Five Ways to Stay Close after Kids
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 07:17PM As promised, here’s a selection of some of my favorite post-kid intimacy enhancers. Ultimately, I learned all of them from my work with couples over the years, but each one of them is also heavily informed by my personal experience.
I could probably launch a whole blog devoted to this topic, but in the mean time, here’s something to kick things off.
1) Jump at chances to be with each other. When your schedule becomes squeezed by parenting demands, a carpe diem mentality can add a playfulness and excitement to intimate life that you weren’t challenged to try out before kids.
2) Take a good hard look at yourself. Could you learn to be more flexible? Or a better listener? If you’re open to learning new behaviors and attitudes, your kids will benefit—and so will your partner.
3) Embrace the changes brought by kids. I learned to start viewing “going to the beach” as “going to the beach with kids”—a slower, more meandering version of my kid-free beach days, but one that involved lots of games and breaks from packing. My wife and I both benefited by giving up our attachment to the old version. If you fight the change, you can count on tension with your partner. If you embrace it, you can start seeing things in a whole new way.
4) Use quiet times with kids as a chance to bond. Few moments provide the depth of satisfaction and emotional bonding of lying together, soaking up the bliss of a sweet, family moment. Sit close to you partner. Touch each other when you have the chance. This is family intimacy. It can only add to your relationship.
5) Celebrate when the day is over. My wife and I started a ritual of toasting at the end of the day: ‘We made it,’ we’d say; ‘the kids are alive and asleep. Ahhhh. We’d share the highs and lows. Parenting is a shared adventure, full of self-discovery and rich rewards. If you don’t take the time to talk about it, you’re nurturing distance and missing out—and then you end up as a statistic in a study.
Are you one of the couples who grew closer after kids? Let me know. Better yet, add to this list by sharing your own experience in the comments.
If you like my posts, let me know! Let's connect on facebook and twitter. I frequently respond to comments and questions there. And feel free to check out www.drcraigmalkin.com for more tips and advice, as well as information on my book in progress.
Reader Comments (4)
Wow..so right about embracing change and not fighting it.
Hi Busta,
Looks like you're feeling a little better about the idea of kids. Thanks for reading!
I agree with Busta. I've gotten into Buddhism recently and this sounds very in line with what I've been learning - acceptance of reality can allow an appreciation and a contentedness to develop.
Thank you Dr. Malkin for this site and your wisdom in this area. It has brought me comfort and validation. My husband and I have become much closer after having children. I attribute this greatly to having twins and my family not being close-by too help me. My husband was ecstatic to have a son and daughter at the same time. He is a teacher, coach, and loves children, so he was ready and willing to fully help. He also craves love and acceptance, something children freely give (at least until their teens). Sadly, he comes from an enmeshed, narcissistic family so we have had a lot of bumps in the parenting roads, but he has and still does work hard to overcome acting out his father's angry, sarcastic, narcissistic parenting style and his mother's disparaged, passive-aggressive, narcissistic parenting style.We were told we were "imagining their actions" and that we were "too sensitive". After many years of attempting to confront their crazy-making narcissistic abuse and them repeatedly refusing our requests to engage in an honest dialogue or attend counseling (with a mediator) to work though our emotional distrust and feelings of invalidation, we finally enacted the "no contact" rule. They disowned us. This solidarity has made my husband and I much closer. We are better people. We are better parents. We have a better marriage. We have also focused more intently on our children, building a nurturing, caring and loving home. Not like the apathetic, and angry home in which he was raised. He has always craved a loving, empathetic and accepting home, something he never had. He was needy and dependent on them, he seldom made a decision without them. It wasn't until after we had children that his eyes were truly opened to how his family really acts. His scripted "perfect family" delusion took some time for him to resolve. His sister is in an incestuously close relationship with his parents, so is their grand-daughter. His mother has pitted them against each other since childhood. She also used her rejection to instill fear in him. They were all bound up by a narcissistic web. I come from a large, loving, caring, touchy-feely family. We communicate, talk, love, share and show emotions freely. We are distinctly different, free-thinking, accepting of criticism and don't shy away from diverse thinking; something not allowed in his family. And while he is loved, accepted and validated by my family, the rejection of his family still stings us all. Their refusal to validate, communicate, admit fault, work toward solutions and attempt to reconcile still hurts. I suppose this is a small price to pay for having a happy, empathetic, caring and wholesome family of our own.❤️Our children made all the difference, without them to fight for he may very well have rejected me for his dysfunctional family. Thank you for this blog.