Love and your relationship when your kids are young

Your relationship with your partner will inevitably evolve, because you’re parents now. But what should you do to avoid losing one another through all of this change? Or might the opposite approach make sense: should you lower your expectations of your relationship during the first year? We talked to psychologist Tova Winbladh on how to approach love and lust, and what to do about crises in your relationship when your children are young.

Hi, Tova. What would you say is important for keeping a relationship on track?

A ton of different factors are at play when it comes to romantic relationships and how they develop. Some of those factors can be influenced, but others are out of your control. The most important components for a healthy relationship depend on the people in the relationship, their needs, and how they work. For some, communication is key; you’ll need to feel connected and to understand one another. For others, sex and physical intimacy are most important, while others still need alone time as the key to a flourishing relationship.

Since it can vary so much, a crucial part of a relationship is getting to know one another’s wants, needs and expectations. What do you and I need to feel good in our relationship? What is most important for us? What is less important? How do we want our sex life to look and how do we not want it to look?

If you make time and space to talk about these things now and then, you will improve the chances of having a rewarding, satisfying relationship for both partners – one that lasts over time. Your daily life and inner life are incredibly busy when your children are young, which means your relationship may change for a while. If you don’t talk about it, you’re at risk of misunderstandings and disappointments. It’s a good idea to let your partner know how you’re feeling, what your thoughts are about the relationship at the moment, and what might have changed when it comes to your wants and needs. Take the time to listen to how your partner is feeling about your relationship, too.

How can you avoid a situation where you’re constantly annoying one another?

When you have young children, it’s much easier than it would otherwise be to feel irritated by everything your partner does. That isn’t so surprising, because when our kids are young, we spend most of our energy, understanding, empathy and care on them, with very little left for our partners. So we can easily get caught up in a negative spiral of irritation and bickering, and almost no loving interactions at all. Almost all couples go through this for some period of time while their kids are young.

If it’s just temporary irritation, it may be enough to simply communicate why you’re so annoyed. Simply saying something like: “I’m so tired and drained today; I’m sorry for being short and grumpy – it’s not about you,” can be enough to lighten the mood and keep your partner from feeling as hurt. We can often have tons of compassion for our partner’s bad mood just by being told that they didn’t mean it and it’s nothing personal. In the best case, this kind of reply can even invite a supportive hug, or one partner taking over baby duties for a while to allow their exhausted partner to rest.

When irritation is more persistent and clearly connected to some of your partner’s behaviours, it might take more effort to reverse the vicious cycle of negative, destructive interactions in your relationship. A sense of unfairness could lie behind the irritation, or maybe you feel hurt and insufficiently loved or cared for by your partner. It’s important to try to communicate what the irritation is really about, to dare to be vulnerable, and to explain what’s making you feel sad or insecure. For the partner who only hears complaints and annoyed quips, it can be impossible to figure out the source of the irritation. That’s why you need an honest, open discussion to move forward – conversations held not in the heat of the moment, but in peace and quiet, when you’ve got time and energy to focus on your relationship.

What if your partner takes everything as criticism?

When your partner perceives everything you say as a complaint or as criticism, there’s often more truth behind it than you might realise when making well-meaning comments that are misunderstood. Maybe you didn’t specifically express a criticism, but the subtext might still be critical, and your tone might be questioning or disparaging, even if you didn’t think it was. And maybe your partner feels insecure about something, which means they might be extra sensitive if you question them.

One way to handle a relationship that has become imbalanced, where one person feels attacked, is to try to gather up your more critical questions and talk about them when you aren’t in the middle of those day-to-day tasks, with the kids around. It’s hard enough as it is to be a parent; when there are two of you, you need your partner’s support to handle it all with confidence. At the same time, you need to be able to talk to your partner about what’s bothering you, but that’s best done at a time when you can focus on each other and you’re both invested in having a talk about your relationship.

When you can’t work together at all without one person making comments and the other feeling criticized, it’s usually best to split up the tasks and not do everything together. This will make it much easier to interrupt those destructive cycles.

How do you make parenting more equal?

Many couples endeavour to have a balanced and equal relationship, but it may be helpful to reflect together on what you mean by equal. For some, the most important factor is doing the same amount of housework; for others, it’s more important for both to play similar roles as parents to their children. Some couples are happy to divide the essential tasks of family life into different areas of responsibility, while others prefer to share responsibility for everything. In one family, it might work well to alternate nappy changes and split the parental leave, while in another, it will work best to plan and structure life according to each parent’s personality and interests. There is no right or wrong way to live together! If you’re aiming for equality and balance in your relationship, a crucial first step is to define what you mean by those terms and what your shared goals are.

A common problem in families is that the parents develop increasingly distinct and different roles. One of them then resents their role and perceives it as more demanding and difficult than the other partner’s role. At that point, the relationship has become unequal and it’s important to talk about it; otherwise it may lead to dissatisfaction and the party bearing the heavier load will become exhausted and run down. Talking about your roles can be a way to highlight and clarify where things have become unfair. “I’m not happy in my role in the family because the tasks are too demanding and I don’t have enough rest and time to myself. We need to renegotiate our roles to make them more balanced.”

If you’re just fighting constantly – how do you move forward?

When you’re arguing with your partner all the time and your relationship has become a source of worry and sorrow, rather than energy and love, it might be time to turn to a professional for help with figuring out what got so difficult and why. It could be a family counsellor or psychologist, or a couples therapist. It can be so much easier to talk about charged topics when a third party is present.

Is it harmful to children when parents fight in front of them?

It is very hard to say just what affects children in the long term, because kids are so different when it comes to how sensitive and impressionable they are. But most children definitely find it very uncomfortable when their parents fight and speak angrily to one another. It often makes kids very uneasy, because they’re so dependent on their parents, who should be a source of security in their life. But occasionally disagreeing is a part of life, and it isn’t harmful for children to see their parents disagree or be in a bad mood with one another sometimes. It’s when things evolve into shouting, accusations, or aggression that it becomes really uncomfortable for them. If that happens, it is important to spend time and care on your child afterwards, to talk about what happened and comfort them so that they feel secure again.

What do you do if your sex drive has disappeared, or if sex has become a supercharged subject in general?

Having kids is likely to impact your sex life. This is mainly because the time when it’s possible to have sex tends to decline drastically. We also aren’t robots – we’re humans and we can’t just turn a sex drive switch on and off, so the number of times when desire and opportunity coincide also declines. In addition, our bodies and minds are both impacted in a variety of ways by pregnancy, childbirth and having young children, which can impact both our sex drive and the practicalities of having sex.

It is very common in relationship to have a sexual imbalance, where one person wants more frequent sex than the other. An unfortunate pattern of interactions tends to develop then, where the person who wants more sex feels rejected and sad, and the person who wants less feels pressured and stressed. The person who wants sex more wants to feel attractive and desired, and might try to make sex happen in various ways, while the one who wants sex less tries to avoid the pressure in order to feel relaxed and respected. The situation is prepped to be rife with misunderstandings and negative feelings that affect your relationship.

To move forward in that situation, you’ve got to talk to each other honestly about what your respective goals are for your sex life. Would you both prefer for your sex life to work better – or would the partner experiencing less desire prefer to put sex on hold for a while? You need to figure this out together so that you aren’t fighting for different goals. If you both really want your sex life to work better, then you’ve got a solid foundation for taking a curious approach to exploring each other’s feelings and concerns about sex. The lower-drive partner needs to specify what the necessary circumstances are to feel more desire, and the higher-drive partner needs to say what kind of emotional validation they need to not feel so rejected when their lower-drive partner doesn’t want to have sex.

Do you have any tips on how to keep love alive?

I’ve covered a lot of ground related to communication and how to try to develop closeness when your relationship changes. That is the foundation for a loving relationship! Here are some more things that could be important and that you can try out to see if they support love in your relationship:

• Be as generous with each other as you can be. It will pay off in the long run! Do the dishes when your partner is too tired, encourage them to go out for that night on the town with friends, offer to have them pop out for a workout one evening, or to enjoy a few hours with a book in the middle of a Sunday. Generosity is contagious and will bring positive energy to your relationship!
• Don’t assume that your partner can read your mind! Talk about your thoughts and feelings. If it’s too hard to talk about it, then maybe you can write a text or letter instead.
• Schedule time together as a couple! An at-home date after the kids go to bed or a child-free walk in the woods could be all you need to feel close again from time to time.
• Remember: no one person can meet all your needs. Turn to friends, family, or a professional and try to cultivate lots of different relationships. This will boost your self-confidence and improve the conditions for satisfaction in your partnership.
• If you’re spending a lot of time bickering, try doing more things separately. A weekend apart can work wonders. You can also try spending a few months mostly doing things separately, and thinking about yourself and your own needs more than your relationship.
• Everyday romance can be a real mood-booster; try it and see what kind of impact it has. A cute text, an extra long gaze, bringing home your partner’s favourite sweets. A passionate kiss in the midst of caring for the kids, or maybe a clean house or take-out dinner after a partner’s stressful day at work. Sometimes, having your partner recognise the little things can be one of the most romantic things out there!

How do you know when it’s time to separate or divorce?

You’ll know! Almost everyone who separates reaches a point where they simply can’t stay in the relationship any longer, and once you’ve started seriously thinking about leaving your partner, it usually happens quickly from there. You will usually know in your heart if a relationship isn’t good for you; most of the time, practical obstacles are what prevent separation rather than the actual feeling.

Relationships that end in separation are not failures – they are just as valuable as ones that continue. A lot of things can lead to separation, and separating doesn’t mean falling into an abyss; rather, it’s a way to move forward in your life and change direction. When you have kids, your relationship as parents will always remain. For many people, that can continue to be important and valuable, even if the romantic relationship is over.

Please note that all information above is based on Swedish recommendations.