How Google Calendar is Helping Our Marriage

One of the areas of our marriage where The Teacher and I used to really struggle in was communicating about schedules.  For a long time, he looked to me to keep track of all our family events.  He even joked at times, calling me the calendar!  I tend to be the more organized of the two of us anyway, so I laughed about it at first.  But, as we added more children to the mix and my plate got more and more full, I was no longer amused.

We both knew there had to be a better way.  For years, I was exclusively a paper planner girl and I carried it with me in my purse all the time.  The Teacher never knew what things I had going on and I had no way of knowing what things he had on his schedule.  Trying to make plans with other people was always a challenge and we both hated having to check with the other before we could commit.

I still love a paper planner and continue to use one for certain things, but have quickly jumped on the Google calendar bandwagon.  The Teacher had been after me for a long time, but I finally agreed to give it a try once we got our smart phones last year (we are with Republic Wireless*).  Even though you can access Google calendar on a laptop, I knew that I was not going to use it unless I could access it while on the go.

So, now that we’ve been using it for almost a year now, I thought it was about time I shared some of the ways that Google calendar is helping our marriage.

1.  No longer double book ourselves

There were times when both of us had planned things, not knowing that the other had done the same.  Sure enough, the nights I wanted to get coffee with my girlfriends were the times he had wanted to go running with a friend.  Now that we have instant visibility, we make sure to add events right away so that we can avoid having to reschedule things.

2.  Don’t have to remind the other (=less nagging)

Let’s face it, us women tend to be naggers by nature (or is that just me?)!  Sometimes it’s totally for a good cause, but no one enjoys nagging.  Reminding The Teacher about an upcoming event often felt like I was nagging him, so I love that we no longer have to even go there with each other.  Another cool feature about Google calendar is that you can add in reminder notifications to help keep you from missing an event.

3.  Schedule things more independently

I still believe it’s good to communicate with one another about events and schedules, but our Google calendar has certainly allowed us to feel more free to make plans with people.  We still check in and confirm things (especially if it means that one of us needs to be home with the kids), but we can usually tell whether we are able to accept an invitation to something based on what we each have on our calendar.

4.  One less thing to argue about

One of our common arguments was about not remembering events that we had planned.  One of us (ahem!) tended to forget about plans we had made previously, which usually caused a lot of frustration.  Now that we each have access to the calendars, we can see what is coming up ourselves.  I also love that you can set up reminder notifications!

5.  On the same page (with minimal effort)

Google calendar has helped us to be more in tune with what we each have going on in our day.  The Teacher has a separate work calendar, but he uses it to add to keep track of events that are outside of his normal workday.  By sharing our Google calendars with one another, I can see what events he has and he can see what events the kids and I have going on throughout our day with really minimal effort.  When we are on the same page as a couple, we feel more unified as well.

6.  Time together is better spent

Before we started using Google calendar, much of our conversation was strictly logistics.  We would spend a lot of time going through what was going on in our day and what appointments or events we had coming up.  While we still communicate about those sorts of things, we spend much less time doing so.  Our time to communicate is so limited as it is, that now we can focus on other topics that are more meaningful.

7.  No one person is responsible for the family’s calendar

I mentioned earlier how The Teacher used to tell people that I was the family calendar.  It was funny at first, but then it became a burden to me.  I’m already responsible for keeping track of mine and the kid’s schedules, but adding on his schedule was more than I could handle.  I love that we both help keep track of things, since we can each add, edit, or remove events from our individual calendars and each other’s (we set it up to our individual calendars are shared and we can edit them too).