LivingFrom being a couple to being a family: how...

From being a couple to being a family: how the arrival of the baby affects our relationship

Becoming parents is one of the most wonderful experiences in the world (for many), it brings exponential love, tenderness, it leads you to give your best … but also the worst: it is tiring, exhausting and sometimes frustrating. What is clear is that parenthood changes us, and not only does it individually, it also changes our relationship as a couple. Now you are not two, you are three, and the third is your baby, a tiny being that needs care and attention 24 hours. Where is the couple? Does becoming a parent always negatively affect our relationship? Is it possible to survive?

Changes, changes and changes … and not just diapers

Let’s start with a basic point: one of the questions we have to accept is that things are going to change. For better or worse? Well, it depends, among other things, on how we deal with it. What are the main changes (to which we must pay attention) that appear when we go from two to three?

C hange role

What are the roles? We all have various “roles” in life that we activate or deactivate depending on the moment or the person we are with. It is not that we change our personality, it is that we adapt to the conditions: one does not behave the same when he is alone with his parents as when he is with his gang of friends, is that understood?

Until now you were you, woman, worker, daughter, friend, lover… man, worker, son, brother, friend… With the arrival of the baby we are going to implement a new role, one of the great ones, also: that of mom and dad .

And where is the possible problem? In that new role that is so intense that it absorbs us so much, annuls or displaces others, creating a mismatch in us. One of the things that I usually explain in consultation is that we are like a table and that to be great we need to have the four legs of the table very stable and seated. For many those legs are: the social, the work / personal development, the family and the couple (but there are those who have “other legs”, of course).

If we neglect one of the legs the table will limp yes or yes, if we neglect two the risk of it collapsing is strong, if there are three … you can imagine. Well, motherhood / fatherhood is sometimes so intense that it makes it difficult for us to give the other legs the attention they need. The result is that if we put aside our role as a couple, the relationship will suffer , and so will we.

Availability of the tie mpo tending to zero

This, which sounds obvious and is the first thing that everyone warns you when you break the news that you are going to be parents, is one of the biggest and crushing truths of parenthood: you will not have time for almost anything.

Your baby needs you, and their pet-stained bodys must be washed, and you have to go down to buy diapers, and feed and bathe them and love them… and if you can, when you can, sleep.

The time for romantic dinners, to watch movies together on the couch or to have a little privacy, is now hard to come by. And of course, if we don’t do things as a couple, the relationship can suffer, because love is not something eternal and incorruptible, something that will last forever even though we don’t take care of it, no. Love, relationships, need time and effort , this is how they stay healthy.

Priority ades

Will the baby be okay? What do you need now? Why will he cry? We are going to go for a walk because he has to go out, we are going to buy this because he needs it, we are going to go with him to … It is evident that our little one needs us, and that he also does it all the time, but … is it the only thing we have in our life?

As I said with the topic of roles, people are more than a specific role, and we need that range of variety to be well on an emotional level. One of the things that we usually see in consultation is that the arrival of a baby can cause the couple’s priorities to change, and sometimes they do not change in the same way for both members .

Yes, the baby is usually in the first place, but is there something else on the list or have we struck it all down? Where is the couple, where is the individual need for time?

Cans Antium

If there is one variable that can influence how we relate as a couple, it is this: lack of sleep and rest. Irritability, a lower tolerance for the other’s behavior, little flexibility, etc. These are some of the consequences of the supreme fatigue that often accompanies the early stages of parenthood (some say that this extends until the child is forty, but let’s be optimistic).

I saw her sexual

One of the most frequent demands in consultation when couples with young children attend is precisely the change (for them for the worse) in their sexual life: less quantity and, in many cases, less quality.

Why can this happen? For the sum of everything I have told before: change of priorities, lack of time, fatigue … But, then, is fatherhood the end of sexual life? No, tranquility in the masses, it is not the end, but we must work on it so that it does not go down the drain, starting by not relegating it to the bottom of our list of priorities.

Sex is more than physical pleasure , it is intimacy, it is time as a couple, so we are very interested in pampering it, having it and taking care of it.

Be careful, not everything is “potentially harmful” …

Do not come down on me, that although tired and absorbing, parenthood can also bring positive changes, both individually and as a couple: a greater union (if sharing life already seemed nice to us, you cannot imagine what it is to share a child, another life, a precious little one), greater commitment (now we are jointly responsible for a little one, it is a common project that makes us develop long-term plans, which increases the commitment established between us), and more love. .. because when you see your partner with your child in his arms, singing or bathing him, suddenly you see him (your boy or your girl) with new eyes, ones full of love.

If you are going to be daddies, prepare for the changes, but be clear, as much as people tell you the worst of the worst, that yes, it will be hard for the couple, but it will also be wonderful. If you work together, if you are a team, the experience will be absolutely enriching for the couple.

Photos | senivpetro – www.freepik.es, prostooleh – www.freepik.es

In Babies and more | We are parents, but also a couple: how to keep love alive when we have children

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