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fter having a baby, 67 percent of couples see marital satisfaction plummet
fter having a baby, 67 percent of couples see marital satisfaction plummet
Jill Hamilton. Modern Parents columnist for OC Family.

Whenever my friend’s husband makes a boneheaded move, she turns to me and says, with an eye roll, “I just had to have him.”

Sometimes, it can be difficult to remember why we so needed our particular mate – or even why we liked him or her in the first place – especially after having a kid or two. It’s not good, but it is normal. After having a baby, 67 percent of couples see marital satisfaction plummet, John Gottman, Ph.D., says in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Here are some suggestions for wiggling out of that unhappy 67 percent:

1. Be nice: “Help each other in small ways even when you’re pressed for time,” recommends Misa Butsuhara, a director and licensed marriage and family therapist at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Institute of Southern California in Newport Beach. “If you’re prepping lunches for the kids, prep one for your spouse too. Finish a chore that your spouse started, whether it’s folding the laundry they washed or putting away the groceries they bought. When you anticipate your spouse’s needs, you not only give the message that you care, but you also save time by working as a team.”

2. Keep dating: “Sometimes the last thing you want to do after having babies is stay up later than normal and make plans to get a babysitter and spend money, but you’ll be glad you did. Bite the bullet and get some kidless time,” suggests Lindsay Deibler, a clinical psychologist in Orange who works with couples. “If you’re not spending money having fun going on dates then you’re most likely going to be spending that money on therapy when you don’t like each other anymore.”

If you’ve become so disconnected you don’t really want to be with your spouse, she advises, “Ask yourself, ‘What did we do when we were having fun together before having kids?’ Try that.”

3. Nurture your “couple self”: “Kids do really well when they see that Mom and Dad are friends and like to have play dates together. Even though they may complain that you’re leaving, they definitely internalize ‘They actually like each other,’” says Kathleen Mates-Youngman, a Mission Viejo-based therapist, speaker and author of “Couples Therapy Workbook: 30 Guided Conversations to Re-Connect Relationships.”

“Be affectionate too,” she says. “When Mommy and Daddy hug and kiss, the kids may go ‘Ew!’ but the couple is the foundation of the family, and when they see you being physically loving with each other, they feel safer.”

4. Find something you both like to do: “Couples can drift apart when they don’t engage in shared hobbies,” Butsuhara says. “Maybe he’d prefer to play a game of golf while she would rather be indoors with a book. But even if you don’t love your spouse’s favorite hobbies, engage in them anyway from time to time before you end up exclusively having fun without each other.”

5. Carve out a few minutes together: “If you’re not big on date nights, take a few minutes a day when things are quiet and the kids are in bed, and just have a nonstressful, connecting conversation,” Mates-Youngman says.

“Couples that carve out a few minutes are more connected. The more they’re feeling connected, the more they can tolerate distress in their relationship. They still conflict, but it’s not so destructive because they see each other more positively in general.”

6. Just do it. As in “it”: “Many couples think they should feel like having sex before they initiate sex. I say, do the opposite,” Butsuhara says.

“Even if you don’t feel like it because you’re tired or stressed out, initiate sex anyway. The ‘feeling like doing it’ will develop once you get the ball rolling!”

Last weekend my husband and I walked to the corner liquor store for forbidden Diet Cokes, a habit we both had supposedly kicked.

We sat on a concrete ledge next to the busy street, talked and watched people going in for their own vices: cigarettes, candy, 40-ouncers.

As dates go, it probably wouldn’t satisfy most readers out there. But, if you subtract the part where we were consuming what might not be the most nutritional beverage, we were inadvertently engaging in all kinds of healthiness, couples-wise. We were nurturing our couple selves by going on what I’m generously going to refer to as a date.

We figured out something we both like to do. We met in college while working at a similar convenience store, so we were remembering what we used to do before we had kids.

And I paid, so I’ll chock that up as being nice. Of course we didn’t “do it” there at the corner, but who knows what happened later.