7 Reasons Why Couples Connection Gets Better After Kids

Getting married and living the married is one amazing type of journey you will experience. Every day you get to learn something new about your partner and thier family. Each day is a challenge on how to keep the family connected and happy. And then comes the time, when you have kids. If you read any articles about marriage after kids, you’ll most likely read that it’s more hard work, that you have to make more effort or any other derivative of ‘hard’ and ‘work’. Which is true to some extent. But I don’t think we focus on the positive enough, the ways in which marriage is better after kids.

At first it is difficult to adjust to parenthood.But this doesn’t have to be a negative thing. In fact, I have found that as we have added children to our family, our marriage has actually gotten better!

# We Have Become More Efficient At Communicating

Communication is something that we spend a lot of our focus on, sometimes it falls by the wayside, but most of the time it is front and centre. BUT… we don’t have hours to chat, and usually, our conversations are taking place while we are doing other things.

Which is why we have become more efficient at communicating.

We know we need to get to the point quickly, express our concerns or worries, share our ideas for solutions and create a plan to move forward.

# We Make The Most Of The Time We Have Together

Date nights aren’t always possible, and I don’t think they are necessarily essential to the happiness of a relationship if you manage to make the most of the time you do have together.

After the kids are in bed each night, instead of watching TV mindlessly, we snuggle and chat and catch up on our time. Sometimes we will watch a movie together and have an at-home ‘date night’, other times we will talk about our current goals and our plans for achieving them.

It also means when the rare occasion comes up that we both have a day off together without the kids, we put each other first, put our marriage first and we spend that day together, regardless of what else we have going on.

# We Make A Conscious Effort To Connect

Before kids, we had all the time in the world together. Connecting was simple, we didn’t have to share our bed with kids, share our space with kids, we could be together whenever we wanted.

But now… not so much. Which means we have to make a conscious effort to connect, to talk with each other, to do things for each other, to be thinking of each other.

Simple things like having the coffee out ready for the other person of a morning, or leaving a sweet ‘I love you’ note somewhere, or talking to each other, even if it is on the phone, can make the world of difference.

# We Have Become Intimacy Opportunists

Our little girl bed shares with us, and we absolutely love it. We wouldn’t have it any other way. When I was telling this to my beautician, she said ‘oh, but doesn’t your husband hate that you can’t have sex because your daughter is there?’

First of all, so many things wrong with that statement. Second of all, he is the one that loves bedsharing with her, even more than me. AND, if your bed is the only place you can be intimate with your husband then you’re missing out!

# We Appreciate Each Other More

Speaking of appreciation, we have found that we appreciate each other even more. I mean, we’ve always appreciated each other, but after kids? That’s a whole new level of gratitude.

I appreciate my husband’s cleanliness even more allowing me to spend more time with the kids rather than cleaning, he appreciates my desire to be the breadwinner allowing him to spend more time with the kids rather than having to work all the time.

# We Have Greater Patience With Each Other

I’m not the most patient person at the best of times, but having kids has made me become far more patient because things don’t happen on my time anymore, it’s all on their time, especially when they are babies, and that’s just how it’s meant to be.

So, thanks to this, my patience has spread to my marriage too. Not that it was an issue before, but I found I don’t get irritated as easily, the little things that frustrated me before just don’t bother me now and whatever frustrations I do have I tend to move past faster because my husband is my safe and calm place, not a place of frustration.

# We Have Become More Responsive To Each Others Needs

Before you have kids it’s easy to be a little selfish, which is a good thing! You absolutely should be. As you’re finding your feet in marriage, you start putting each other’s needs first and this is exactly how it’s supposed to be.

But, when kids come along, it’s essential that you are responsive to each other’s needs and you put your marriage first.

As full of love as your life is with kids, it’s also quite chaotic. Acknowledging when your spouse needs extra love and support and then following through is so important to being able to maintain a happy and healthy marriage. This is one of the things we found makes our marriage even better after having kids.