What Happens To Romance When You’re Married And A Mom

The early days of marriage are often called the Honeymoon Period as everything is flowers and kisses and romantic walks in the park. When your family starts to grow, however, and you have children with your partner, things can change a lot as you have so many new responsibilities. Whilst having children together can add a new dimension to your bond, it can also affect your relationship in other ways.

Let’s try to understand what happens to romance after you have married and have kids.

Less Time for Your Partner

For most women, once they become mothers and start to grow the bond with their child, they tend to spend less time on nurturing their other relationships. This is not a conscious decision, it is just a natural result of the extra time that mothers give to their child. The experts at The Hot Spot explain that there are various inevitable changes that occur, but that your sex life is one of the main differences. When couples have a baby, there are many nights when the child will not sleep and so one or both parents will spend the night lying with the child or looking after them. This means that couples spend a lot less intimate time together. It is important to make time for each other and take the right steps to ensure that you are both fulfilled sexually in order to stay healthy and maintain a healthy relationship.

Strained Communication

As you and your partner become busy with tasks like feeding the kids, bathing them, and helping them with their homework, you will have less time to have a real conversation with each other, where you can share your views and feelings and really connect. Communication can suddenly become transactional and more like each person’s requests to the other. You will no longer have the time and energy to do the sweet little things for your other half in order to keep the relationship strong. Birthdays may even be forgotten, and you may even stop celebrating anniversaries after a few years. Communication is important for any relationship, so make sure to talk to each about your feelings and needs.

Fewer Opportunities for Spontaneity

When you were first dating, you probably had many spontaneous nights out trying new restaurants, going to a movie, or taking a last-minute trip together. All these experiences brought you and your partner closer and built a special bond and close understanding, which made your relationship stronger. Now, with a growing family, it will be more difficult, maybe even impossible, to take a spontaneous trip or surprise your partner with a night out. Even taking your child to the supermarket can require so much logistical planning and preparation that you will eventually feel like it’s better to just stay at home. If you want to go to a movie, you will have to find a babysitter a day in advance.

That spontaneity which keeps life exciting diminishes little by little, and before you know it, it can be a long time since you and your partner have spent quality time together. Instead of spontaneous dates, plan a regular date night once a week or once every two weeks and get a babysitter to help you out. Make sure on that date you don’t spend the whole time talking about the kids or the finances. Focus on each other and your relationship for that night only to keep your bond strong.

Romance is Replaced with Responsibility

Oftentimes, one parent will have to take on more childcare responsibilities than the other. For example, mothers will have to get up at night to breastfeed their babies while their husbands are sleeping soundly. While this doesn’t necessarily lead to resentment between every married couple, it does lead to some sort of division of labor. If women take on more of the childcare tasks and household chores, men will feel the responsibility to provide more for the family financially. Some women may feel like their husbands are not helping them with household duties, while some men will feel like their wives don’t understand their pressure at work.

Respect for the other’s role is absolutely vital to stop resentment from growing. It is really important that you look at yourselves as a team in which no member is more or less important than the other.

Parenting can be the most rewarding time of your life, or it can be the end of a romantic relationship. A marriage relationship, just like any other relationship in life, needs to be cherished and nurtured. Having understood the possibilities laid out in this article, it is important that you do whatever is necessary to keep your relationship strong after your family starts to grow. Communication and mutual love and respect are absolutely vital as you begin your parenting journey together.