Welcome to my very first Love Makes a Family blog carnival post. Basically, a group of queer TTC/Parenting blogs are taking on a specific subject. Today, how a baby can affect your relationship! Read away. At the end, follow the link to the next participant.
I often say that we had a great relationship then we decided to ruin it all by having a kid. It’s sadly not too far from the truth. Until we had Finn and then Zivia I knew only one couple who had disintegrated in front of my eyes. Now I can count way too many.
This week I learned of yet another. Betrayal, infidelity, unhappiness. All those words came to mind as I discovered the details of how yet another couple has been Destroyed by Baby. You might think that this is a black and white way to look at things. After all, how can a sweet chubby little bundle of joy be the thing that brings down people who have spent what feels like at least a lifetime together? After all, isn’t it the time when your relationship is most solid that you make that big decision to go from two to three? You love each other, why not spread that love around, why not have a baby.
Sometimes I think our relationships are like mighty rivers that have been dammed. We are not unfettered gentle streams that meander through life together. Things build up, come between, and no one is perfect. Resentments build, but somehow we are able to hold back all those feelings, the nastiness, the anger. Until something comes along and starts to poke holes in that concrete structure that holds us back from truly resenting the person we’ve decided to spend our lives with. This something often comes complete with a layette, drool, night wakings and babbling. It’s really cute. It’s really hard to deal with the fact that something you love so deeply and completely is such a threat to something else you love. Each other.
I have been with my wife for close to 19 years, and wouldn’t it be nice if somehow time provided some type of immunity from the dangers a baby can bring to one’s primary relationship. It didn’t. In April of 2007 he landed right smack between us and all of the sudden there was this tiny vulnerable being who we were both willing to go to the mat for, willing to sacrifice each other over. After a year of parenting, of being immersed in the most fabulous joint project I had ever conceived of, I realized that our relationship was the worst it had ever been and I began to have moments feeling that I might be better off alone. That feeling had never once crossed my mind and there I was thinking things would be better without the person who I had married not just once but twice, who I was truly devoted to, who I loved. My dam had started cracking.
I often joke that my long-term-relationship is a creature of its own. After all, it’s officially old enough to buy porn and cigarettes. The one thing I can say I’ve always had is a deep and abiding respect for my wife. Even when things are hard, she is a person who I truly LIKE. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s a giant pain in the ass. She’s not perfect but like all people who have weathered time together, you learn that about each other and you decide that the imperfections are worth having that person in your life. It’s not about changing, it’s about accepting, embracing, sometimes coping through specific moments.
Things did even out. Those leaks healed, although the dam is still there in so many ways. As Finn grew older and more nuanced (a nice way of saying he got to be so much more of a pain in the ass) Megan and I reoriented to each other. A second child didn’t have the same impact. We made it and today I can report that while not every day is rainbows and unicorns, I feel pretty damn lucky to have an amazing person by my side in this life and I look forward to what lies ahead.
Things don’t heal for everyone. Then you’re left standing in the rubble of a relationship that once was the paramount of importance, left without the person you promised to love your entire life. Children in the picture make all those things we were able to tolerate because we could fight our way through them or turn our backs on them become intolerable. We either find a way to find each other again, or we just don’t. Sometimes this means the end of our relationships. Other times it means we live in a state of unhappiness with each other, the flood of emotion barely held in check. Rarely do we emerge from the experience of having children the same as we went in.
Read on: And Baby Made Three…and Then Two…
