Why Marriages Drift Into “Kids Only” Mode

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. There's a pattern that I see happen all the time in long-term relationships. It's a gradual shift, a change in the relationship culture, if you will. The relationship goes from we, us as a couple, and it transfers into we as a family. And from what I've seen over and over again, unfortunately for a lot of couples, that we as a family transitions further into a couple of roommates running a daycare center. What's funny is that this shift in the relationship never gets discussed ahead of time, does it? It just happens. Relationships tend to follow a pattern whether we want them to or not. They all seem to start with what we call the honeymoon stage. You're super connected. Yes, you're very sexual, romantic. You're emotionally connected. There's curiosity. There's playfulness at this stage. You always want to be around each other. And then life happens. The old jobs and responsibilities and bills and stress. You move into what I call the building phase of the relationship. And then it happens. Kids enter the picture. This is, by my estimation, where most of the relationships go off the rails. Once children enter the picture, priorities get rearranged. Understandably. These priorities get rearranged not out of trying to sabotage the marriage. This change is not done out of malice. It's done out of necessity but part of this change means that the emotional center of their relationship shifts. As I often say if you were to look into the brain of the typical mother you would see that the top 10 priorities in her brain are kids-kids-kids-kids-kids-kids-kids-kids-kids-kids— Notice what's not on the top-ten list? We as a couple or more specifically husband! From what I have seen, it's not that women are purposefully putting men down on spot number 99 on the list. They're not choosing kids over husband. They're just naturally gravitating towards where most of the anxiety lies in their life. They are choosing what feels urgent. Kids trigger anxiety. Kids feel fragile. The marriage itself feels stable. We can kind of ignore that for now. Until you can no longer ignore just how unstable it really is. The whole marriage, you as a couple, slowly gets squeezed out of your life. The kids end up taking over the bed a lot of the time, your conversations as two adults, your schedule, your emotional energy, all of the physical space in the home a little at a time. I can't tell you how many men that I talk to say, ever since we had kids, The house looks like a daycare center. The wife manages to fill every square inch of the home with something related to the children. Little by little, the marriage itself gets crowded out. The playfulness between the couple disappears. All real adult conversations just dry up completely. And yes, much to the chagrin of the average dude, the sex between the couple goes bye-bye. The relationship becomes some kind of logistical coordination hub of the family as opposed to an actual emotional real connection. Men tend to feel this shift first. Men don't tend to verbalize this and say, "I miss the romance between us." What men often report is a feeling of displacement. They stop feeling chosen. They stop feeling desired. And frankly, to a lot of men, they stop feeling like they flat out matter at all. Remember, if you were to put a mind-reading device up to their wife, They're not even in the top 99 spots. And when the men watch the action of their wives, this mentality is pretty obvious. And you know what? Men feel guilty for noticing this. They do. And anytime they verbalize this or say this to their social circle, the answer is invariably, "Dude, you had kids. That's just what happens." Here is the uncomfortable truth. Here's what I have determined after doing this, after working with men one-on-one for over a decade now. For the typical couple, actually, let's be fair, for the typical couple where the guy comes to me for help, from what I have seen, if the man does not actively pull the energy of the couple back towards we as a couple, towards the relationship itself, then it is just not going to get done. The system of we as a couple does not self-correct. Culturally, everything that is child-centric gets rewarded, and everything that is couple-centric is looked at suspiciously. Men, you have to get in the driver's seat when it comes to this reconnecting with the wife thing, and you have to overcome that suspicion. If you want dates, if you want sex, if you want intimacy, if you want your old wife back, so to speak, you are going to have to push for that. And this is precisely where a lot of tension, a lot of butting heads happens in a relationship. It is not going to be easy because what often happens is you're going to have to push against things like the kids being in the marital bed, every single conversation you have with your wife being about kids, the house becoming a toy warehouse, every stinking moment going towards kid activities. None of these things are evil or wrong necessarily. But all those things day in and day out with no relief will in fact absolutely positively kill your marriage. Now, the obstacles that you're going to run into when trying to drive this relationship back towards romance, so to speak. When you push for more "we" time as a couple, your wife is not going to hear, "I want us back." What she's going to hear is, I want to take things away from the kids. And that's when the old shaming language pops up. You're going to hear things like, "The kids come first." "This is just what good parents do." "You are being selfish." "You are being a big fat baby." "Real men sacrifice for their kids." Notice what's happening with this language. It's not talking about compromise. It's not talking about being an adult. It's not talking about being a happy family and a happy couple. It's not a discussion about balance. It's an attack on your identity. Most men retreat at this point, and it's not because they don't care. It's not because they gave up on the marriage. It's because they don't want to be seen as the guy who is pushing against the kids. So the men stop pushing, they stop asking, they stop initiating anything at all. And what a lot of men do is that they frame it as being very noble. They will prop up their vows and say, "I made a vow to this woman. To hell with my happiness. To hell with what I think. I'm doing what's right." And the men become very, very passive. And as I've often said in a lot of my material, there's a lot of danger in passivity. It affects all aspects of your life. And this is when the old dead bedroom comes in. You can go years without touching each other. I see it all the time. And what happens is you quietly become way more resentful. And one day your wife says to you, "You know what? I don't feel connected to you anymore." And the guy thinks, "Yeah, I've been invisible for like a decade plus and you're just now noticing?" Here's the part that a lot of women in these kind of scenarios do not like to hear. A marriage that puts the kids first always is a marriage that does a lot of harm actually to the kids, believe it or not. Kids do not benefit from watching parents that don't flirt with each other, that don't touch each other, that don't go on dates together. Parents that barely tolerate each other. Kids benefit from seeing a strong, connected, romantic couple. This is not just some sex-hungry dude talking here. Ask any mental health professional and they will tell you the exact same thing. The couple in a relationship is not optional. In fact, it is the foundation of the entire family. When the couple weakens, when their bond together weakens, the whole family structure destabilizes. When the couple stays strong and connected together and makes time for each other, and yes, that takes a lot of work. Sorry if that seems unnatural to you and you think that's a bad thing. Welcome to 99.9% of all long-term relationships. When you stay strong and you work to stay connected, everything else organizes around that strong hub of the family, the loving couple. Protecting the concept of the loving couple requires leadership, and that leadership at times is extremely unpopular. You will get resistance. You will get shamed. You will be accused of being selfish, of being a baby. Leadership rarely feels comfortable, but you still have to do it. In the long run, it is best for you, your wife, and your family. Because a strong family grows out of a strong couple, not the other way around. And if nobody is protecting the concept of the couple, The husband has to decide, is he going to take on that role of leading even if it costs you your approval? This is the kind of stuff that we talk about all day, every day in the Brotherhood, my private support community for men only. Hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world getting together in private discussion forums, live Zoom meetings. We get together in person. We have like over 1,500 hours of audio content for our members, all my books, all kinds of awesome stuff. Check it out, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com/join. Guys, if you like this video, do me a favor, give me a like, give me a subscribe. I really would appreciate it, and we will catch you on the next one.