3 Relationship Issues Involving Kids Have you and your partner decided to expand your family?

emilyrabin
Apr 15, 2019
4 min read

Updated: Apr 16, 2019

Have you and your partner decided to expand your family?

Marriage is a beautiful partnership with the one you love. In marriage, both partners should be comfortable and happy with the life they share with their partner. Of course, no marriage is completely happy every moment of the day. In order to grow your family, you must have a solid foundation to rest upon when times get tough. When children are involved, the doors are opened to a plethora of issues and problems at home. Most couples would love to still be the same as they were before kids. Reality is, no one is the same after children. Healthy relationships must evolve, and couples must learn to adapt, and more importantly, grow together. Children give us an opportunity to grow together as couples. Kids can uncover how difficult a relationship can get. Learning how to balance your relationship and children is a constant struggle for any couple. If you are married with children or consider having a blended family, here are some things to be wary of:

Time for love and marriage:

People everywhere play a balancing act of knowing how to manage home life, children, work, intimate, healthy relationships, and friendships. Free time almost becomes a thing of the past. The lack of intimacy, the stress of making time for your partner, children, and friends, and the depleted feeling along with lack of quality time with oneself poses a significant issue when it comes from both parties in a relationship. Time is precious, and once it is spent, it is the only thing in life that you can never get back. Wouldn’t you want to spend your time on things that are worth it? For instance, spending time on family members, love, and marriage. When one branch of life takes center stage and becomes the focal point in your life, that is when issues can begin to take hold. By waking up with an intention for each day you can add so much to your life. Your intention to choose your partner, your intention to be there for your children, and sometimes the most important one of all, the intention to give yourself the love and attention you give to the world on a daily basis. Life can get crazy, but prioritization and intention can help significantly. Prioritize and recognize that you are still human. Check in with your partner, establish a routine with your family members, let your work know when your plate is full, and any job should be able to accommodate the people they truly value. You have neighbors, friends, close family, and even co-workers who can help take the load when the weight is too much to bear. Having time for love and marriage helps strengthen a family system to grow healthy family relationships. Even for the best of us, it takes a village, and not just to raise a child.

Rest:

Sleep is sacred. Sleep should be your time to recharge and re-group. Parenthood is an around the clock job that you’ll have for the rest of your life. Parenthood means losing sleep over a crying infant or lying awake as the early morning rolls in and your teenager hasn't come home yet. An ideal relationship has both members putting in 100% effort at all times. Even if this is the norm in your family, there are times when one falters, and the other must pick up the slack, sometimes working beyond 100%. Frustrations can rise, and irritability can run rampant. Some of those feelings can bleed into your relationship with your partner and result in tension, resentment, and misunderstanding. The confusion in the midst of exhaustion may cause fights to commence and lead to ignorance of each partner's needs. Rest is the blank slate to help build a foundation of understanding and resolve.

Rules for a strong family system:

Children have a way of giving your life a new sense of purpose. Life with children can be some of the best years you’ll ever know, but not without a bit of struggle. The push and pull between parents and kids make structure and rules more difficult to establish. Not being on the same page as your partner is one way to condemn not only how a child is raised, but the structure of your relationship. Establishing rules and boundaries will allow each party in a family unit to know expectations set by each other, therefore creating more structure in the household. These rules will help decrease tension, miscommunication, and resentment. Like a sturdy brick wall, parents should hold their ground as a team and always stick together, in unison with one another.

What can you do if you are having issues at home?

We know that balancing love and marriage is a tedious task and can be even harder when it comes to being married with children and forming a blended family. Even balancing your friends and family to establish harmony in your life could prove to be challenging. Having healthy relationships in both your marriage and your family is crucial to being happy and feeling comfortable in your life. Whether you are running into problems with your partner, couples counseling and marriage counseling can be the solution. It is always good to talk about these problems with a couples therapist, someone who can help find where the issues stem from. There is nothing wrong with having couples therapy, and if anything, it is a step in the right direction when it comes to love and marriage.

At He Said She Said, we are here to help counsel and re-establish your relationship into one that will leave you feeling good and be able to survive the times. Whether it be marriage counseling or just couples counseling, at He Said She Said we want to help strengthen those intimate bonds. We understand the daily, private struggles of relationship problems. We know because we've been there. Going through struggles alone is never a good idea, and never easy. If you and your partner aren’t seeing eye to eye, you have us to confide in and to support you through our couples therapy. We will lay the groundwork for rebuilding your relationship and rediscovering the love you and your partner share.

We look forward to hearing from you soon