How Can Couples Stay Emotionally Connected After Having Kids?
By: Kat Donina, PsyD
Parenthood is one of the biggest and most life changing transitions for couples. While welcoming children into our lives is joyful and fulfilling, it almost always brings incredible stressors into a relationship. These stressors can challenge some of the strongest bonds, leaving couples feeling more like co-parents rather than romantic, emotionally connected partners. Sometimes you might even feel like two people on separate islands trying to paddle toward shore in the middle of a hurricane. If you have felt this shift in your relationship, you are not alone.
As a therapist (and parent and spouse), I see this pattern often—two people who deeply love each other, but struggle to feel close and connected after becoming parents. In many cases, this loss in connection exacerbates the stress of parenting, leaving partners feeling even more overwhelmed and alone. This is especially true in couples with children who have special needs, learning or health challenges, requiring a lot of emotional support and attention. Of course it makes sense that your child’s needs would be prioritized. It is totally normal that increased demands on your family can lead to more disconnection and conflict with your partner. The good news, is that you have found each other once, and you can find each other again. Nurturing the emotional foundation of your relationship will help you get there.
According to Dr. Sue Johnson, pioneer of Emotionally Focused Therapy, the most important question arising in an intimate relationship (whether one realizes it or not), is “Are You There For Me?” Fostering emotional safety in our relationship doesn’t just feel good, it is vital to survival and helps us feel strong enough to take on life’s challenges, such as parenting. Without this emotional security in our relationships with our partners, we are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and have a harder time coping with stress overall. Additionally, we might find ourselves on two different sides of a problem, rather than on the same side against the problem. When we are so focused on parenting our children, we can forget to be emotionally accessible to each other and caught in an unhelpful cycle that creates distance and disconnection.
In this post, I will outline some tangible ways for couples to create emotional connection and emotional accessibility to one other. Additionally, I will briefly discuss reactive cycles (cycle we have with our partners that lead to distance) and how to address them, and finally, how couples therapy can support couples in rebuilding their bonds.
How to create space for emotional availability and accessibility with your partner?
Responding in a validating way instead of problem solving. Just like with our children, we want to listen to their problems and validate their feelings without jumping into problem solving mode.
If we have big reactions to their problems, children may feel more overwhelmed and develop a narrative that their problems/feelings are too big and unmanageable.
If we minimize their problems, they may feel like their experiences and feelings don’t matter. The end result is that they’ll probably share less with us.
Similarly, if your partner is stressed from work or by a conflict they just had with your child, just listen and validate their feelings. It can be easy to commiserate with your partner, feel stressed by the situation yourself, or think of a plan to tackle the issue; but just allowing your partner the space to feel heard can create a path toward more emotional connection. Ultimately, we all want to feel understood and that our problems are important, but not too big that others can’t handle them.
Creating moments of connection and emotional check-ins.
Having daily check-ins by asking each other questions can create more pathways to connection. When we are met with curiosity, we feel like our experience matters, leading to more emotional safety. Asking a question such as “How are you really doing/feeling today?” rather than a general “what’s up” or “how is your day?” can create much more room for communication and understanding.
Acknowledging your partner’s efforts and asking about their emotional experiences goes beyond the business of being a co-parent and into an emotional partnership.
A small daily ritual such as a kiss goodbye or hello, a hug, or a hand on your partner’s back, can also help maintain closeness and intimacy.
Meaningful moments rather than just time together. As bingeable television and podcasts are on the rise, we can easily fall into that trap after putting the kids to bed. However, sitting next to each other side by side, watching tv, reading or listening to a podcast, does not create emotional connection. Though it can sometimes be time well spent, we need more to feel close in our relationships.
A few minutes a day of talking to one another face to face (not about kids’ schedules or other parenting business) can actually do a lot in building intimacy.
Creating small moments with a loving look or physical touch can help you feel more connected as a couple rather than just co parents.
Though sex is a very important part of feeling close to your partner in an intimate relationship, we usually need more than that for emotional intimacy and safety. Feeling loved, desired and cared for is highly important.
What helps one partner feel close, may not be what helps the other. Stay curious with one another and ask those important questions!
Asking for what you need means being vulnerable. Dr. Sue Johnson has found that a key struggle for couples is the ability to be truly vulnerable with one another in expressing deepest longings and fears. Often times, fears and longings are masked by either criticisms or withdrawal/disengagement from one’s partner. For example, a criticism may sound like this: “You don’t ever help with the kids’ homework!”, rather than an expression of need/longing: “I feel so overwhelmed and I need to know we’re in this together.” Or angrily saying “You’re home late every night” rather than “I really miss you and would love to spend more time together.” We often think our partners should just know what we need, but being clear, direct and honest will go a long way in getting our needs met.
Reconnect after a disconnection as quickly as you can. If you find yourself in conflict, try to acknowledge your hurt feelings and express your longing/desire to be close again, even if you’re not ready to let it go. Expressing hurt feelings and acknowledging your wish to be close creates more vulnerability in your relationship, leading to closeness and repair. For example “I feel hurt that you disregarded my 30 minute device rule. I’m worried that if we’re not consistent, the kids won’t respect our boundaries. I need to feel like we are a team in this together.”
How understanding your reactive cycle can decrease disconnection: When faced with a disagreement around parenting, both partners may react in ways that unintentionally pushes each other away rather than coming toward one another and working as a team. These cycles are driven by deep rooted emotions and attachment needs (that typically predate the relationship). For example, this may be a common and relatable disagreement:
One parent allows an extra piece of candy/dessert/more screen time, while the other parent would like stronger parameters and rules. While this is a common conflict, the disagreement activates deep fears/longings for both parents.
For example, one parent may criticize “You never listen to me and always give in to the kids!” while deep down feeling unheard, unsupported and overwhelmed.
The other parent defends themselves or just withdraws because they are really feeling unappreciated and attacked.
In this cycle, the more one parent criticizes or pushes the other parent to hear them, the other parent withdraws and hears them less and less. The cycle then continues in that same pattern.
This results in both parents feeling alone and disconnected.
While the content changes, the cycle and the roles of each parent in the cycle typically remain the same. If we are able to notice our cycle and own each of our roles, we can say “hey, we’re in this cycle again” and begin to form a team against the cycle, rather than attack or feel attacked by our partner (i.e. You’re doing this to me again!”).**
In couples therapy, partners can learn how to shift from a place of criticism to vulnerability and express their deepest needs and longings, which creates more connection and secure attachment. Building awareness of these moments of disconnection caused by the reactive cycle is key. Partners gain insight into and own their part of the cycle, building empathy for and understanding of one another, along with other foundational tools.
Having a strong, loving and secure bond with our partners can be one of the most healing forces in our lives. It can also be a source of healing, strength and protection for our children who are watching and learning what relationships mean and how they evolve. Everyone is deserving and capable of having loving, healing, connected relationships.
I will end this post with a question: What is one thing you do every day as a couple to connect?
References
Johnson, Susan. (2008). Hold Me Tight. New York: Little Brown Spark, Hachette Book Group.
Johnson, Susan. (2019). Attachment in Theory and Practice. Emotionally Focus Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families. New York: The Guildford Press.
