(Photo Credit: Giampaolo Sgura/InStyle)

When Ben Affleck accepted his best picture Oscar in 2013, he thanked his wife, Jennifer Garner, for "working on our marriage," adding "there's no one I'd rather work with."

Some sniped that the actor-director could have chosen a more amorous shout out to his wife, but in the October issue of InStyle magazine, Garner makes it clear that theirs is a "mindful" marriage.

"You can't expect to be courted all the time, and I don't want to court him right now; I don't have the energy!" the busy actress and mother of three told the magazine. "But we're definitely in a very mindful place where we're making an effort to be together, do things at the same time, and be loving."

Now that the kids - Violet, 8, Seraphina, 5, and Samuel, 2 - are older, Garner, 42, and Affleck, 44, are getting more couple time together.

"When we had our first [child], we had only been together a year," said Garner, who married Affleck in 2005 when she was four months pregnant. "We were babies. It happened so fast, I hardly remember what we were like before the kids got here. Now we're just starting to go away for a night here and there."

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Garner also opened up about how the couple shares parenting duties.

"For better or worse, I tend to be the one who says, 'This is what needs to happen.' I know who wants what lunch, and I've done all the school paperwork and filled out the emergency cards. Ben doesn't know that stuff exists," she told the magazine.

"He is in charge of laughter. No matter how much I tickle them or toss them or chase them around, it's not the same. If I'm the slow, steady drumbeat, he's the jazz."

Because of Garner and her work with Halle Berry to push through an anti-paparazzi bill that protects the privacy of celebrity children, her three kids now have a "different life."

"My kids can't get over it," she said. "Not a day goes by that one of them doesn't say, 'Can you believe we're at the park with our mom?' It means I don't spend every day thinking about moving."