How To Not Ruin Your Marriage After Kids, According To A Man
by The Candidly Team
Maintaining any sort of successful, happy, deeply connected long-term romantic relationship is hard enough.
And then you throw in KIDS?? And getting zero sleep. And feeling like you’re shouldering more of the parental load. And a dwindling sex life. And about 1538 more problems, resentments, and fights. Really it’s a miracle if any relationship doesn’t fully implode after having kids.
Few of us are truly prepared for the changing dynamics of our relationship once we have kids. Sure, there are baby books and lamaze classes, but do any of them address how much we’re going to HATE our spouse after seeing them sleep soundlessly through our baby’s shrieks even though it’s their turn to change the diaper?
So when we found out that marriage and relationship expert Aaron Steinberg (yes, a man! Pause for reaction) created an actual COURSE to help couples “babyproof their relationship,” obviously we had to pepper him with questions about how to not hate each other after having a baby.
His answers are illuminating.
1. What, in your experience, is the single biggest source of dissatisfaction in a relationship after having kids? Is it an unequal parental load? The death of a couple's sex life? Just plain sleep deprivation?
It’s clear that the unequal parent load, and the corresponding scorekeeping that happens, is the biggest, meaning most common, issue that arises, but I think of that as a symptom instead of a source.
I think the biggest source is a lack of relational preparation and an inability to make collaborative adjustments as we go. In most, if not all, cases, becoming a parent completely changes our lives and relationships in very challenging ways that parents who come before us don’t relay very sincerely (either being fake-positive or hyper-negative about it in highly personal ways).
But the reality is that it is super hard, and we’re in a sort of survival mode. Challenges with exhaustion, dividing and conquering and the corresponding emotional distance, change in identity and roles, scarcity of money, and the like, fracture our connection and sense of teamwork in ways that we often don’t notice. As a result of this, we can’t agree about how to share work and roles in the family system and our intimate connection starts to diminish. We don’t have the right tools to adjust and reconnect, and so we grow frustrated and sometimes quite hopeless and then it’s all just angry digs and avoidance.
But to be clear, I don’t blame anyone for this; it’s just one of those areas that we haven’t paid much attention to as a society and normalized the bummer results that tend to come after. We don’t realize that when we have kids we’re actually starting almost an entirely new relationship that is going to require a lot of attention and constant connecting and readjusting at a time when that borders on impossible.
2. Why is there so little parenting content directed towards men? Is it still because of antiquated views about gender roles? Or are men just not interested in this content? If so, why not?
I would guess it’s some combination of gender role/patriarchy/not-giving-proper respect-and-care-to-women-and-mother issues carrying over into present time and the continued challenges with destigmatizing mental health and personal growth education. We’re at a weird gray area time in society where we’ve moved past a lot of antiquated gender roles but haven’t landed with new, better norms. We aren’t sure what being a modern parent means, and how to meet the demands of modern life and create a fulfilling and healthy family system.
When my wife was pregnant with our first son, I remember someone gave me this book for new dads that was structured like a camping manual, and it had this section like “Your wife may scream she hates you in labor. Don’t take it personally.” I thought the whole thing was ludicrous and offensive. Men are babied in a lot of ways when it comes to parenting. When I got a vasectomy, I had to watch multiple videos about risks and I felt some archetype of male fragility was being pandered to.
However, that being said, I would like to think that our generation currently having kids is trying to do things differently and men/dads are much more interested and more content is starting to exist. As an example, I follow a therapist/influencer named Kier Gaines and he has really beautiful and vulnerable content about being a dad and working on yourself. The hopeful part of me watches my male friends be extremely involved, wear their babies, stay nights solo and support their partners in having their individual needs met, and have very even shares with their partners of work and parenting/house responsibilities, and I think that we’re figuring it out and moving toward something good.
On the other hand, one time my wife was at a work event and I flew home with our three year old and our one year old and was given a free sub at Jersey Mike’s because I was a “hero.” I highly doubt this would have happened if I were a woman, so I know we have a long way to go.
3. Even for couples who make an effort to share the parenting load equally, a lot of women in heterosexual partnerships feel like they still have to "manage" their husbands and tell them exactly what to feed the kids and when to pick them up from daycare/school. Is it ever possible for parents to not only share the parenting tasks equally, but to equally manage all aspects of the household and kids too?
The short answer is yes–I think it’s possible. As one data point, my wife and I do this and agree we do it well.
In relationship work, men certainly tend to be the less willing, less emotionally mature cohort, but I think it’s a failure to look at this issue from a narrow lens. It always makes me sad when I ask what couples want to get out of participating in the live version of BYR and some men respond “I don’t know I’m just doing this because my wife signed me up.” While I get the fear or resistance, this isn’t the world I want to live in. I really, really want to get the message across that men need to step up and do better as parents and partners.
That being said, I think there is a way to look at this more holistically that is important. As one example, my wife has said that some of her girlfriends don’t trust their partner to parent their child, and that at least some of it is not based in reality. Because of the desire to ensure the kid’s safety without a shred of possibility for harm, some women create this belief that they are the only ones who can do it right from the beginning and never give their partners a chance to succeed. They don’t have space for their partner’s different parenting styles that may in fact be complementary and actually help the child to develop more responsiveness and resilience. As time goes on, this dynamic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and it contributes to burning them out.
Overall, we need to continue the societal conversation that parenting is not the responsibility of just the biological mom. We need to support men in learning how to develop secure relationships with their kids and overcoming the fear that it won’t be good or right or that it’s feminine, and even admitting that oftentimes, it’s just plain fear and insecurity that’s getting in our way. We need to stop telling women they’re bad moms if they need a break from their kids, and that they are causing harm if they aren’t perfectly attuned 24/7. It absolutely should be the norm that both parents have a safe and connected relationship with the kid(s) from the beginning such that either parent can do any role at any time to support the child and the family. And there needs to be willingness from both partners to work as a team to readjust and check in and connect and understand the other partner’s world.
4. How can having kids bring up other marital issues that were never settled?
Having kids puts your relationship in a pressure cooker, so not only will new dynamics arise but old ones will be exacerbated. This may be obvious, but under stress, we revert to our most unsophisticated communication skills and habits, and often these are very childish and unskillful. With kids there is a lot of stress, so we’ll bring our worst selves to the table a lot to meet our partner.
In a basic sense, communication will likely get worse. We’ll lean more on character attacks than specific, actionable feedback. Sexual issues will get worse because of exhaustion, changes in body, identity, birth injuries (another thing that really isn’t talked about enough).
Our lack of getting our needs met gets way worse in parenthood, and much harder to manage, because we have no time to connect and maintain the bond. This is why most relationships start to end in early parenthood. These relationship dynamics are somewhat manageable with the larger margin for error that exists pre-children, but when the kids come the frustration just gets reinforced constantly. Eventually, we end up feeling large resentment for not what our partner does–which can be addressed–but who the other person is, which is one of the most prominent signs of a relationship being doomed. We fall out of love and chalk it up to compatibility, not realizing that we could have prevented this and it’s not about compatibility.
As a society we keep reinforcing the false belief that our relationship dissatisfaction is just a matter of who we are with and not what we do once we are with someone. Then we find someone new, which in some cases is correct but in most cases with kids is a nightmare scenario.
5. Without giving away your entire business for free, what are a few of the key suggestions you give to all parents to keep their relationships alive?
The two basic principles are:
Use as many moments of tension as possible as opportunities to connect and become better partners: I know that sounds kind of corny and idealistic, but that sense of team is central to the ability to stay connected and create a truly good relationship. At the beginning of a relationship, our partner feels like a teammate we get to do life with. As time goes on, this sense of team often fades, and becomes really destructive when we start to feel the opposite: that our partner is our adversary, that they are impeding a good life for us and perhaps our kids. You absolutely cannot build on top of this; it’s like trying to learn calculus when you don’t know multiplication–it will not work. I’m not saying we should create a fantasy of re-living the honeymoon phase, but if you notice this type of adversarial situation, I’d first focus all your energy on trying to get back to being on the same team.
Continue to come back and re-engage over and over again: Absolutely do not sweep things under the rug. Pretending to let things go is a sure fire way to ruin a relationship. Resentment and disconnection builds until it hits a breaking point. This may take a few tries, but you want to stop having the same debate and argument over and over again. Change your approach and zoom out and out and out until you find a point of agreement, and then find where you diverge. For example, “Do we both agree we want this relationship to work?” “Yes.” “Okay, what does ‘work’ mean to you?” Once you find where you disagree, that’s where the conversation begins. Usually, it’s actually that you’re not as far apart as you think.
6. How can one partner gently encourage the other partner to take a course like this without the other partner feeling like they're being criticized/attacked/being told that their relationship is "broken"?
First of all, I really hope this stigma around couples counseling changes because it’s absolutely not true that if you need support with your relationship, that you or your relationship is broken. That old-school idea just hasn’t gotten us very far. That being said, I completely understand that reaction, because it feels very vulnerable to have to address our relationship issues, even if a lot of it is positive and skill building.
This is why I made this course— it’s preparatory. You’re not doing it because you’re broken; you’re doing it because you’re excited to have a baby, and you don’t want your relationship to suffer the way 67% of couples do after having kids.
When a couple without a baby takes a labor and delivery class, they don’t feel broken for not knowing the right contraction intervals to go to the hospital. When a couple takes a class about caring for infants, they don’t feel bad about not having changed a diaper before. These are not skills they would have been or should have been taught before, so there isn’t anything to feel bad about. The same thing is true here–these types of skills are not something they would have been taught before, so there is nothing to feel bad about.
So I suppose my blanket answer is to point out what I just said to your partner. It’s in the same category as learning about labor and delivery, taking care of infants, and healthy sleep habits for your kid. When you have a kid, you’ll need to know how to change a diaper, so you’re happy to learn it. It’s also very likely when you have a kid, your relationship will change, so we should feel good about learning skills to manage that.
7. What are 3 ways that expecting parents can work on staying connected before the baby arrives? How can they continue those practices for years to come?
If you think about how we connect, it’s through words, presence, and physicality. The strains we experience in early parenthood, and the dividing and conquering that needs to happen, makes concentrated presence very difficult, so when we have opportunities to connect, it’s really important to make the most of them.
In terms of words, I recommend instating two practices toward the end of the day:
Highs and lows: Highs and lows are simply where each person shares the high point in their day and the low point in their day. It gives a little window into each other’s worlds. This can also be a starting point for deeper conversation or sorting through an issue if the “low” had to do with our partner.
A practice of appreciation: The appreciation practice is something I discuss at length in the course that people universally hate and then can’t get enough of. Instead of our partner trying to figure out what we want them to show us appreciation for, we actually feed them something. They then try to take it in, get it in their heart and mind about the positive impact of it, and feed appreciation back to us, authentically, in their own way. It’s actually very gratifying to share with our partner, without inflated ego or self depreciation, what we feel we did well today to support our family system. It makes us feel safer inside ourselves and more compassionate and self-loving in a real way. Then, it’s also a tremendous gift to receive that back when it’s done authentically.
In terms of physicality, it’s really useful to start to look at sex and intimacy differently in pregnancy. When the kid is here, it’s basically impossible to maintain sex and intimacy the way you had it before. Not only are there changes in body, and often birth injuries (which, by the way, needs to be talked about and honored WAY more), for the birthing mother, but there are also changes in desire and the way we feel about our sexual selves.
To have a fulfilling intimate life, then we need to expand our repertoire for sex and intimacy and find more pleasure in the gray areas and not get sucked into the zero to 60 of sex v. not sex. We can practice spending time holding hands more, kissing more, caressing each other more without it leading to sex, massages, sharing fantasies, talking about our fears and difficult developmental sexual experiences. All of this will allow less heartache when sex inevitably changes when the baby comes.
8. What about couples with older kids? How can they start to implement changes in their relationship if they've gotten in a rut that's lasted for years?
The reality is that it’s very difficult to come back when there’s a lot of resentment. So I think there are kind of two categories: 1) reconnecting in a rut, and 2) repair in resentment.
In terms of a rut, a few things are important. One is to get time away from your children. The parent identity is often in opposition to the partner identity, meaning that it’s very hard to feel connected and into your partner in the land of being consumed by your kids. It often requires actual distance from our kids and our home to start to regain our sense of an independent self. Take a trip. Go on weekly date nights. You are now in a fundamentally different relationship since you had kids: discover it, create it. Make sure you’re having fun together and doing things that feel energizing. That sense of romantic relationship and energy and positivity has to come back in.
In terms of repairing resentment, I have a particular definition for resentment that I think is useful as a roadmap for what to do. Resentment is: an accumulated, negative judgment of your partner’s character, e.g. “They’re too selfish,” “They’re too distant,” “They’re too unsupportive,” “They’re too explosive.” Each of these judgments of your partner, has a corresponding negative impact on you. So for example, “They’re too selfish,” might feel like “I don’t matter.” “They’re too distant,” might feel like “I’m invisible or unlovable.” These pairs of feelings are so destructive to a relationship but get so ingrained and are really hard to work with.
Identify both your judgments and negative feelings, and then track back through your relationship and listen to each other share times when this has happened. For example, “When I was struggling with depression and you were really deep in work stuff and not coming home till late, it made me feel like I didn’t matter to you.” We both have to make a firm commitment to doing our best to stay grounded and giving each other a full turn, without interruption or debate.
Lastly, I’ll say in my testing of the course, I gave it to a couple with 3 kids who were between 5 and 11, and they said it allowed them to understand where things had gone wrong and start to right the ship. They texted me recently and said they had the best therapy session they’d ever had because of getting to use the course principles as a foundation for what they needed to work on.
Aaron F. Steinberg, MA, PCC is a relationship coach, group facilitator, and father of two young boys. He is the Co-Founder and CEO a relationship education and support organization, Babyproofing Your Relationship. In addition to his MA in Integral Psychology, he has certificates in leadership development and sex education, is a NARM Complex and Developmental Trauma Practitioner, and is trained in couples therapy through the Gottman Institute and the Couples Institute. He has helped thousands of people learn to feel truly fulfilled in romantic relationships through individual and couples counseling, group workshops and courses, and his guidebook to working through romantic conflict called The Honesty Practice. @BabyproofingYourRelationship / www.babyproofingyourrelationship.com
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