My husband and I forgot how to be a team after having kids. These 4 steps saved our marriage.

Yahoo

a day ago

The founders of the popular parenting platform Big Little Feelings — moms and real-life best friends Deena Margolin, a child therapist specializing in interpersonal neurobiology, and Kristin Gallant, a parenting coach with a background in maternal and child education — are back with more parenting wisdom in Yahoo's new column called , a companion to their podcast, After Bedtime With Big Little Feelings. In the third episode of their show, Margolin and her husband open up about how communication, or a lack thereof, played a role in their marital challenges, including leading to feelings of resentment. Margolin reveals that she felt alone and unheard while her husband tended to overthink in isolation rather than talk things through. Margolin explains how their different communication styles set up roadblocks in their relationship and shares the four strategies that saved their marriage.
Before kids, my husband and I rarely fought. We had different personalities, sure — me, more internal and emotional; him, more logical and reserved. But we clicked. We were in love. We knew how to laugh. We were a team.
And then we had a baby.
And then we quickly had another baby.
Then somewhere between the 2 a.m. feeds, the cracked nipples, the mounting work deadlines and the Costco-size packs of diapers, we forgot how to be that team. We didn't yell. We didn't throw plates. But we didn't connect at all. In fact, we barely talked, at least not in a way that made either of us feel seen.
I felt so alone in our relationship, and he felt like he couldn't win. And neither of us knew how to say or get what we really needed from each other.
Here's the dangerous lie many couples fall into: 'If they really loved me, they'd just know what I need.' But here's the truth, both personally and professionally: Your partner is not a mind reader. And they never will be!
I spent so much time feeling invisible, unheard and unsupported. I was carrying the entire mental load of parenting and managing our household, while also building a business and trying not to completely lose myself in motherhood.
Meanwhile, my husband was doing all his problem-solving and decision making in his own head.
So by the time he brought something to me, it was already fully formed: 'This is what I think we should do.' And I was sitting there, like: Wait. What about me? What about what I think?
We weren't screaming at each other — we were slowly drifting. And what grew in that silence wasn't peace, it was resentment.
Psychologist John Gottman refers to the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' in relationships — criticism, contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness — and resentment can be a part of that. Once it's there, it poisons everything, which definitely was true for my relationship.
When we're not talking openly and vulnerably and truly hearing each other, we make assumptions. We project stories. We stop being partners and start becoming adversaries.
So, what actually helped us? Here's what finally started to shift things in our marriage — not overnight, but over time:
Emotional intelligence is the ability to notice, name and regulate emotions, and it's one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction (and yes, it can be learned!). My husband couldn't communicate because he didn't have the tools or even the language to do so. That's not a flaw. It's how a lot of men (and people) are raised. Emotions were never modeled or named in his home. He had to learn how to feel and speak. And well, I am a therapist, who had also been in therapy myself, so we had different skill sets. That had never really been a major issue for us until now, in this new chapter as parents. Therapy gave my husband that ability, and that gave us a starting place.
I'm an external processor, so I like to 'walk the parking lot,' meaning talk it out in real time. My husband is an internal processor, so he loops through everything in his own mind before sharing. This used to make us clash, but now we name it and work with it. We know we need more check-ins, more intentional time and more conversations that are just about us. (Not the grocery list. Not the school calendar. Us.)
We started being explicit and made invisible expectations visible. Here's what that looks like: 'I need you to tell me you see how hard I'm working right now.' 'I'm overwhelmed. Can we talk through who's doing what this week?' 'I don't want you to solve this. I just want you to listen.' And yes, it was awkward at first. But it was better than the guessing game. And research shows that couples who clearly state their needs and check in about expectations regularly have better conflict recovery and stronger emotional bonds.
When we'd relied on spontaneity and hope that it would just 'figure itself out' when it came to chores, communication and more, we failed. We learned that when we had more structure, we succeeded more. We started a shared Google calendar. We wrote down the weekly division of labor. We scheduled time to actually talk without distractions and without phones. One of the biggest steps for us: We also gave each other alone time on purpose, so we could fill our own tanks and show up as a more grounded version of ourselves when together. Sure, scheduling isn't romantic, but it definitely saved us!