Another one is the lack of sex, and a lot of times I tell couples at that time it’s crucial to schedule it. You can get really caught up in changing diapers, taking to daycare, cooking, all of the things that come with kids. Playing with them, being with them, and it’s very easy to lose sight of your partner. This is especially so for moms I believe because for the most part moms usually take that primary caregiver role. Then they all say “By 11:00 at night I’m exhausted. I don’t want to have sex.” What the partner feels is that they’ve been replaced. Sometimes the husbands can even start resenting the kids. We talk about all of this in therapy and at the end of the day I say schedule it. Don’t let too much time go by whether you want to, whether you don’t want to.
90% of the time I hear couples says, “I don’t really want to, but once we actually start having sex I enjoy it, we love it, why don’t we do this more often?” That’s really what I mean by whether you want to or don’t want to, just do it, kind of like the Nike commercial when it comes to this because it will keep you connected. With time once the kids start getting older and stuff you haven’t really lost a lot. A lot of times when I see those couples married 10 years that have kids it’s 10 years of repair because it’s 10 years that the partner has been feeling left out, replaced, second, and that’s not repaired in 6 sessions. It’s important for if you’ve already had kids to know that yes there’s hope and you can repair, but it will take a lot of work. If you’re watching any of these videos and you just recently had a child, or you’re thinking about having a child, it’s really important to plan for that also.
I think as moms, and I could talk from my own personal experience, we can get so caught up in planning for the birth, and planning for when the baby comes home. We don’t plan for our relationship, we don’t plan for our marriage and how we’re going to still include our partners in the day-to-day activities and how we’re still going to be sexual with them and be intimate in that way with them.