Save Marriage Post-Kids



Save Marriage Post-Kids

Have your children left the house or are they getting ready to leave and go off to school? Have you spent the last 18 years focusing on your children and realize you haven’t paid as much attention to your spouse? Do you feel like when you look at your spouse you don’t know who they are? Do you feel like when your spouse talks to you he/she doesn’t know who you are? Are you starting to realize that you feel disconnected and grown apart from your spouse? Does the idea that you and your spouse are growing apart scare you?

Therapy helps couples rediscover who each other is. A common phenomena is that during the period of working and raising children people often deprioritize their relationship. They may take it for granted, rationalize it, they don’t have time to focus on it, the person will always be there, this is the part of marriage.

Unfortunately, we live in an adult centric, work centric world that doesn’t allow for a lot of free time for us as an individual, much less as a couple. Many times couples have to make very difficult choices during the work years and child-rearing years to focus on raising their children and building an income. One of the areas that they cut out is their intimate relationship with their spouse. Unfortunately, this does lead to a growing apart and unlearning.

As people age personalities are fixed and don’t change, but life experiences do change us. We change what we like, how we like things, our preferences and our interests. Unfortunately, a common phenomena is people make a decision about who they marry to and their idea of their partner gets kind of locked and fixed into their head at an earlier period in their life and people stop being curious about their partner, what they are doing, what they are thinking.

Often couples spend many hours focusing on administrative issues in the marriage or on their children and they don’t spend time getting to know one another. While there may be very good reasons and justifiable reasons, it does not change the fact that couples grow apart and this needs to be addressed.

 

Unfortunately, many couples wait too long to address the issue of growing apart until it’s too late. For therapy to work, couples need to still have some sort of care about each other and come in sooner. Therapy helps couples learn how to develop the skills and the frameworks that they need to have intimate conversations and deal with conflict in a productive way to build the connection and debth of knowledge of one another that you need.

 

Conflict is a purposeful behaviour when done properly. It is actually when two individuals are meeting up and having to realize how they are different and then through a productive communication and conflict couples learn how to build a happy relationship that respects the individual while being in a relationship.

 

Marriage requires learning how to deal with issues around power, dependancy, vulnerability, intimacy in order to create a framework for sexual intimacy, mutual respect and common goals.

If you feel that you are growing apart, you can do therapy individually for your marriage or you can do it as a couple. Sometimes a partner does not want to attend therapy. Don’t let that put you off and think that you can’t make changes to your relationship.

Tammy Fontana often works with individuals who are working on their marriage and their partner doesn’t want to attend. You have 100% control over your relationship and can make changes that will have positive impact on your relationship.

If you would like to find out how therapy can help you, contact us at +65 9030 7239 to find out how we can help you or you can email us at tammy@allinthefamilycounselling.com.

All in the Family Counselling Centre Pte ltd has been providing therapy for just under two decades in Southeast Asia and Singapore. We offer help for couples who want to address issues around sex and intimacy, communication and conflict, learning how to build positive arenas around parenting, household chores, sex and power.

We work with difficult cases, especially around issues of infidelity and other betrayals. Individuals are helped with anxiety, depression, relationship skills, emotional regulation, boundaries. If you would like to find out how we can help you, contact us now for an initial consultation.