Super Basic Ideas That Can Help Save Marriages: Part 1

“Our Problems Really Began After We Had Our First Kid”. This is a common thing that is said in both individual and couples therapy. Kids are such a huge and joyous blessing. But they don’t come without consequence to the marriage. The consequences can be really wonderful and pull couples closer together, have them be more unified, and roll their mutual sleeves up to share in the love and labor of being a parent. The consequences however can also look like lack of sleep, disagreeing about parenting values, difficult or stressful dynamics with in laws or extended family, and lack of emotional and sexual intimacy for the couple to name a handful. And generally speaking, a first child can accentuate a couples’ strengths or areas that need improvement. For example if the couple is pretty good at communicating together, its not as challenging to have at least decent to good communication after their child is born. If they have struggled with communication, the birth of their child can bring more difficulty in this area. 

Its common that especially in the more labor intensive periods of the child’s life, their parents focus on the kids and the marriage suffers. It can be pretty easy to be so focused on the day in and day out of what the baby then child wants or needs, the parents don’t pick their heads up to look around and notice how disconnected they are from their partner. Or sometimes, one partner has been asking or loudly telling the other partner how far apart they are, and the other partner can’t or won’t hear them. 

The first super basic idea for couples in this situation is to have regular protected time together. The time together is to support re-establishing the emotional connection with one’s partner. Couples are better at tolerating stresses (including parenting) better when they know their partner is in it with them. Ideally the time together is at least on a weekly basis for a few hours. So, baby sitter, mother in law- here we come. This might be time to work out conflicts or disagreements long overdue. But also its incredibly important for couples to be able to have fun and light times together. Sometimes this takes time and multiple discussions over weeks or months to work their way back to. Other times there are serious things that need to be worked through before the couple can begin to experience the other as their partner who is on their team again. Included in this is any breach of trust. Especially for this and more serious conflict, having a couples therapist support them can be incredibly valuable.