Even the best, most easy-going relationship can become fraught when children come into the mix - between tiredness, the demands of family life and potential disparity in assuming parental roles, your relationship can often deteriorate. Unmet expectations and automatic assumptions along gender roles can easily tip a genial partnership over the edge. Yes, the mix of children into the relationship can be complex and hard.

 Those times when you are just ready to collapse into a heap, switch off and sit in silence - maybe it would be better spent reminding yourself and each other of the reasons why you are together; what makes you love one another. What is good about each other. Choose a time to allow those feelings of resentment and frustration to recede for a while. Remember why you chose to follow the road to parenthood and all the expectation and wonder that brought to your lives. 

 Undoubtedly, taking up the responsibilities of parenthood can make time disappear - many parents run on empty, leaving little patience or energy for the bumps in the road that come along in adult relationships. There can be an assumption that our partner can see a situation the same way, and be prepared to meet a particular need as quickly or as enthusiastically as you would yourself. This can be problematic, as of course most people cannot mind-read, and this leads to feelings of frustration and unmet expectations.

 Unless there is a determined effort to discuss who does what with parenting roles, there can be a tendency to keep a tally. This can be the quickest way to lose the sense of being a team, a partnership. Recent studies have also shown that even in households where a couple try to split responsibilities 50:50, the emotional load of caring seems to fall heaviest on the shoulders of women. 

 In the maze of family life, routine and investing into your children’s upbringing can become all-consuming. Requests become orders, genuine time together can become more like a roommate situation, and we can zone out from each other, with what little energy we have left hungrily focused on what ‘I’ want. Each person forms their own lane of comfort, which never crosses into the lane of their partner. During these times many frustrations can rise, resentment boils over and you move further and further away from the centre where you both used to be. 

 At times like this, you have a choice to make. Do you become more firmly entrenched in solitude and clinging onto your individual needs, or do you remind yourself that you are a team?  Is your goal a loving relationship, full of support? If this is true of both partners, pulling apart during difficult times will take you away from that goal.

 It is true that we can lash out at those we are closest to when we are under duress, but there may also be differences of approach that you haven’t really looked at previously, and need to be addressed.

 How can your relationship get back on track? It needs to start with each individual. If you are self-aware and committed to communication and compassion with each other, then this is the right jumping-off point. Even if you don’t believe there are any issues, laying this groundwork can endlessly help your relationship (even without kids in the mix).  If you understand how to respond instead of reacting, then you can model and mirror the behavior you want to see. Issues can be talked about without conflict always being the overriding factor, and the conversation can once again be less about ‘me’, and more about ‘us’.