Brian Reid (Rebeldad) guest posts on the Washington Post blog On Balance. He recently touched on the topic of marital contentment post-kiddies in Four Keys to Spouse-Life Balance. A wonderful starting point, with more sage advice in the comments (aside from the bickering about typos in the original post…oy vey.) including the perky suggestion regular sex helps too! (Hence the link to Passionate Marriage, which a therapist friend of mine recommends to her clients.)
Brian's advice brings to mind Duane's suggestion to work off the same to-do list. New parents: take note. The advice contained in these two posts is worth its weight in gold.
More: Marriage and relationship hacks
Thank you. Just starting to look around for ideas on helping out in finding my marriage connection and sexual intimacy in particular. So a very timely post for me. Thanks again.
One thing I think my husband and I were not prepared for was the stress and strain that having a baby would place on our relationship. For some reason, I had this fairytale storyline in my head: “and then they had a baby and lived happily ever after.” I think the more realistic storyline is: “and then they had a baby, worked really hard at nurturing their relationship, and lived happily ever after.”
I agree wholeheartedly – it is soooooo hard to work on your marriage when kids are involved and you’re working full time jobs.
My hubby and I try to have lunch together at least once a week. We also have a date night once a month where we ship kids off to Grandma’s or a babysitter and go out just the two of us with a rule that the topic of kids cannot dominate the evening. We try to getaway for a couple weekends a year to a local hotel and be newlyweds again.
The very first thing our family physician said when I was expecing (after the obligitory Congratulations) was make sure you make ‘couple time’ a priority – such great advice.