Having children of any age can pose a significant challenge to your love life. When the kids are new borns, you are so exhausted, often miserable adjusting and while nursing, over touched and dripping from every orifice. Sex just seems like faint memory. when the kids are toddlers and in elementary school, you are still exhausted, rethinking your role as “mother” afraid they are gonna wake up and come wandering in and all your energy seems to be channeled into collecting playmobile and action heros off the floor. And just when you think it’s better and they become teens, you find that they stay up later than you, seem more conscious of everything that is going on and you become more self conscious.
Your not crazy. Having kids really does put a cramp in your love life. But your will be fooling yourself if you think that “the next stage” will be easier. the truth is you need to address each stage of life individually, be honest about the challenges and come up with solutions that work well for you. In future posts I’ll go into this more.
In the meantime, a wonderful patient told me that she had enlisted the kids to help give mommy and daddy “alone time” on Sunday’s from 1- 4 (or something like that). They explained to the older kids that they needed some quality time together when they wouldn’t be disturbed and now the kids all band together to work on it!!! She told me that a few weeks ago her 5 year old stood outside her bedroom door, bellowing at the top of her lungs: “Turn the TV down!! You know this is mommy and daddy’s quiet time!”