Raising Kids is Taking a Toll on My Relationship. What Can I Do?

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. Today we'll be talking about stress in partnerships and marriages while raising young kids. We'll talk about mental load, about feeling alone, about resentment, about how to ask for what you need from a partner. Now let me say this before we continue. I'm aware that there are many larger sociological patterns and problems that impact the very discussions we're about to have. For example, we need change. We need policies that actually support working parents, stay at home parents, parental mental health that acknowledge how hard it is is to be a parent, how relentless it is, how exhausting and depleting it is. It's not just up to each individual parent in their individual home to change intergenerational large world patterns. And at the same time, that won't be the focus of today's episode. I very much want to have those conversations and plan to on this very podcast that sometime soon. What we'll do in today's episode is we'll hear from three women who are calling in looking for ideas and strategies to help with the day to day stress inside their home. So with that in mind, let's jump in. Our first caller is Alison.

Hi Dr. Becky. My name is Allison. I have two boys, ages 5 and 8 and we live in California. My question is about maintaining a partnership teamwork when I am the primary person who's dealing with all the difficult moments. So my husband has a newest job that will be over soon. It was an interim position but it has demanded a great deal of his time and as a result of that, I have been primary parent in a lot of ways. And our five year old has some pretty significant behavioral issues going on and I find that on the times I do try to take a break, my kids behave great for their dad and so he's not seeing these huge hour to two hour long meltdowns that I'm sometimes having to deal with and I'm fried and I'm overwhelmed, and I'm really frustrated that so. So much of it is falling on me. He wants to help, but there's not a lot he can do. And so I guess I just am looking for advice on how. How do you balance that. When I. Honestly, I'm. I'm resentful. I'm resentful that he gets to have good days with the kids and that I have days where I fight. And just any advice you could give me on how to try and manage that or balance that would be great.

Hi, Alison. Thank you for calling in. Thank you for sharing. Yes, that's my first reaction. Yes, parenting is exhausting. It's exhausting, it's difficult. And if you feel alone in doing it, it's isolating. And of course, that adds up to feeling all types of distress, including resentment. So I would give yourself some credit first and give yourself permission. Credit might sound like I'm doing a lot. I'm doing so much day in and day out. I am getting through tough moments. I'm dealing with difficult behavior. I am depleted, and I keep going. I am amazing in that way. Of course, my body feels all of that work. Of course this leads to feelings and. And not particularly pleasant ones toward my partner, who sounds like he's working really hard, but not in this exact same emotionally exhausting way. I'm doing a lot, and I'm allowed to be feeling the exact way I'm feeling now. That's just a start. I know that's not all. I keep thinking about this word recognition or acknowledgement in terms of how isolated you are in this experience, that it's one thing to be parenting and dealing with difficult behaviors and meltdowns and all those really tricky moments. And it's another thing for nobody to know about it. Right? It's like the nobody knowing about it that can make us feel crazy. Someone acknowledging what's happening doesn't take away from the part of experience that's exhausting, but it does help us feel seen. It helps us with the part that feels so alone. And whenever we feel someone's presence in our distress, the distress becomes a little bit more manageable. So where would I go? I would talk to your partner. I would share and say something like, look, I don't know if we can exactly change the balance of who gets the fun times and who gets the hard times. What I do know, because it would feel so good to get recognition from you about the times you didn't even see, but you can probably assume are happening, and then Feel free to share some ideas. You can ask for a middle of the day phone call where your partner calls and just share something like, wow, I'm sure various points today were really hard. I love you. Or maybe tell your partner to expect a text at some point since saying massive tantrum. Oh my goodness. And hopefully your partner knows. Or you can tell him that it would feel good to get a text back saying, thank you for getting through that. You're an amazing parent. You're doing so much for this family. I love you. When we feel acknowledged, we can find our feet. We feel like we're not just doing all of this invisible work. We can take a deep breath. We feel like things are a little bit more manageable. Another idea, self care. Now, I'll be honest, Alison. When I hear the word self care, I often think, who has time for self care? I mean, I don't think I can go get a massage. I would love to take a vacation, but I don't think that's something I can do. Right now. I'm really thinking about manageable moments of self care because the accumulation of manageable moments can lead to a day that's entirely different with than not having done those three or four things. So here's some ideas, of course. Feel free to come up with your own. Dancing in the shower to your favorite song from your adolescence. Right. When we're a mom of young kids, it feels like there's so many parts of our identity that are absent. Like, where's that part of me that likes to dance, that likes to be with friends? What about that part of me that used to have various hobbies or play sports. Sports. Or create intellectually? Where is that part of me that would sing a song like nobody is watching? Well, guess what? Sing like nobody's watching. Dance like nobody's watching. It's important for you. That is a great form of self care to get in touch with your inner teenager. Maybe it's grunge, maybe it's pop. Maybe it's just giving yourself permission. Dance it out. Get into your body and take care of yourself by being in a mode that's not cooking for your child. Taking a child out of a bath or sitting through a tantrum. Another idea, drink your coffee while it's hot. It's a small thing, but it can be so big for the start of your day. I say this to my kids all the time. No, I can't come right now. I'm drinking my coffee when it's hot. That's something. That's Important for me. So you need to wait. Boom. Another thing. Tell yourself, I'm a good parent going through a tough time. I'm a good parent going through a tough time. Or maybe my favorite mantra, this feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. So many parents tell me that they have this mantra taped up in various parts of their house so there's a reminder for when they're spiraling. Other parents tell me, and I sometimes do this myself, that they set their alarm every hour on the hour on their phone with a reminder that says, put your feet on the ground and take five slow, deep breaths. Again, these are manageable moments of self care. And if you're with your kids at that time, tell them you're not available. Show them that you need self care. This is helpful for the whole family system. Ah, right now I'm sitting. I'm keeping my body still. I'm taking a few deep breaths. Breaths that's really important to me. I'll be with you in a few moments. One more idea. Think about how you can take care of your tomorrow self. I love this idea because it can take something that feels like another obligation and turn it into an act of self care. So at night, I know sometimes I say to myself, oh, I have to set the coffee so it's ready in the morning. If it feels like an obligation, I won't do it. And yet sometimes I say to myself, oh, it's going to feel like such a treat in the morning to just press that button. Oh, tomorrow Becky is going to be so grateful that nighttime Becky took care of her in this way. So think about something you can do where you're really kind of taking care of your tomorrow self. Let's hear from our next caller, Hannah.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Hannah. I'm calling from Seattle. I have one son who is 4 years old. I'm calling with a question about managing partnerships in our parenting, and we have a tricky situation regarding the mental load of parenting. I read a lot about mental load and how it generally is heavily weighed to one parent versus the other. Wondering if you have any strategies about how to cope with that. I find that I struggle with this on a daily basis with my partner. My husband shares in a lot of our parenting styles and a lot of our techniques. The mental load seems to be a missing gap for me. I still feel that I am the one carrying the mental load of parenting in our relationship and in our family. Everything from thinking about what to do, what's for dinner, to what size clothes is my child currently wearing to? Did he brush his teeth last night? Did he nap today? What are these different challenges that are going on in this given instance that I'm the one carrying the burden of and necessarily isn't something that I can delegate or ask my partner to help with. This mental load seems to weigh on me heavily and impacts us a lot in our relationship and in our parenting style. I look forward to hearing from you and any suggestions or tips that you might have. Thanks so much, Dr. Becky.

Hi Hannah. Thank you for raising something that so many of us really struggle with. Mental load. This is a good reminder for me, so maybe you can join me right now in placing a hand on your heart and telling yourself mental load is exhausting. Mental load is invisible and is totally real. I know it's real. My body knows it's real. My body doesn't lie. Give yourself some credit for all the work you've been doing that's not so obvious on the outside. And then to me there are these larger questions. So what do we do? How do we rebalance the mental load of parenting? Step one, and I think this is a step so many of us skip. It's really learning about our partner's history and sharing our history in terms of our parents, gender roles, who did what when we were kids, how we were parented, what each parent did. This is infused into our approach to parenting. And the more we share our history, our partners learn about our expectations. And the more we learn about our partner's history, the more context we have to understand what's happening inside our family system. This doesn't make anything okay or not okay. It just helps us understand the whole picture. So ask some questions. Who did bath? Who bought clothes? Who made sure permission slips for school were signed? Who went to sports? Who made sure kids got help with homework when they needed it? When someone was really upset and having a hard time? When which parent took that on? Learn stories, learn memories. And this really gives us all a better sense of what each person in the partnership is bringing in as they approach different parts of parenting. Next, we have to talk to our partners about how we feel and what we need. How we feel and what we need when we don't. Our feelings and needs often come out as criticism and anger, and this always provokes defensiveness. And I think everyone here knows this does not lead anyone to a good place. Let me model the difference. Feelings and needs. I feel overwhelmed by all the tasks and all the thoughts and planning about parenting. I need more help now after that, or right around there, we want to assure our partner some version of, I think you're a good person. Why do we want to do this, all of us? When someone presents their needs, we are often prone to shame, to defensiveness. When we hear anything that can be perceived as criticism, I know I can operate the same way. So you might follow up by saying, I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm not saying you're a bad partner. I'm saying that the current division isn't working for me, and I want to figure something out together. What we're doing there is we're really staying connected, connected to a partner while we communicate something really important. Communicating feelings and needs directly helps us avoid those feelings and needs coming out in the form of accusations that might sound like this. You never do anything. You don't even care about the kids. You assume, I'll take care of everything in this family. When we don't directly communicate feelings and needs, it's understandable that they come out in that way because they're too much for any person to handle. The only problem is that when we come at someone with criticism, it's likely that partner is going to throw criticism right back to us. And this is not at all effective in actually solving the problem we have. I always think with couples that there's just so many ways that we can say what's true. We want to express something honest and direct, and we want to assume positive intent so we're likely to stay connected and get to a productive solution. Another idea, be specific. When it comes to mental load. If we really want to unload certain tasks, we have to be explicit about what that means. So let's say you're particularly overwhelmed at night. You might say to a partner, look, at night, I think I tend to take on food, bath, the bedtime routine, and getting book bags ready for school the next day. Can we divvy up these tasks? So both of us are in charge of some, but not all, and both of us are responsible for thinking about doing them. Now, if you're met with confusion, well, what do you mean, go further into detail? Well, doing bath doesn't just mean filling up the tub. It also means thinking about what time bath should be so bedtime can happen. Or doing dinner doesn't just mean sitting with our kids while they eat, but it means thinking about the food that we would need to have in the house, thinking about cooking it, thinking about the time it should be served. Now what's happening is we're talking with a partner. We're staying connected, we're decreasing shame, and we're clearly expressing all of the nuances, our feelings and our needs, so they're more likely to get met. Hannah one more thought. The book Fair Play by Eve Rodsky might be a really, really good fit to help you divide responsibilities between you and your partner. Eve does a great job of giving readers a step by step system for thinking about the various parts of household living, including not only executing tasks, but the mental load of thinking through them. Our final caller is Chris.

Hi Dr. Becky. My name is Chris. I live in New York. I have an almost 3 year old and an almost 5 month old. I'm having a tricky time with my husband. I'm trying to work and work at my parenting and myself, but I feel like my husband's not really on board and he won't. I can pop his video physically in front of him and he'll watch your video A couple times he's done it, but he won't follow on his own. Something that will happen often is when my son is fussing or having some kind of an issue. He my husband will say, stop crying, you're being a crybaby. I tell him, please don't tell me this is being cry baby. And maybe the way that I go about it isn't so good. But how do I help him? Please help with like a script or something to help get him to soften up and stop saying. I try to flip it and say, lucas, I could tell you're having a tough time. It's all right, like we're right here. But it doesn't always work in the moment. And then my husband just is like, no, he's being a crybaby. It works. He stops and I tell him that how do I help get my husband on board and how do I help in a situation like that where he says, you know, you're being a crybaby. Stop crying. Thanks. Bye bye.

Hi Chris. This is a really important situation to talk through, and I think it's so similar to so many things I hear from other people. You are not alone here. When we have kids, we watch the ways we were parented kind of come alive, and we watch the ways our partners were parented come alive. When your son is crying and is upset, it's a moment where a child's really vulnerable, maybe even feeling helpless. And then essentially you watch your husband get triggered. Right? This is what's really happening. So what is a trigger? A trigger is when we see something in someone else that we had to learn to shut down harshly in ourselves. So then when we see it in someone else, essentially your body says, oh, I know what to do in this situation. And we react to that person in the same shutdown way. We had to learn to shut down ourselves. In this case, shut down. Vulnerability, tears, sadness, helplessness. We're watching your husband's childhood come alive in terms of knowing that his vulnerability certainly didn't have a place in his own family. Now, understanding this, I think is important because it reminds us my husband isn't a horrible person. My husband is struggling here. Now, having said that, this is important too. Understanding this doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't give anyone permission to maintain these patterns intergenerationally. Because I'm a pragmatist at heart, I think about two very different pathways from here. They actually both start in the same way, which is trying to connect to your husband about these moments. And this is really, really key to do. Outside of the actual moment where the trigger is happening, when someone's triggered, when someone is reactive in their body, when someone's in literal threat mode, no good conversation happens. No productive conversation has ever happened between any two people when one person is in a state of threat. We have to survive that moment and find a time outside of the moment when both people's bodies feel safer. Safety, meaning connected, getting along. I'd start a conversation outside the moment like this. I want to talk to you about something that's going on that's probably going to be a little tricky for us to talk about. I think it's going to be a little tricky because I understand that if I were you, I could see myself feeling defensive. And I really get that. So as we talk, I think both of us want to avoid a big blow up fight. So maybe just let me know at any point if this conversation doesn't feel good to you and then we'll pause and continue it later. Okay, Chris, So if you notice, I didn't even say the thing that the conversation is about, right? This is kind of some big preamble. And I think people hear this. And I remember in fact a couple in my own practice saying to me, wait, you really want us to talk that way to each other? What about the thing we actually want to say? Yes, yes, I actually want you to talk that way together. Because if you don't, then when you talk about the actual content, which in this case, Chris, is this crybaby label, the only thing that's going to happen in Your bodies is an explosion because no one is primed to pay attention to how the conversation is making them feel. Which means those feelings, Feelings will just act themselves out. Is it awkward to start talking this way? If this is new, then, yeah, it's going to feel really, really awkward to have this long introduction. And at the same time, awkwardness is a sign you're doing something new. New is a sign of change, and that's a really good thing here. Okay, so after that long preamble, I'd say something like this. I know when our son cries, we have really different experiences of that moment and different ways we want to respond. What's interesting is I feel like we have the same goals for our kids. We want them to kind of be good kids. We want them to feel good about themselves, and yet we go about that moment really differently. Now, here's where I would explain kind of options. I would say, I feel like we have two options here. One is that you feel kind of compelled to think, huh, I wonder what this crying is about and why it makes me upset. I wonder if there's something about seeing his crying that makes me shut down. I wonder if that's interesting and maybe I want to look into that. That might help me in parenting and also might just help me in general. The alternative is that if that's not so compelling, if you're thinking, yeah, I don't really think it's that big of a deal. I'm not that curious about why I shut down. Then I'm just gonna ask you to let me take over those moments and for you seriously, to just walk away, take a break. I personally feel good about my ability to handle those moments and help him through them. And I'm sure there'll be other moments in parenting where I say to you, hey, can you take over? Because I need that kind of step back. You don't have to let me know which route you want to take, and we don't have to be tied to either one forever. But that's kind of how I'm seeing it now. Why don't you think about it? Let me know what feels best to you. Okay. Now, Chris, I'm completely aware that this conversation with your partner will not go as smoothly as I just modeled talking to nobody, just to air on my own. So what I would say is, pay attention to what you started with, to that idea of a check in. I tell couples often to pause while you're talking about content and say, hey, one second. Is this conversation still feeling okay? Or maybe even say, remember, we both want the same things for our kids. Let's come back to that. I know we're both trying our best. Again, we're affirming a similarity. We're affirming positive intent. We're affirming joint goodness. This is to lower the likelihood of defensiveness so both people feel safe. And actually, the safer we feel in a conversation, the more connected we feel to someone else. The more we feel that person is looking at us like a good person, the more likely we are to be able to incorporate a new idea and consider change. Alternatively, if you notice, wow, this is getting heated. That's a good time to say, hey, let's take a break. I think we both see the pathway this is going down and I don't think either of us want to get all the way there. Let's pick this up on another day. Let's tie this all together with three takeaways. 1. Talk to your partner outside of a heated moment When a situation escalates, it's likely that you and your partner are in fight or flight mode. This is not the time for a productive conversation. Instead, find a moment when you're both calm and connected and share a desire to talk through a struggle together. 2. Learn this formula I feel and I need the Gottman Institute, a research based approach to couples therapy, calls this a gentle startup. Notice if you tend to approach your partner with criticism and try to replace accusations about your partner with statements about what you feel and what you need in a situation. 3. Self care is critical in parenting and in partnerships. In fact, resentment is often a sign that we haven't expressed or taken care of our needs early enough. Let's all get ahead of this painful feeling. Ask yourself with me right now, what can I do for myself today? You can think small. Maybe lighting a scented candle or something a little bigger like planning to sleep in on the weekend and asking your partner to get up with the kids. One trick with self care is to remember that it's okay for other people to feel inconvenienced when you are getting your needs met. We don't need others approval, we only need their cooperation. Thanks for listening to Good Inside. If this episode resonated with you, check out my Couples Communication workshop where I teach and model so many more strategies to strengthen your partnership while raising young kids. You can find this workshop and many others at learning.goodinside.com at goodinside.com you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to Good Insider, my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram Dr. Beckyoodinside good inside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky please rate and review our show. Let us know what you think and what resonated. I actually do read each and every review, so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle, and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.