Couples Counseling For Parents
Couples Counseling For Parents
Can Kids Ruin Your Couple Relationship?
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Erin Mitchell, MACP and Stephen Mitchell, PhD unwrap the complexities of parenthood and its impact on couples. We crack open the often-misunderstood narrative that children are the wrecking ball of romance, with a sprinkle of humor and personal tales like Stephen's own 'eye-opening' parenting injury.
Strap in as they navigate the seismic shift in dynamics that a new child brings, particularly focusing on the 'default parent' phenomenon. The Mitchell's candid conversation sheds light on the essential growth both partners must commit to, to preserve their connection amid the new context of being parents.
Hello and welcome, mrs Couples. Counseling for Parents. A show about couple relationships, how they work, why they don't, what you can do to fix what's broken. Hello parents, our Dad, dr Steven Mitchell, and our Mom, erin Mitchell.
Speaker 2:Hello and thanks for joining us today on Couples Counseling for Parents. I'm Dr Steven Mitchell, I'm Erin Mitchell. On today's show we want to answer this question can having a kid ruin your relationship?
Speaker 3:To be clear, do I always have a sort of like caveat in the beginning? I feel like I do.
Speaker 2:I think so yes.
Speaker 3:I don't feel excited about answering this question. I understand why we're answering this question. It is a question that comes up pretty often, honestly, I think, and I understand what the question's about, and I know that you don't want to rush into that, but what I don't like Can we just fundamentally say you don't like the question, I don't, I think it places the blame of what ruins a relationship on a tiny child or a giant child, it doesn't really matter, on a child, and I'm just. I'm not ever going to like that.
Speaker 2:So that makes all the sense in the world. What I would like to say is I don't think a kid can ruin a relationship, but they can ruin your eye. This is what I mean by that. So fun fact.
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:a fun fact, all these, all these podcasts are now getting posted on our YouTube channel, so you can kind of see a video version of what we're doing here.
Speaker 3:Well, that is a fun fact.
Speaker 2:That's not what I thought you were going to say, for all of you who are seeing this on video, what you're going to notice is that I look like I got in some kind of alley fight bar fight with someone, because one of my eyes is swollen shut, I think, and I'm bringing this around. I'm bringing this around, I'm getting there.
Speaker 3:Also, it doesn't look like that anymore. You are 700% better than you were last week.
Speaker 2:But you know what? Look at the video, and when you watch the YouTube of this podcast, I want you to honestly ask yourself this question Does his eye look normal? Because it doesn't, even though it looks a lot better, it looks like it's swollen shut still. This is all I'm trying to say is that your kid cannot ruin your relationship, but my kid did this to my eye Five years ago.
Speaker 2:Our youngest son had really long fingernails and he and I were playing. He mistakenly not not on purpose his fingernail went into my eye and dug out a piece of my cornea and every year for the last five, six years, that injury has reemerged. The area that was affected gets ripped back open. My eye swells shut, I can't see, I have headaches, lights, awful. It takes a little while for my eye to kind of heal and get back to normal. We are what four days post this, happening at the recording of this podcast, and so thus my story that Aaron obviously thinks. You'll look at her face also and you'll see that she really is concerned and she really feels that this was a useful expenditure of our time. You know, your kids cannot ruin your relationship, but they can ruin your eye. That's what I have to say.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't like that explanation anymore than I like the question.
Speaker 2:I mean it didn't mean to. It was a mistake.
Speaker 3:But also, you're the one who didn't cut his nails, so did you ruin your own eye?
Speaker 2:So, basically, oh, wow, wow, what a turn.
Speaker 3:He was one. Is he responsible?
Speaker 2:to clip his own fingernails. I know he's not. You know what I ruined my eye it's on me, it's on me.
Speaker 3:I just didn't like the way you said that. Okay, I do feel bad about your eye. It has been awful. It's awful every time it happened.
Speaker 2:It's not five or six years.
Speaker 3:It was five years ago, almost exactly next time.
Speaker 2:Your empathy is overwhelming.
Speaker 3:I thought the storytelling painted a negative picture. I didn't like it.
Speaker 2:So back to the question.
Speaker 3:Can what's the question and the story feel aligned. To me, though, Well.
Speaker 2:So I think that this is sort of at the crux of it. So we get asked this question not infrequently. It comes up in discussions that we hear, you know, just in couples that like we know ourselves, but also in the conversations that we have with other couples, and there's this idea that everything was great and fine in our relationship and then we had kids and then everything got really hard, and so there's this kind of direct so this correlation to like it's becoming parents or having kids that has ruined our relationship, and we obviously don't agree with that, and Aaron particularly feels a lot of energy about that. So we don't need to qualify that, let's just sort of jump in like what like.
Speaker 3:Well, here's one of the things that really bothers me about the question, I think, very often the way it gets used and, to be honest, I think this question gets used to I mean, it happens on our page and our community in various ways. Often, I would say, where someone will be talking about a struggle or will post something, or we bring up a conversation about something that is challenging, about being a couple with kids, and people say this is why I'll never have kids, that's why I would never have kids. All you have to do is never have kids, which is fine if you never want to have kids.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think everyone should have kids.
Speaker 3:I don't mean that at all, I just think being able to talk about a struggle is important and that in no way means that your kids are the problem. Yes or that, like if you didn't have said kid then these problems wouldn't exist.
Speaker 2:Well then I'll ask you what do you think ruins a relationship?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there are many things. I think maybe even I think sort of as many as there are couples. But I think some of the things that spring to mind, especially for parenting partners, I think like something that gets highlighted as parents, is a partner's need for both partners to be addressing sort of their emotional regulation and intelligence. I think when a kid enters the picture we've talked about this a ton. I'm just gonna say me so, like I have a very short rope, is that a way to say that Sure, sure, very small tolerance level for you to lose your patience with our kid?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I think that the only way that that is okay is if I know that is also something we're both working on, because I can lose my patience too. I'm not trying to say like I love it when I do it, but I trust that I'm working on that. I don't like that.
Speaker 3:I'm like I wanna do some stuff to make sure that like I'm able to regulate my stress, and when I see that you are losing your patience and not working on regulating your stress or growing an emotional intelligence, I think that is something that can ruin a relationship.
Speaker 2:Right. So when you feel like you're not on the same page in terms of addressing or coming to or processing this new reality which is parenting, you're not on the same page, in a sense, like taking it seriously and allowing it to change you and allowing it to shift who you are in such a in a very monumental way, and so you feel like, well, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to regulate how I respond to my kids, to the kids, steven, but I don't see you doing that. And then that begins to be a concern.
Speaker 3:I think this is something couples say I'm not saying you're doing it, but yeah, for example, sake, yeah. Yes, I do think that that is something that really starts to tear at the trust.
Speaker 2:And then I say, hey, quit micromanaging how I parent. Why don't you take care of your own side of the street? Quit criticizing me. Who says you know everything about parenting, or this is the way I parent, whatever it might be, or very much, just as if you're some perfect parent.
Speaker 3:You're out there criticizing me like you haven't ever lost your patience, like, well, no, I have. I'm not trying to say I'm a perfect parent, but I do feel like I'm growing. I think that you said the word change. I don't think it's so much, and maybe it is. Maybe couples are really asking their partner to change. I do think partners are asking their partner to grow, like, hey, we have we have this new context where there's something more asked of us and we have to do some more introspection and emotional intelligence and stress regulation.
Speaker 3:I think those are massive things that I do think. So so you're using willingness to do, to work, to grow together on those things I think can ruin a couple of relationships.
Speaker 2:So you're using EQ as an example, but I, but I, but I think if we were to extrapolate this into a larger theme that one of the things you think Ruins a couple of relationship is that both partners are not open to allowing their lives to be as monumentally like changed as the other. And so it's like, so we, we kind of you know.
Speaker 2:So no shock to anyone, but Aaron has had all of our children. Aaron, obviously again, no shock to anyone Her entire physical being was impacted by this experience of having kids and mine was not. And I think even in that simple discrepancy there's this reality that, like, I can be maybe a little bit behind on the reality that having kids, like there needs to be a monumental change in my life to address this new context, whereas maybe, aaron, you already are aware of that because it's happened, you're undergoing and experienced that monumental change. And that's a physical comparison. But then that also like unravels into, like the emotional components of it, the components of like learning about parenting, the components of yeah, you know, like it changes how I view my free time, it changes how we view our time together.
Speaker 3:I think so that role could technically be that. I think what you're saying right now is like the person who biologically carried the kid is obviously impacted, but I think this is true for adopted families as well.
Speaker 2:So I think default parent speaks more generally Sure, so okay, default parent primary caregiver.
Speaker 3:It's the non default parent, which, again, a lot of people take issue with this, and that's okay. You can have different language for it. But there is a difference in how parenting impacts a couple. And also, to be super clear, if you feel like in your couple relationship mutually, that there hasn't been a difference, great.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think most people do, and certainly couples we talk to and you can label that whatever feels true and right for you. But traditionally, typically, this is called default parent, non default parent.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And so if the non default parent isn't willing to acknowledge the difference and take the necessary, well, and I would like to say, the monumental difference, because I think there's this.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there's a little difference, because what we're not saying is that it didn't monumentally also change your life.
Speaker 3:It's just a monumental difference in what for the two of us, how we experience that Right.
Speaker 2:Right, there is a. It is a monumental change. There is a discrepancy in how we feel that. I think, because of the embodied nature of having children, the birthing partner feels that monumental change to the one millionth degree in comparison to the non default, non birthing parent, which is usually how they those usually go together. That I don't guess, they always have to, but, and so all I'm saying is there's, there's.
Speaker 2:It's like this game of catch up all of us is happening.
Speaker 2:So it's like and I think we've experienced this in our own relationship this huge change happened to you and you were experiencing it for nine to 10 months before, like in your body in a way that I never was.
Speaker 2:And then baby comes and and it's like you're trying to tell me the whole time hey, hey, this is a big deal, hey, things have really changed, hey, we have to re-orchestrate how we do our life because of this, this really significant change.
Speaker 2:And and not that I didn't, I was trying to be slow and understanding that, or didn't want to understand that, or didn't try to understand that, or didn't feel like things had changed for me, it's just I wasn't at the same level of change and understanding that you were, and I think a lot of those conflicts are where one partner is trying to get the other partner to understand what it feels like to have had a kid and the other partner is like the non default, non primary caregiver is like I don't know what you're talking about. It's yeah, it's different, or it's hard for me to, or well, I just want to. I mean, why can't we just go back to the way it was and it just, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. And that very conversation is the thing that quote unquote ruins the relationship.
Speaker 3:Wait, what you? Everything you just described them like. Well, yeah, that is a perfect recipe for a perfect storm.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Of how a relationship feels like. Well, what are we then? If we fundamentally disagree and, like, honestly feel disrespected to some extent and demoralized and invalidated. And now these core places of who we are, yeah, I think that can ruin a couple of relationship. I think that's very much something that can and will if not addressed.
Speaker 2:And so I don't. Again, though, the focus is not the kid, but it's the idea of the inability to communicate one's experience and have their partner understand it.
Speaker 3:Mutually.
Speaker 2:Mutually. Yes, it goes both ways. That's what. That's what makes the relationship feel awful.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say this too I think that there's a part of getting it that the non default, non primary caregiver partner has to deal with, and that there is, there is a level of not getting it.
Speaker 2:That was that happened in my like, for me, in relationship to your experience. That required some real soul searching and some real humility and some real acknowledgement on my part. Yes, maybe you weren't understanding my experience and there were things I was trying to communicate, but there's something different about what the non default, non primary caregiving partner has to do to help bridge this gap, and I think the main thing is just to acknowledge my life has changed, your life has changed, your life has changed in a way that is so different and other than what I understand can understand that it creates a big gap between us, and I have to work my tail off to try and understand it and to acknowledge it and to recognize it and to be mindful of it as the non default, non primary caregiving partner. That's what I would say, and they're probably people who don't like that.
Speaker 3:But Well, there's people who don't like a lot of things. I think I agree with everything you said. I think the gap piece I started to get a little fuzzy, I think. All I think you mean, though, is that there's a gap like my body wasn't impacted the way yours was.
Speaker 2:I didn't have to breastfeed, I didn't like all these kinds of things. That's a huge gap of understanding, like I don't like that changes your life in a way that's different than mine and, to be quite honest, is harder, and I have to work to understand that gap and you don't have to work to understand that for me, because that didn't happen. That's all I mean in terms of the difference. It's not like our lives changed in the same way.
Speaker 3:It's changed Our lives to be clear, did both change dramatically? And I think that's a lot of times where the non-default parent gets really caught up, Like for me to acknowledge that you're this default parent, whatever that means, it's somehow like saying my life's totally normal.
Speaker 1:I have no stress, no fear.
Speaker 3:I'm sleeping great. Yeah, which is not. That's just not it at all, at all, at all. Okay, wait, so I think we're getting off task here, because, yes, so I think what you're saying is an acknowledgement of the difference is a very important thing Again, because if there isn't that shared understanding, what are we talking about? Like, if I don't feel like, you have a sort of like understand this cost. That is running through my mind all of the time.
Speaker 3:And I think that's one of the things we talk about too. If you can't understand that, or I feel like that you're like yeah, we know exactly what this is like for you. I don't feel known anymore in this relationship and if I try to explain it and you tell me, no, that's not true, or? No, it's not different or invalidated.
Speaker 2:Or it's the same, or my experience is the same, whatever it might be, or even harder, or like, oh yeah, well, you don't know, and there is truth to that.
Speaker 3:So I think this is a very nuanced conversation, but this is something that can absolutely tear at the fabric of connection and even desire to connect. Another thing that can tear a couple system apart, a relationship, is family dynamics. I think that's a major one.
Speaker 2:That's right. They really become more wow, that's good. That's good Because that's a really intense. That's something that definitely intensifies post having kids.
Speaker 1:Are those structures?
Speaker 3:Yeah, even great extended family dynamics intensify. I think they can sort of compound for the better and like, oh my goodness, we feel so supported and loved and done, or compound for the more complicated.
Speaker 2:We thought we would be supported, or the way I was willing to tolerate X behavior when we didn't have a little person around, but like I'm not exposing them to that. So like what are we going to do?
Speaker 3:And by that I mean you. What are you going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and then that becomes really tough because you're trying to your family of origin. Dynamics begins to interrupt your partner relationship and your family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like this family, our family.
Speaker 2:The family that you're creating. Yeah, that is a really significant thing also that does.
Speaker 3:I think this is tied to emotional regulation and sort of stress response and ability to regulate stress. We did a podcast with hey Sleepy Baby and this is making me think of it right now Because I think I'll backtrack into my thought process. Stephen says I'm not a straight line. I come out sort of like seven steps into my thoughts. But I think a lot of parents think like okay, we are aligned, we have this and you know you're a couple months in or a couple years in or a lot of years then, and we were particularly talking about, like hey, our philosophy on sleep and how we're going to sleep.
Speaker 2:How we're going to sleep, you know how we're going to do sleep with our kids and you think you're coming in like we're on the same page and you are, you 100% are. But then and then it happens. You're sleeping, you have your kids and you're like we got to figure out sleep.
Speaker 3:And whatever you thought, you agreed to, and this isn't like us promoting one style over another or anything Like. Whatever it is like we agreed that our kid would be in the bassinet in our room forever Right, until they grew out of it.
Speaker 2:But you know what I mean. Right, right, right For a very long time and then suddenly they're 18 and in the bassinet. It's amazing how they fit in that thing, it's shocking.
Speaker 3:But then either the one parent's like I want to bring them in, or the other parent's like I need them out.
Speaker 2:Like we're not sleeping, something's got to change and it's like but we talked about this and we said we were going to do it this way, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And these things can, and none of these things are problems. All of these sort of topical things we're talking about are not problems. These things, unaddressed, I think, are what Like. So if you and your partner are finding about where your kid is sleeping right now, that's not a problem. If you and your partner are unable to get on the same page about where your kid is sleeping right now, yeah. That, that great I mean these things. It really Parenting is core to who we are.
Speaker 3:And so it's like well, how can we disagree on something like this?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And still feel aligned as a couple.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:If we are so unaligned, misaligned, dealigned.
Speaker 2:Not on the same alignment.
Speaker 3:Different aligned On some of these things that feel so important to me, I think. I think you start to feel really unknown and, honestly, really unloved pretty fast.
Speaker 2:Having kids. It intensifies a lot of family relationships. It intensifies the feeling of not being validated or understood. It intensifies the conversation it can prioritize.
Speaker 3:I mean personally, like I love Stephen with our kids reading a book to them, catching them, telling them some silly joke, playing cards, whatever, like those moments soothe my soul, like into my bones. But I wanna still feel loved too, and I think you would agree. I think we experience love differently, but like I still wanna feel like still love me, right, you still love me. I think some of these things make it feel like you don't love me, you don't or you don't get me.
Speaker 2:Because you can't get on the same wavelength in the midst, completely. You did, you did like totally. So I was saying something, then you came in and it just took in a different direction.
Speaker 3:You said supported and I'm like, yeah, it is supportive, but it's also like so much like no, you know how I feel loved is when I don't feel derailed and interrupted, I think something you might like is when you were saying, I get the difference. I actually get what you were saying, too, about the overarching sort of theme, Because if you can talk, if you can be open to one another's input and this is some of the ways I feel like I'm changing- or that.
Speaker 3:I'm growing, or being asked to grow, and feel stretched to the point of very, very, very very, then here, if you can share those places and then go somewhere, you can handle anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think and I think that's what you were trying to say Like an openness to yeah, but because the thing is is this new context intensifies all these areas and there's like probably 30 other areas that get intensified right.
Speaker 3:Oh, I think honestly, I think we could as many couples as exist we could all message with that and this and this.
Speaker 2:And so part of it is having an open enough, like you were saying conversation.
Speaker 3:That.
Speaker 1:I was saying, you were saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, being able to be open enough to say how can we deal with this intensity? How can we deal with feeling like we're in different places? And even though we're in different places, how can we still move to a place of being together? Even if we disagree, even if we, even if we have to compromise a little bit, how do we still stay a team? How do we help one another, manage and deal with the intensity? And I think a lot of that is.
Speaker 2:First of all, you have to be willing to examine why you become defensive when these conversations. You have to understand what the intensity is for you, like. Why are you feeling the increased level of stress or the increased distress? What kind of is behind your defensiveness? When your partner tries to bring it up or tries to address it, because that undoubtedly happens, and then being able to kind of share that in what's happening, then you can be like okay, like this feels intense for me too.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm not trying to say that you don't care about being emotionally intelligent and regulating yourself with our kids. What I'm trying to say is I feel concerned, like I want, as a couple, for us to work on knowing how to increase our EQ and how to regulate our emotions and do that together. Or I'm not trying to say your family's the worst family that's ever lived on the face of the earth, but there are some things that, when it comes to your family and talking about it, I find myself getting stressed Like. What I want to do is be able to, as a couple, like have an understanding of how we want to relate and interact with your family and my family in a way that feels good for us both, like those kinds of conversations rather than the conflict that comes.
Speaker 3:I'm stuck. I mean I cannot tell you how many couples we talk to in our consults, or that we hear about, or that reach out, whatever. Who say we're stuck? Like we both actually want to understand, because I do think that it's. I think it is very common for one partner to not Like I don't want to have this conversation. I know where it's going to go. No, that happens. I've been that partner well, no you have, though, but I think more often than not, couples want to be able to have these conversations.
Speaker 2:You know what.
Speaker 3:I think most couples are wanting to like hey, let's figure this out, but it goes wrong the same ways every time, and I think that's what you're saying, Like let's try to address why and where and how.
Speaker 2:And, to be quite honest, that's why we exist in the world. We have, like, all the resources we do. A number will podcast about this. We have workshops with our membership about this. We have a whole series of workshops on in-law relationships. We have other two other series of workshops on communication and like how to work through.
Speaker 3:And some of these bigger topics too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, understanding these bigger topics. Our Instagram is about all of this, and so you might be saying, like, well, how? And we're saying well, how is delve into those resources. Listen to our podcast, check out the workshops, look at the Instagram handle, because we do. This is a conversation that is perpetual and always ongoing. Couples are always trying to understand how do we have this more open style and way of connecting with each other, and we try to talk about it from 150 different angles in all of those places. So, yeah, check those things out. Today's show was produced by Aaron and Steven Mitchell. If you're enjoying the podcast, please hit the follow button and leave us a rating. This helps our content become more visible to others who might enjoy it, and it lets us know how we can keep improving the show. And, as always, we're grateful for you listening. Thanks so much for being with us here today on Couples Counseling for Parents, and remember, working on a healthy couple relationship is good parenting.