “TALK, TALK,” so I pretend we don’t EVER. It gets a little tricky with all the pregnancies, however.

So what’s my point? I’m not sure…I just thought you would enjoy another peek into the life of a crazy, large family. I think, however, this will be the last code word I reveal, lest my honey and I have to write a whole new communication script for our sweet nothings.

Do you and your spouse have any code words? I would love to hear about it.