
Last week’s post examined the necessities and benefits of coming to “know thyself” while parenting and partnering. Today, we continue this 10-week series which aims to explore one new core social-emotional capacity or practice every week to strengthen your family and partnership. This week’s post, the 3rd installment, focuses on a vital practice parents can undertake to help their families thrive: cultivating one’s marriage or partnership.
Creating a long term committed relationship while raising kids is the ultramarathon of human relating. If you want to give yourself a serious challenge in life, then this is the terrain for you.
Raising kids is a ton of work to say the least, especially in light of the new intensive parenting paradigm. If you and your partner hope to launch your kids together while still liking each other on the other side of the empty nest, then cultivating better relationship practices is a must.
One of the greatest things you can do for your kids is work on your marriage, so says David Code. In his book To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First, Code unpacks the ways in which couples can address unfinished business in their family of origin as well as with their spouse, which greatly benefits their own kids. It’s a book worth checking out.
Economist Melissa Kearney in her book The Two-Parent Privilege reveals the unsettling truth routinely supported by economic data that kids in two-parent families gain enormous benefits from living in these households, including living in safer neighborhoods and attending higher performing schools. She points out that these children enjoy the fruits of three straightforward things:
1. More money for the household
2. More time for the kids
3. Shared work among parents
Important to note, is that kids in upper income households have continued to reap the benefits of two-parent families with little statistical change over the last several decades in terms of the total percentage of married couples raising kids in this income bracket. Conversely, lower income families have disproportionately experienced, at increasing levels, the disadvantages of growing up in single parent households. These disadvantages include living in less safe neighborhoods and attending poorer performing schools among other minuses, which are also further exacerbated by the growing economic disparities in this country.
Given the increased pressures of modern parenting, it is more important than ever to fortify one’s caregiving team to meet the demands. Married couples can rely on each other for a shared workload. Single parents raising kids with an ex-partner can strengthen their co-parenting skills while those raising kids solo can put key supports in place – including a team of family and friends – to help with the demands. Creating a team approach, no matter your marital status or income bracket, will benefit your kids.
For married and partnered couples, the proscription to cultivate one’s marriage can feel mystifying or unwieldy, yet the benefits are clear. Two well-known psychologist couples break it down into more concrete terms. John and Julie Gottman of the Gottman Institute and Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, authors of Getting the Love You Want, provide ample, evidence-based practices to help couples develop their skills and capacities.
John Gottman has been conducting marriage research for over 35 years in his Love Lab at the University of Washington. His wife Julie Gottman works in clinical practice to support families. Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt worked in private practice and have written many books on marriage, including the New York Times best-selling Getting the Love You Want.
The Gottman Institute draws on an enormous body of research to inform couples how to better understand and improve their marriages. The Hendrix-Hunt duo has introduced the invaluable Couples Dialogue to the world, a tool to use with your spouse to manage conflict and achieve deeper understandings together.
There are many things that couples can do to start shifting the dynamics in their marriage for the better. Here’s a short list of some key take-aways from the dynamic Gottman and Hendrix duos:
1.Turn Toward Your Partner
2. Cultivate a Culture of Respect and Appreciation
3. Create a Surplus in Your Emotional Bank Account ~ of small positive interactions: Gottman’s research found that the magic ration is 5:1 – for every one negative interaction you have, you need 5 more to keep a positive connection in your relationship
4. Learn how to Manage Conflict ~ it’s inevitable, it’s not “bad,” and it will help you both grow
5. Routinely Use the Couples Dialogue ~ to manage conflict and to aid in better understanding and respecting your partner’s point of view
6. Close Your Exits – consciously commit to your marriage and turn away from other distractions, interests or titillations that could undermine your ability to connect with your partner
There are many more practices and understandings that couples can develop to create a better path forward when the stressors of raising kids mount. Learning these skills takes work. It also requires unlearning old patterns.
Yet couples must if they wish to create deeper and lasting connections in their marriage or partnership. Learning how to turn toward your partner, for instance, means that instead of isolating when something feels awry or off in your marriage or in your family life together, one instead orients towards one’s spouse for support and understanding. Couples often need to create a greater sense of trust and commitment in order to turn to each other with a sense of safety.
David Code, in To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First, discusses the three ways couples deal with stress, or what he calls anxiety, in a marriage: (1) projecting it onto our kids, (2) blaming our spouse, or (3) distancing from our spouse. Distancing is the silent killer that leads to lonely partnerships, affairs, divorce and even psychosomatic symptoms or illness among other exits. Learning to turn towards each other is an antidote to these unfortunate outcomes.
Reflecting on questions like the ones below foster insight into your marriage and can lead to more of the connection you want:
· What are you avoiding in your relationship?
· What makes you feel the most secure and loved with your partner?
· What might you be missing or not seeing in relating to your spouse?
· What might you be hiding from your partner or yourself?
In addition to building a culture of respect and appreciation with your spouse, long-term, committed relationships are comprised of many discussions, negotiations, compromises and often forgiveness, so reflecting on these types of questions doesn’t necessarily portend the need to work through each of these things directly with your spouse (though they might). Often they are the things you need to work out within yourself in order to keep choosing to be in relationship with your spouse.
Regardless of how you reconcile these types of questions, in marriage and partnership, having the intention to create a life together will help you to hold onto it, especially as the pressures and intensities of raising kids together rise.
When you learn how to appreciate your spouse and enjoy your partnership, the rewards are deep and rich, the companionship can be endlessly enjoyable, and the support healing and life-giving. So roll up your sleeves, and get to work. It’s worth it.
Explore More
Tuesdays@Noon, Upcoming Drop-In Parenting Chat Group (ongoing brief support) – https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/weekly-tuesday-noon-drop-in-parents-chat?referral=service_list_widget
Thursdays@Noon, Upcoming Drop-In Couples Chat Group (ongoing brief support) - https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/weekly-thursday-noon-drop-in-couple-chat?referral=service_list_widget
Tuesday, July 16th, 7:00 p.m. ET, Parenting EQ Workshop (1 hour; up your parenting game) - https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/1-hour-positive-discipline-parent-intro?referral=service_list_widget
Thursday, July 18th, 7:00 p.m; ET, Couple EQ Workshop (1 hour; build a better partnership starting now) - https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/1-hour-intro-to-couples-work?referral=service_list_widget
Further Learning
Getting the Love You Want (2005), Harville Hendrix
The Two-Parent Privilege (2023), Melissa Kearney
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (1999), John Gottman and Nan Silver
To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First (2009), David Code