Marital Satisfaction

Jason and I are both pretty passionate people, so over the last 5 and half years of marriage we've both intensely loved and intensely disliked one another.  Emotion has never  been in short supply, and while that meant our fights have been intense, it's also meant our love for one another has been deep and in abundance.

Last night, after Eliana went to bed, I stared across the room at Jason and for the first time didn't feel much at all.  Well, distant, disconnected, I suppose that's how I felt.  I started trying to figure out how it happened, it felt like just a few weeks ago our adoration for our daughter and the flood of visitors was leaving us both exhilirated and content to be surrounded by so much love.  So what is with this nothingness I feel?

It's like somehow between the end of my mat leave, keeping up with friends and family, the constant swapping between one of us at home with Eliana and the other at work I didn't even notice the bond between us start to drain away.  I've often envied people who's emotions are a little more level and steady than my own, but I must say it feels pretty awful, and scary, to feel nothing.

Suddenly I have this chart on marital satisfaction from one of my undergrad psych classes come to my mind: the steady rise during the beginning of marriage and then the slow decline to the zero line once kids come along, only to recover again if the couple makes it the 20 years that result in kids starting to move out.  That chart scared me then, and even more now.

If you're one of our parents, I wouldn't worry too much about us just yet, knowing Jason and I, we're likely to have a long, in depth conversation about this and come out the other end feeling closer and more committed to strengthening our marriage.  I write this because it's new, and scary, and one of those things that you're told will happen when you have kids, but that I don't really want to accept as inevitable.  I see this as one of the many moments where I am reminded that love is a choice, and I can choose to keep working on our bond, even when the emotions aren't there.  It's pretty easy to consistently pour out love on our daughter every moment she's awake, I'm biologically wired to do so, but in this new season I'm realizing that consistently pouring love into Jason requires more intention than it used to.  I guess that's why there's a consistent finding that marital happiness declines after children, it takes a lot more work, sacrifice, and choice to keep it up.

New parents have this bad reputation of "disappearing" from their social circles once they have a baby.  It's true, having a baby makes one want to stay close to home much more often, however, instead of working so hard to prove that stereotype wrong, I may need to embrace it a bit more as a means of spending more one on one time on my marriage.  So friends, beware, I may be becoming "one of those people" that can't do as much as I used to, so that I can keep our love running strong even when the feelings aren't there.