When you’re married, Valentine’s Day seems more like a duty than a holiday. You already have a Valentine, which is a great relief, but can also be a challenge. Can you keep love alive after you’ve already heard your beloved make every disgusting bodily noise there is?

For those who are single, I know Valentine’s Day can be difficult. If you’re raising kids alone and putting them first, you are one of the best models of love there is. Forgive me for concentrating on married couples here, but we do need some help. Marriages aren’t doing very well, which is tragic because marriage is so beneficial. In The Case for Marriage, Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite quote statistic after statistic that shows that by virtue of being married, you’re likely to live longer, make more money, be happier, healthier, have better sex, and have better relationships in all areas of your life. And those are just the benefits for us. The benefits for our kids are just as dramatic.

The best gift we can give our children, then, is to nurture our marriages. A few years ago I read Steven Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He explained that you could classify everything you do by whether it’s important and whether it’s urgent, giving you four different categories (important/not urgent, not important/urgent, etc.). I think this gives us a clue as to what strains marriages. We might know something is important, but if it’s not urgent it’s easy to ignore it. Maybe your husband is nervous about a presentation he has to make at work today, and wants to talk (important/not urgent). Meanwhile, the telephone is ringing and your ten-year-old son is yelling that he’s out of clean underwear. Both distractions are urgent, neither is really that important in the long run, but what’s going to get your attention?

If we keep ignoring things that are important but not urgent, we’re going to create crises that are important and urgent. Maybe your spouse will threaten to separate, your kid’s principal will call, or your teenager will run away. You’ll spend your life putting out fires.

I think that’s why so many couples split up after ten years. They haven’t spent time together, and so they’ve forgotten why they like each other. At the same time, they throw brick after brick of misunderstanding onto the wall that comes between them, because when the other person needed them, something more urgent—though perhaps not important—came up.

To stop this dysfunctional construction project, let’s remember that we’re not just raising kids, we’re raising families. The children, though it may feel like it, are not the most important relationship in your home. The marriage is. The quality of that relationship impacts all of the others. Unfortunately, kids are most demanding in the early years, before you’ve had a chance to build years of goodwill. But if you don’t take time for each other in those diaper-and-spit up days, you may not have a relationship once life settles down.

Dating your spouse, though, seems like so much effort. Not only do you need to find a baby-sitter; you also need to find that make-up you used to wear, hidden under the sink by the rubber duckies and Vaseline. And let’s not forget the quest to find clothes that don’t have mashed bananas on them. But dating, even on Valentine’s Day, doesn’t have to be that hard. Every now and then have a candlelit dinner after the kids go to bed. Trade baby-sitting with some friends so you can watch a movie. Or take the kids out in strollers so you can talk peacefully as you walk. Don’t get sidetracked from what’s important.

Let’s see how this principle might further play out. You’re snuggling with your spouse (important) when the kids burst in arguing over what TV show to watch (urgent). Time to let them hone their problem-solving skills. You’re reading to your kids (important) when the phone rings (urgent). That’s what answering machines are for. Some things are harder to classify, like chocolate truffles (important and urgent if I’ve had a bad day, important but not urgent if I’m relaxing in a bubble bath). Kisses, however, are always important. And urgent. Especially at Valentine’s Day. Are you ready?

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