Eduard has 9-year-old twins, is getting separated and has been living on an emotional rollercoaster for the past year and a half. The reason for the breakup, he says, was “the end of love”. The routine took its toll on the bond. “We didn’t know how to create space for the couple, and when we realized that there was nothing left, we decided to end it,” he explains to La Vanguardia.
The Observatory of the Spanish Association of Family Lawyers points out that the first reason for divorce is “wear and tear, estrangement and lack of communication brought about by the stress caused by raising children”. According to couples therapy specialists, this is the main reason for 80% of their consultations.
“Often couples do not identify the real problem, they expose a sexual disconnection. But when they delve deeper, paternity or motherhood immediately emerges as the cause”, explains Núria Jorba, psychologist, sexologist and couple’s therapist. “In most cases, the divorce or separation occurs after a few years of the first child, when the problems have taken root”, points out Patricia Rodríguez, matrimonial lawyer.
Maria has also experienced it with her partner – now ex -, and the pandemic caught her in the middle of the separation process. They were and remain excellent friends: they go to concerts together, help each other and make plans with mutual colleagues, but their relationship as a couple with children did not work out. They have lived together for more than two years, being separated, with their two children aged 6 and 8. “Parenting affected our relationship 100%. Before children we did few things alone because we had a lot of plans with people and reserved a lot of individual space. But when you have kids, if you don’t take care of alone time, it’s all family logistics. We became flatmates”, she says.
“We have always put the children first and that has worn us down. We created a kind of bubble about the creatures, we always talked about them. Also, since we had a very small family, we were ashamed to ask for favors, we didn’t leave them with the grandparents, and when we did, the children protested and there was conflict.” Maria also acknowledges that they did not ask for help from the environment, “if it was not essential”.
Jorba, a psychologist, and Rodríguez, a matrimonial lawyer, agree on a diagnosis: they treat many couples with problems arising from the wrongly called “natural” parenting, the family bed and prolonged breastfeeding. “In this way of raising, the child sets the pace, the spaces, the baby is always in the middle and, therefore, the couple does not exist”, points out Jorba. “There are family beds that extend up to 8 years. I see parents in the buffet who haven’t slept in their room since the child was born”, comments the lawyer, with years of experience listening to stories of relationships that end.
For Jorba, the family bed, without a doubt, negatively affects the bond and sexuality. “Let’s be realistic, in the daily routine there is no more time than night and bed for intimacy. I don’t mean just sex, but an emotional conversation, a space for caresses, for example.” He adds that “the free demand of babies means that fathers and mothers are just that, fathers and mothers who are 24/7 waiting for any need of the child”.
That of Eduard’s family could be one of the cases explained by the specialists. “Today the twins are nine years old, but they still make a family bed, with me and their mother. We prioritized – me first – sleeping well. Ask that, when they woke up, in our bed! This affects the couple’s relationship, you don’t have sex!” Sleeping in the same bed, he says, gave them precious moments when the children were babies, but he admits that he would have “liquidated” it at the age of five or six. The problem “was that by then they were already used to it, and it was very difficult”.
In the case of Maria, it was she who decided to opt for the family bed, “not for ideology, but for practicality”. It was easy, the couple and their two children slept in a giant bed. “Of course, this took away our privacy”, he confesses. “The lack of libido was mutual, we weren’t looking for each other. After the kids, the kind of sex we had was low-key, no frills and no love. It was all very physiological, to let off steam. This creates laziness, and the less sex you have, the less you need,” he adds. This also lowered their self-esteem. “That the partner stops seeing you as a desirable person affects a lot.”
Leave of absence from work to take care of babies, the family bed, letting the baby cry or not, prolonged breastfeeding or alternatives such as formula, childcare or babysitting, the role of grandparents… These are issues that require the consensus of the parents who are raising them together. In the case of Maria and Eduard, there were no problems of conjugal understanding in this regard, but according to the two professionals consulted, it is common for there to be. “I came across a divorce suit in which the mother asked that the children not be with the father at night because he had wanted to impose the Estivill method”, says the lawyer specializing in family law.
Before having children “not even 5% of the necessary issues were agreed upon, we were not taught to talk and negotiate about it. If one goes to the gym three afternoons a week, when there is a child, it is the other who is responsible for the child during that time. Then the tricky game begins. There was no agreement without children, now it is”, explains Jorba. The more shared responsibility, the more possible disagreements and arguments. “In a job interview you talk about the salary, the hours, the tasks assigned, the conditions… With motherhood and fatherhood, we should do the same”, points out the specialist in couple psychology.
In parenting that favors breastfeeding, the nursing mother has a lot of weight, for a purely biological matter. Maria lived it intensely. “For the first few months I was so in love with my babies that I didn’t want to part with them. He was going to football with his friends one day, and it seemed fine to me, I thought that on a Friday night there was no better plan than to be with my children. In addition, I was breastfeeding”, he says.
In these first months of motherhood and fatherhood, it is difficult to divide the roles of each one, to establish balanced dynamics. “Equality is almost impossible in the first years of the child. That’s why I tell couples that everyone has to find their role. It is necessary to determine who is in charge of the parenting part (breastfeeding, having a closer bond), and what role the other person plays (maintaining the partner, considering leisure, taking care of the house and the management… .)”, explains Jorba.
Many mothers, in heterosexual relationships, as pointed out by Jorba and Rodríguez, in the face of the misnamed “affectionate” or “natural” model of parenting, make it difficult for the father to get involved. “They come for consultation saying: ‘My partner does nothing’. It got to this point because every time he did something, she corrected him. I meet parents who don’t know anything, or where the children’s clothes are.” Rodríguez explains that futility is often used as a weapon. “‘Am I putting the washing machine in the wrong place? Well, I don’t wear it’, they say. Someone will do it for them!”. You enter a loop that requires a lot of dialogue, serenity and patience.
Maria never relegated her ex-partner from raising the children. She always let him participate, but the mental burden was one of the biggest problems in the relationship. A mental burden suffered by 71% of women in Spain, according to 2019 data collected by a study by P
Being a couple has nothing to do with being parents, and when we build our relationships we need to think about that. “It’s one thing to choose a partner and another to choose the father or mother of your children. Maybe a person suits you as a partner, but not as a parent. If this happens, it is necessary to have a very difficult internal dialogue”, explains Núria Jorba. “I see many women under pressure because of their age, because they want to be mothers. When you want to have children with someone, consider whether they are a good ex-partner”.
Communication is essential in any case, both when deciding whether to have a baby and in disagreements during parenting. Because, as the therapist concludes, “when the children are independent, the couple sits on the sofa, looks at each other and both wonder who that person is next to them”.
