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How To Keep a Healthy Relationship After Having Children

As parents, we love our children and consider them to be beautiful blessings. But let’s be honest: they make most things more complicated than they used to be. Simple stuff like going to the store or watching a movie can seem nearly impossible. And, with all the demands that kids put on us every day, it can be especially tough to maintain a healthy relationship with our partners. Here are some great ways to keep a healthy relationship after having children.

Make Time for Each Other
When each day is filled to the brim with diaper changes, rinsing bottles, and endless loads of laundry, it can be easy to go for long stretches without spending some one-on-one time with your partner to simply talk and share a moment that doesn’t revolve around children or to-do lists. Schedules and routines are great for children, and they can also be the perfect way to make sure you carve out some time to be with one another. Put it on your calendar and stick to it. Be sure to focus on each other completely – no chores!

While You’re at It, Do Some Sex Scheduling
I think most of us can agree that Google Calendar isn’t exactly an aphrodisiac. And scheduling our most intimate moments can make it feel more like a trip to the dentist. But the truth is, if you don’t make an effort to put it on the calendar, it may never happen, and physical intimacy is vital for the health of a relationship. In fact, you don’t always have to have sex during these times. You can cuddle, snuggle, spoon – whatever you want. The point is simply to ensure that you make time to be physically intimate with each other.

Go on Dates
I do mean real, actual dates. You don’t necessarily have to get dressed up and go to a fancy restaurant (although that sounds pretty nice). But you do need to have the babysitter, friend, or relative come over and watch the children while the two of you go enjoy a kid-free activity. Go to the movies, grab some cocktails, and have dinner without a highchair at your table. You can do whatever you like! The only rule is that there is that you’re not allowed to talk about the children. Keep the focus on yourselves while you can, because just like Cinderella, your special night will end before you know it. Then it’s back to reality.

Do you notice a pattern between the three suggestions? It’s all about making an effort to have time for each other. Show your partner that you love them by making them a priority in your schedule. You’ll be amazed at the powerful effect you’ll see!

Communicating with your partner is hard work! It takes constant effort and a willingness to be honest. It’s difficult to know what another person is thinking, and if it’s been a while since you last had a meaningful conversation, a lot can be brought up. If you want to speak your truth to your partner, but aren’t sure how to get started, here are a few suggestions.

Communication versus Avoidance

When it comes to relationships, we often shy from speaking our truths because we don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. But that issue then never gets the opportunity to resolve itself. As a result, we tend to avoid either the action we don’t like, or even the person causing it. And the end result can be resentment or disappointment and potentially the end of the relationship. But isn’t that more hurtful than actually talking to your partner? The first step in being able to speak your truth to your partner is to think of your end game – a better relationship. Yes, feelings may get hurt initially, but if communication becomes more open and respectful, there is a possibility for resolution. If nothing gets said, will there still be hope for the relationship in the future?

Think First

Think about what your truth really is. Are you angry because your partner always leaves dirty socks around the house? Or are you frustrated because you spend more time on household chores than they do, and as a result, have less free time?

The more you can think about your feelings, the clearer they will come out in a conversation. It’s also a really good idea to write your thoughts down to better organize them. When you speak your truth with your partner, there are a lot of emotions. It can be hard to focus and remember what you wanted to say in the first place. Write down your thoughts to better make sense of them.

Ask for help

It’s hard to start communicating if you’re out of practice. Seek a neutral place and a therapist that can guide you through the process. This is especially important if you or your partner has a habit of listing a series of grievances or blames the other or is left feeling unheard and misunderstood. A therapist can act as a mediator and teach you effective communication skills. They can help focus the conversation on the issues at hand and make sure that each person has a turn.

You can try on your own, but if you realize that you’re not making any progress with your partner, but still want to work on your relationship, then a therapist can help lead to better understanding. There’s no shame in seeing a therapist. In fact, the opposite is true. It shows that you are willing to take the time to invest in your relationship and work together to make it better.

Who you are is the most important part of yourself. Take away all your possessions, your career, your friends and family. What is left is you! So why not make the most of this person? To improve your self care, you need to acknowledge your own importance and then look at what will make you happy. You have control over your life; it’s time to start taking it.

Put yourself first

There’s the old adage that in an airplane emergency, you need to put your oxygen mask on yourself first. If you try to help anyone else but don’t have enough oxygen, then you will both suffer. The same is true in life. You may be worried that too much time spent on yourself means not enough time for others. But, if you run out of oxygen, how is that other person going to be helped?

The first step in putting yourself first is to recognize that you deserve to be fulfilled. You deserve to be whole. You deserve to be happy! When you focus on yourself, you can then unleash your full potential.

Ask for help

There is no shame in asking for help. Think of it this way. If your friend asked you for help, would you judge them? Or would you immediately help them? The same holds true for you. Friends and family members want to help you. However, they might not be aware if you’re struggling. Open the lines of communication and let others in. It will feel so much better once you do.

Be specific

Once you’ve asked for help, try your best to be specific about your needs. Remember that no one is a mind reader. The truth is, it’s hard to know exactly what you need to change or what you specifically need help with. This step might need a bit of soul searching. Look to the moments when you feel the most overwhelmed. Then, try to think about what may have triggered those feelings. Look for patterns to see if there are internal factors or external factors. The more aware you are of your needs, the better you can communicate them to the people around you.

Set a personal goal

Think about the kind of person you want to be. Then, work towards that goal. Is that person happy? Is that person energetic? Creative? Helpful? Think about how you want other people to describe you and take the steps to become that person. Once you have a vision of who you want to be, look at the steps needed to accomplish your goal. Do you need to exercise more to become energetic and healthier? Do you want to volunteer your time in something you feel passionate about? Do you want to pursue a creative interest?

You can be happy with who you are and still want to improve your self care. The point is to keep working at being the best version of yourself.

Many people suffer from anxiety, and don’t realize that ignoring the problem or relying on medicine isn’t treating the root cause of the issue. A therapist has a multitude of ways to help you deal with these issues while teaching you how to resolve them by yourself. This is why i put together an article explaining How can therapy relieve my anxiety?

What is anxiety?

Anxiety can manifest itself in many ways, but the discomfort it causes is clear. Anxiety is most often characterized as feelings of worry, self-doubt, fear, stress, and any mixture of these. It’s a normal reaction to many circumstances and has become increasingly common in our society. Many experience these emotions passingly, but being exposed to this for a prolonged time can have severe consequences on your physical health, mental well-being, and other aspects of your live. Physical symptoms vary from stomach aches to tense musculature, and go as far as full-blown panic attacks. Life can be much more complicated, and medicine helps to a certain extent, but psychology is the field most apt to treat this.

Perspective:

Anxiety is often characterized by a few emotional responses that when left to their own devices can worsen the problem. One of these is repetitive thoughts and emotions, which repeatedly expose you to the same ideas and only make the problem worse. A therapist can help a lot by discussing the problem and giving you a different perspective on your feelings, or the problems which gave rise to them. Being able to have someone listen in and give you a 3rd person perspective without all the emotional bias we carry living our lives can help change our points of view and make the emotions or problems seem normal and manageable. Anxiety can blow daily circumstances out of proportion in our minds and make it seem as though there’s nothing we can do about them, but this is very rarely the case.

Brainstorming:

Since anxiety often causes our perspectives of issues and emotions to be distorted, this in turn distorts our abilities to deal with said emotions and problems. A Psychologist is someone you can trust to listen to what you’re going through and help you think of ways you could deal with these issues. People are very quick to ask acquaintances and others for help and emotional support, but a therapist is a trained individual who will help you deal with your current situations while preparing you for the future. Although the immediate relief that therapy causes may seem like reason enough to proceed with the treatment, the main goal is to teach you to deal with your emotions by yourself in the future.

Prevention:

One limitation of experiencing your life from within your mind is that our perspective of ourselves, and of our emotional processes are extremely limited. Throughout your life you develop mechanisms to deal with any problems you encounter. These mechanisms are then automatically used to cope with future problems, but sometimes a solution to one problem isn’t the best way to solve another. A Psychologist is trained to guide your, and help give you that extra perspective which can go a long way in preventing you from becoming anxious in the first place. One example of this is isolation; many people become withdrawn in their own minds and this allows your thoughts and emotions to get hijacked by anxiety. Having someone who keeps an eye on how you react to different stimuli, and can give you tips to prevent a small feeling from growing is one of the biggest boons of therapy.

These are only a few ways that a healthy relationship with a therapist can help relieve not only anxiety, but many other conflicting emotions daily life can bring. I hope you found this article helpful, and know I’m always available for consulting!

Sometimes a relationship has been going on for a long time but that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going well or future-proof. That’s why i’ve put together this list containing 6 Signs a couple is stable in the long-term.

1. A shared hobby / common interests:

Although this is something that sometimes brings people together in the first place, some couples don’t share many interests and hobbies on their free time. This can be negative in the long term because hobbies are a great way to do things together, and to deepen bonds and learn each other’s quirks. For example hard working executives, when dating, often don’t have much free time due to work and stress. Although their relationship may have lasted long, quick sex and occasional meals don’t do much in the way of forming a deep, long-lasting bond.

2. Doing something special on a regular basis

Like the shared interests, being able to do something special together for a change of pace is a very healthy sign. Couple can quickly devolve into spending their time together “alone” in a comfort zone. This means they’re together, but apart; couples that take the time to take a drive to the beach on weekends, for example, are much more likely to progress in their relationships. Wanting to experience new things with a partner means you both have trust and feel comfortable enough with each other to risk leaving your comfort zones safety to do something new. Being able to see your partner in different situations is an extremely rare opportunity because people often show different sides of themselves when faced with new situations or stresses.

3. Comfort with family / friends

An extremely telling sign of a healthy relationship is how your partner deals with your friends and family. Everyone has heard tales of a controlling partner forbidding their significant other from seeing certain friends, or avoiding seeing their family. This is a very important sign because in the end there’s no avoiding someone’s social life and history; they’ve spent their life building this and at one point they’re going to be faced with a choice: staying together and abandoning the offending friends/family, or breaking up. This type of issue is unavoidable and set’s traps that are bound to go off sooner or later. This is why i always ask how how each partner deals with the others’ family and friends.

4. How they argue

This one may seem obvious, but the reality of how couples deal with conflicting opinions is much more complicated than it may seem. For example bickering a little bit here and there is not necessarily a bad sign at all. What really matters is how they resolve the issue, and the attitudes and “negotiation tactics” they use to persuade each other. Couples that are honest and use assertive arguments to express their emotions are much more likely to solve problems while getting to know each other better. Couples that scream, use “emotional blackmail”, or even go as far as using violence are doomed to a tragic failure.

5. how much they compromise

If you don’t sacrifice anything for the well-being of your partner, and relationship, you can’t expect much from either. Obviously entirely foregoing your life to serve your relationship won’t help either! Knowing when to give up eating that food you were craving to go have dinner with your loved ones’ family is a sign of maturity and devotion that’ll go a long way in strengthening your bonds. This brings us to the last and most important sign:

6. How they communicate

Couples with honest and assertive communication skills are the ones that last longest, and can get through anything together. This type of couple “discusses” rather than “argues”, and this really sets them on the track for a long bond. Being completely honest about your opinions requires a massive amount of trust, but is extremely rewards. When you share your vulnerabilities, fears, and emotions your partner can get “in your shoes” and understand who you are on a whole different level. This type of trust takes long to develope, but couples who can’t communcate their emotions at all will face a bumpy ride when confronted with any kind of adversity.

I hope this list was helpful, and keep in mind seeing a professional for relationship counseling can greatly improve all of these signs!