How To Prevent The Fizz in Your Marriage From Fizzling After Baby
As a divorce attorney, I spent over 30 years asking clients what happened in their relationship to bring them to my office. Many times, no matter how much they thought they loved each other, introducing a baby who requires 24/7 attention into the relationship caused turbulence between the partners and took a toll on their well-being.
Many articles recommend couples counseling when they hit the point of wanting to separate or look outside the relationship for comfort. I recommend getting counseling or researching the subject of marital discontent that occurs with raising children before the baby comes onto the scene. Thankfully, there are some wonderful resources on YouTube and in books that are must-reads if you balk at the idea of counseling or don’t have the funds for it.
How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn is a witty and informative book full of little gems of advice and insight that give couples useful strategies about dealing with the feelings that flow from the overload of emotions raising kids causes. Some reviewers, however, criticize her for putting the bulk of the work to make the relationship work on the woman. But, in my experience, the stress on a relationship after a child comes into it is real. Unless you prefer separation or divorce as an alternative, evolutionary researchers have found that women are programmed to be the ones to deal with frustration and fix what’s causing it.
In an article published in Frontiers in Psychology, The Evolution of Empathy and Women’s Precarious Leadership Appointments by John G. Vongas and Raghid Al Hajj, a global study found that women are more often promoted to executive positions in companies that have declining performance showing preliminary evidence that board of directors seemed biased in favor of female leaders during crises. They write that the heuristic thinks crisis-think female is based on evidence that a woman’s empathetic advantage over men is natural selection which shaped the mind concerning survival.
Sparing you hours of research simply put, it will come as no surprise to most that biologically, women have more empathy than men. And it is vital to understand that after a baby when the bonding hormone oxytocin is secreted, women become even more empathetic. What does empathy have to do with sex? As Dr. Judith Orloff writes in her book The Empath’s Survival Guide because empaths are so sensitive, there is no such thing as casual sex. This explains why so many marriages end in divorce when an affair is involved. It also explains why when one partner says to the other that it meant nothing, these words only ratchet up the anger. Sadly, many affairs occur after the baby is born when the mother’s body is healing from the birth, the attention is no longer solely focused on the father, and she is sleep-deprived.
The internet is full of articles with suggestions, not to mention the 42,900,000 results you get on YouTube addressing the subject. But if you want my advice, communication is key. Even if you feel like gaging when you tell your partner how much you miss them sexually during this time, you have to remember that nothing has changed for them except for a little sleep deprivation of their own.
As Esther Perel states, sexual desire takes an erotic blow after a baby. But she also points out that humans are the only species of mammal that want sex to be rooted in desire. So, it is essential for the fizz not to fizzle during this season of no sex to maintain the desire you have for one another. Notwithstanding the advice of others, my anecdotal experience has taught me that a sexy note, a text, a novelty toy, and new lingerie purchased after the six-week checkup will go a lot further than a walk in the neighborhood holding hands.
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