Does anticipating common marital issues make it easier to combat them?
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Anonymous
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I have been with my partner for 2 years and we are starting to talk about getting engaged. He's great and I have no doubts that he will be a fantastic husband. However, after spending so many years reading DCUM (and similar forums) I am starting to feel like certain marital issues are inevitable once you have kids, no matter how good of a couple you are. In particular, I'm thinking about:
1. Not having enough sex once you have kids 2. One parent (usually the female, which of course worries me) doing the lion's share of household/childcare work and feeling resentful 3. Losing your identities as individuals/as a couple once you become parents I feel like I would be going in to marriage cognizant of these issues, and having some idea of how to combat them. Of course, my partner and I have discussed them and have agreed that we will never be one of those couples. But I'm sure every woman who posts here about how DH works 60 hours/week and never helps with the kids, and every man who posts about how DW never wants sex swore they'd never be one of those couples either. So - are those issues just an inevitable part of marriage/parenthood? What can we do as a couple to avoid them? |
Anonymous
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Life changes with kids. I don't think there's any way to avoid that. But you can prioritize what's important to you and focus on making sure things don't become too much of a problem.
When I was pregnant, I had this vision of fitting my baby into my fun, city girl life. LOL. I learned quickly that didn't happen. But I slowly made my way back to a semblance of my former life. N other words, it takes awareness, flexibility, and willingness to work on things together. |
Anonymous
| You're conflating marriage with parenthood. |
Anonymous
| I don't think those things are inevitable. I'm married and have 4 kids and none of those apply to my relationship. We have awesome sex, my DH helps around the house even though I'm a SAHM and we still have our individual identities although we usually choose to identify ourselves with each other or our family. Marriage and parenthood are a series of choices and as long as you're on the same page, are committed to making the relationship work and share the same values, you'll be fine. |
Anonymous
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I cannot imagine how anticipating these things would offer much protection from them outside of awareness of their potential future existence. Which you already have.
More helpful are the potential red flags that people, with hindsight, look back and see. For example, I now realize that when I was a teenager, I saw traits in my future husband long before he was to be my husband that I now recognize as problems. But during our early twenties these problems appeared to go away when I got to know hime better. Now after 20 years of marriage I see that, uh oh, he had issues that he just buried and never dealt with. Surprise! None of the problems you mention are issues for us, but we have made up for it in the things that were lurking "under the hood" that neither I nor he knew about. Go figure. I applaud your proactive thoughts, but I would encourage you to find creative ways to explore who you both truly are rather than trying to avoid hypothetical, however typical "cookie cutter" problems. They could indeed end up being your problems too, but not necessarily. |
Anonymous
Agree with this. Everyone has a general awareness of the hot button issues that can stress a marriage: kids, money, in-laws, etc. But in real life it's much more complicated than that, and problems are much more nuanced. Rather than focusing on, as PP called them, "cookie cutter problems," spend as much time as you can keeping the lines of communication open with your partner so that, when your specific, individual issues arise, whatever they are, you guys are ready to handle them. |
Anonymous
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Just make sure you have good communication skills.
And be sure to have conversations in advance about underlying assumptions. In my experience a lot of conflict arises when the parties have unspoken and different assumptions about how things will work / who does what. |
Anonymous
| I think you can be protective of your marriage, and that's a good idea. However, I roll my eyes at some of the posts around here along the lines of "Do you think he's having an affair" and the grounds are that the DH has female friends or texts with female colleagues or they haven't had sex in a few weeks. And everyone pipes up and says "For sure!!" or "Go through his emails." You can't run your marriage on that level of paranoia. |
Anonymous
| I would highly recommend pre-marital counseling. My husband and i really had no "issues" but i really wanted to do it. It really helped us get on the same page about a lot of issue and be able to understand expectations of one another (how much work in the home should each partner do, how much sex is enough for both of us etc). It also helped us know in advance where the sensitive topics are and how we can communicate about them. we haven't had any of the issues you've mentioned since becoming parents (2 kids now) - mainly because we have great communication. |
Anonymous
| Like another PP said, have a conversation about assumptions and make sure you have great communication. DH and I have a 15 month old and our marriage has never been better. We do not and have never had any of the issues you highlighted in your post. |
Anonymous
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Pre-marital counseling!!! Seriously, it was so great at getting those "hidden expectations" out on the table. It gave us a venue to talk about those things we didn't realize we accepted as "normal" based on how we were raised--and whether or not we wanted to emulate those things in our own marriage/parenting adventure.
It also helped us to pre-emptively discuss communication strategies and methods when we didn't have any major issues on the table, so tensions weren't high and emotions weren't raw. Down the road, when we have had tough things to talk about, we've had years and years of good communication practice under our belts to help us handle it. Plus, the premarital counseling was a fun time to reflect on how and why you love each other  Our church offered it free (required it to get married, actually).
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Anonymous
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I think talking about how you see each aspect of your lives is important. DH and I had a LOT of talks about working, traveling, finances, kids, entertaining, inlaws, before getting engaged.
And to break those down farther, we talked about all the various ways each topic could go. For example, would we let the inlaws babysit the kids? Would we travel with the inlaws? When we visit would we stay in their home or at a nearby hotel? If they couldn't live on their own would we invite them to move in with us? How often were we open to having them visit? And on and on. These talks went on for months. I think it helped a lot. I knew that DH would be down for making dinner most weeknights once we had kids. He knew I'd be down for doing most of the laundry. We both prioritized having a cleaning person once a week. We talked about our goals as individuals, as a family. At the same time, we are both open to each other evolving, or getting burnt out. When DH is sick, I don't want him cooking the family meals and germing up the kitchen. If he's watching tv and there's a laundry basket next to the couch with clean clothes, he'll fold them as he watches. There's no "That's not my job" going on here. |
Anonymous
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I think being aware of what can come up can do two things: First, sort of normalize things for you. What I mean by that is it is not abnormal for couples to struggle with issues around money, kids, division of labor, etc. I think sometimes people can have such a pollyanna view of their love and their marriage that they freak out at the first sign of trouble. It's great to plan to be the exception, but it's probably smart to expect some of the normative problems to spin your way.
Second, that knowledge will probably lead you to be certain you have a solid foundation and good communication skills in place before you get married. How do you fight now? Negotiate family holidays, etc? Those are some places to start when thinking about how you function as a couple. Don't spend too much time thinking how your going to be after x, y or z, because you can't really plan for that until it happens. Pre-marital counseling is a great place to flesh out some of this stuff. There is one thing I will toss out that I haven't seen mentioned. Despite a general understanding that there are more common problems that might come your way, there will be things that happen that you just can't account for - and I'm not talking about serious tragedies like deaths or serious accidents. You'll change in some ways and so will your SO. You might have PPD after having a baby or he might lose his job and go through a bout of depression. You might agree now to sex 3 nights a week, but feel like that's not feasible at some point, or one of your libidos might change dramatically (I always sort of chuckle when people on DCUM suggest that they should have talked about libido with their partners before marriage - as if a 20 year olds libido has any bearings on a 40 year old). You might have to move across the country, away from friends and family, to advance one of your careers. Flexibility is a necessity to weather stressors, even the good stuff like a baby, can strain a marriage. Lastly, when you do go through tough times, remember that there are seasons to life, to a marriage, and that things are better, your marriage is stronger, when you weather the storms. |
Anonymous
agree. Actually, if you look at the little issues you have now, things that are easy to ignore/overlook/excuse, they are likely to be the issues that will appear--when the stakes are higher, so they become impossible to overlook. Like, one person is messy. Or one person is a neat-freak. One is skimping on money. Or one is lavish with money. Someone's lifestyle put them in debt. Somebody doesn't stand up to his/her parents, or lets their issues with parents or siblings really upset them. One is a workaholic…or one has a career where they have to stay late or travel, and the other doesn't understand or like this. Stuff like that. One smokes periodically and the other doesn't like that. Different religions, or different commitment to religion. Look and those things are there… Add a baby or two and suddenly those issues are magnified. |
Anonymous
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Um, as a twice married person, the answer is YES. You can avoid them causing problems IF you talk about them and resolve the problems NOW, or get in the habit/practice of resolving problems so that when new ones arise down the road, that you have the tools to work through them.
First, people and situations do change some, but you cannot count on them getting better. So, if they do something already that bugs you, you should feel that it is something you can deal with BEFORE you marry them. I had the great benefit of knowing a lot of shit that drove me CRAZY in my first marriage, so when I was courting my second wife, I made sure I was clear about those things. You don't have to have a msitake/bad marriage under your belt. Counselors have a "top 10" list of reasons people get divorced and you can get that from one (do a couple of sessions of pre-marital) or from something like Catholic Pre-cana. Dealbreaker (divorce causes) include: 1) money 2) children (yes/no) 3) sex (frequency, type) 4) in-laws 5) housework 6) wedding plans (crazy huh?) 7) vacation plans 8) alone/together time (how much) 9) socializing (alone/together? single friends? separate interests?) .... There are slight variations but basically major conflicts over these topics which reflect fundamental differences of opinion - [b]particularly where one spouse has no respect and eventually has contempt for the other spouse's opinion/attitude[/b.] - is what results in divorce. You can go over this list now, before there is any conflict and talk about each of the items and find out if you have major disagreements. Any disagreement you have, be sure to work through to a compromise you can both accept (and not just "for now", but permanently and forever, not dredging that shit back up after the resentment builds). That will give you a taste, without the pressure of bad feelings, of what it takes to work through things. The more practice you have, the easier that gets. |