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iQuestions Faculty, Pat Gelsinger 
 
 
Question: 
 
How important is it to spend time with one's wife and family on 
consistent basis? 
 
Answer:  
 
The idea of spending time consistently with your spouse and kids is 
important. But sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to fit it in.  
 
One of the things that we did as a family is that I would “date” the 
kids, literally every week. We have four kids—you know, one a week, 
right?—and we’d go out on a breakfast date, and it was “breakfast 
with Dad,” and they would always be so excited. The other kids would 
say, “Oh, wow! It’s your week. I wish it was my week,” and it was 
always this fun thing with the kids. 
 
We did it until, boy, they were almost off to college before we stopped 
having the breakfast dates. Now when they come home, we go out to 
“coffee with Dad.”  
 
Dating your spouse—when you were courting them, you did. Are you 
still dating them now?  
 
Linda and I, once a week, or once every two weeks, would go do a 
date night together. How important that is, especially, if you think 
about it, the spouse—in my case, Linda with the kids, twenty, twenty-
five years, that’s her sole focus, the kids. But is your relationship with 
your spouse more important than the relationship with the kids? 
 
 
 
When the kids move from home, are you going to know your spouse, 
and still have a deep relationship with them? Or are you going to find 
that you don’t even know this stranger anymore, because the two of 
you have just invested all of your time and energy into the kids? 
 
That relationship is what the family is built upon—a husband and wife 
being dedicated to their family and to each other—and from that, the 
kids can grow and have a healthy household.  
 
How important is the time with the family and kids? It is the most 
important thing that you will do.  
 
Gelsinger -2- 
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