Eduard has 9-year-old twins, he is separating and for a year and a half he has lived on an emotional roller coaster. The reason for their breakup, he says, was “the end of love.” The routine took its toll on the bond. “We did not know how to create space for the couple, and when we realized that there was nothing left, we decided to end it,” he told La Vanguardia.
The Observatory of the Spanish Association of Family Lawyers points out that the first reason for divorce is “wear and tear, distance and lack of communication caused by the stress caused by raising children”. According to specialists in couples therapy , this is the main reason for 80% of your inquiries.
“Often couples don’t identify the real problem, they expose a sexual disconnect. But when they go deeper, paternity or maternity immediately emerges as the cause of it ”, tells us Núria Jorba, psychologist, sexologist and couples therapist. “In most cases, divorce or separation occurs a few years after the first child, when the problems have become entrenched,” explains Patricia Rodríguez, a matrimonial lawyer.
María has also experienced it with her partner -already ex-, whom the pandemic caught 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 common colleagues, but their relationship with their children did not work out. They have lived together for more than two years, being separated, with their two little ones, ages 6 and 8. “Raising affected our relationship 100%. Before we were children, we already did few things alone because we had many plans with people and we reserved a lot of individual space. But when you have children, if you don’t take care of the moments alone, it’s all family logistics. We became roommates,” she says.
Eduard describes a similar situation. “We have always put children first and that has worn us down. We created a kind of bubble over the creatures, we always talked about them. In addition, having a very small family, we were embarrassed to ask for favors, we did not leave them with the grandparents, and when we did, the little ones protested and there was conflict”. María also acknowledges that they did not ask the environment for help, “if it was not essential”.
Jorba, a psychologist, and Rodríguez, a matrimonial lawyer, agree on a diagnosis: they treat many couples with problems derived from so-called “natural” upbringing, co-sleeping, and prolonged breastfeeding. “In this way of raising, the child marks the tempos, the spaces, the baby is always in the middle and, therefore, the couple does not exist,” says Jorba. “There are co-sleeping beds that last up to 8 years. I see parents in the law firm who have not slept in her room since the child was born, ”says the lawyer, with years of experience listening to stories of relationships that end.
For Jorba, co-sleeping undoubtedly negatively affects bonding and sexuality. “Let’s be realistic, in the daily routine there is no more time than the night and the bed for intimacy. I am not referring only to sex, but to an emotional conversation, a space for caresses, for example”. He adds that “the free demand for babies makes fathers and mothers just that, fathers and mothers who are 24/7 aware of any need of the creature.”
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 co-bed, with me and their mother. We have prioritized -me the first- to sleep well. So, when they woke up, to our bed! That affects the couple’s relationship, you don’t have sex!”. Sleeping in the same bed, he says, gave them precious moments when the little ones were babies, although he admits that he would have “liquidated” it at five or six years old. The problem “was that by then they were used to it, and it was very difficult.”
In the case of María, it was she who decided to do co-sleeping, “not out of ideology, but out of practicality”. It was easy, the couple and the two children slept in a giant bed. “Of course, that took away from our privacy,” she confesses. “The lack of libido was reciprocal, we were not looking for each other. After the children, the type of sex we had was hardly elaborated, without pampering and without affection. It was all very physiological, to let off steam. That breeds laziness, and the less sex you have, the less you need it,” she adds. This also lowered her self-esteem. “That the partner stops seeing you as a desirable person, affects a lot.”
Leave of absence from work to care for babies, co-sleeping or not, letting the baby cry or not, prolonged breastfeeding or alternatives such as formula, nursery or babysitting, the role of grandparents… These are issues that require parental consent. who breed together In the case of Maria and Eduard, there were no marital understanding problems in this sense, but according to the two professionals consulted, it is common for there to be. “I came across a divorce petition 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 have been agreed upon, they have not taught us to talk and negotiate about this. If one goes to the gym three afternoons a week, when there is a child, it is the other who takes responsibility for the child during that time. That’s where the complicated game begins. Without children, there was no need to agree, now yes”, explains Jorba. The greater the shared responsibility, the more possible disagreements and discussions. “In a job interview, you talk about salary, hours, assigned tasks, conditions… With maternity and paternity, we should do the same,” says the specialist in couple psychology.
In the upbringing that is committed to breastfeeding, the nursing mother has a great weight, due to a purely biological issue. Maria lived it intensely. “The first few months she was so in love with my babies she didn’t want to separate me from them. He was going to soccer one day with his friends, 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 breastfed ”, she recounts.
In those first months of maternity and paternity it is difficult to distribute the roles of each one, to establish balanced dynamics. “Equality is almost impossible in the first years of the creature. That’s why I tell the couples that each one has to find her role. It is necessary to establish who is in charge of the parenting part (breastfeeding, having a closer bond), and what role the other person plays (maintaining the couple, planning leisure, taking care of the house and the efforts…) ”, Jorba explains.
Many mothers, in heterosexual relationships, as Jorba and Rodríguez point out, faced with the misnamed attachment or “natural” parenting model, make it difficult for the father to get involved. “They come to the consultation saying “my partner does nothing”. She got there because every time he did something, she corrected it. I meet parents who don’t know anything, not even where the children’s clothes are”. Rodríguez explains that uselessness is often used as a weapon. “Do I put the washing machine wrong? Well, I don’t put 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 little ones. She always let him participate, but the mental load was one of the big problems in her relationship. A mental burden suffered by 71% of women in Spain, according to 2019 data collected by a study by P
Dating has nothing to do with being parents, and when we build our relationships, we have to think about it. “It is one thing to choose a partner and another is to choose the father or mother of your children. Maybe a person fits you as a partner, but not as a parent. If that happens, you have to have a very difficult internal dialogue”, explains Núria Jorba. “I see many women with age pressure, because they want to be mothers. When you want to have children with someone, ask yourself if she is a good ex-partner.
Communication is essential in any case, both at the time of 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, they look at each other and they both wonder who that person next to them is.”
