Don’t forget, I have 20% off for annual subscribers for the month of January (and if you sign up for that you’ll never pay full price again). Sign up here. I wrote this piece with my child hanging out of me, climbing on the keyboard and demanding snacks after every attempt at a sentence, so this may read like complete garbage.
Does having kids ruin relationships?
For many couples, yep. For many more, no. There are countless variables at play, of course - your level of financial comfort, if your child has additional needs, how the relationship was going into parenthood to name but a few. It’s an impossible question to answer in any definitive way but it’s important - I think - to acknowledge the strain that creating mini versions of yourselves can have on you as a twosome, when for so long having children has been portrayed as the ultimate destination for any young couple, and indeed the ultimate life goal in general. In movies and TV, we’ve seen many romanticised tales of how having kids completes the picture. The story often ends in the hospital when the child is born, as both parents look at each other in awe, having reached a new level of love and appreciation for each other. Welcome to domestic bliss. What we don’t tend to see (unless you’re watching Motherland or Working Moms which were both tonics for me) is how things look a few weeks or months in, when you’re so sleep deprived you’ve gone cross-eyed and you’ve entered a never-ending game of tit-for-tat and the ‘who’s really more tired, though?’ competition.
Because it’s not spoken about very much, I think there’s a tendency among couples to panic when their relationship feels (albeit temporarily, perhaps) fraught with tension. They think there is fundamentally something wrong with the relationship (there may well be) as opposed to it being a perfectly fine relationship that’s currently under strain. It’s not easy to talk about it; you’ve finally gotten everything you’ve ever wanted, everything society has been telling you to strive toward, you’re expecting to be the happiest you’ve ever been and yet, you’re killing each other. ‘What if it’s just us?’ you worry. ‘What if this means we shouldn’t be together?’ you think to yourself. It’s not just you and in most cases I would suggest it does not at all mean you shouldn’t be together. It’s just that nobody wants to look at a bundle of joy and say it’s brought anything but beaming positivity into your life. It’s also, obviously, never the child’s fault: it’s the new dynamic and, as mentioned above, the many variables that can take a toll on your relationship.
I’m going to tell you how it’s impacted my relationship.