The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about how our President and his wife Michelle are able to find time for date night, illustrated in their highly-publicized trip to New York for dinner and a show, and what that means for the rest of us.
The Times reports:
THEIRS is a seasoned marriage, 16 years and counting. They are middle-aged. Life is that modern-crazy haze: two girls in the windstorm of year-end school activities, the puppy that must be walked twice daily, the live-in mother-in-law. They both work long hours. Standard recipe for a drive-by relationship.
At the gala celebrating the crowning achievement of his career, he showed her off to cheering throngs: “How good-looking is my wife?”
And yet… In his lock-step schedule, he sets aside daily “Michelle time.”
And last weekend, he fulfilled a promise to her. They got all gussied up and flew to New York, took a limo to dinner and a Broadway show, then flew home. Date night, just the two of them. Michelle and Barack. And their security detail.
And people’s reactions?
While some commentators were grousing about the presidential date’s undisclosed cost to the taxpayers, news of the romantic evening prompted many wives to glare across the breakfast table, trying to remember the last time their husbands made a fuss over them.
Elbowed sharply in the side, husbands felt betrayed by the commander in chief. On “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart reviewed the Obamas’ glamorous foray and screeched, “How do you compete with that?” He warned Mr. Obama, “Take it down a notch, dude!”
The Times even has a sociologist weigh in on the event…
But relationship experts are applauding the first couple for giving life to the modern fantasy that longtime spouses can still be passionate about each other. Intentionally or not, the Obamas have become ambassadors for date night, a term that is a creature of these times. A generation ago, when Saturday night rolled around, parents simply went out. Now parents need to be prodded to date each other, as if they’re singles: take a break from the children, already!
“The Obamas really are products of the culture,” said Christine B. Whelan, a sociologist at the University of Iowa who studies the American family. The Obamas exemplify what sociologists call the “individualized marriage,” she added, where a thriving relationship is marked by love and mutual attraction, not just duty to family and social roles.
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