Rules to a Happy Marriage After Kids

Having kids can change a marriage. Here is the story of how I had to learn to re-love my husband and become a wife again after having kids. Which rules to a happy marriage saved ours?

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Having a baby changes things. Your marriage changes after you have kids as well.

It turns both your worlds upside down in the most amazing and scary way imaginable. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

That being said it’s also a very challenging experience-both mentally, physically, & emotionally. It can take quite the toll on your marriage/relationship.

Sometimes you need to learn some rules to a happy marriage after having kids.

My husband and I have been together 10 years now. We have been through some rough times and blissful times together.

We met in 2010, while we were both still in college and I lived about 2 hours away from him.

We went through our college years together, finding ourselves together, growing together, and facing new challenges together.

We fought and we fought hard! We are both very stubborn individuals. But we also loved hard too.

We fought for our relationship and it was not always easy-but it was worth it. We got married after 3 years of dating and to be honest, nothing really changed too drastically.

We were already living together and had our routines, so it wasn’t too big of a jump-or so I thought.

Now fast forward 4.5 years, we’ve been married for about 6 months and we find out we are expecting our first child. We were overjoyed!

I was scared, but overwhelmed with excitement and nervous for how our lives would change. And boy did they change.

Between finding out I was pregnant and the actual birth of our daughter, my husband changed careers and we had to find a place to move to after the baby was born.

We were also living apart towards the end of the pregnancy, which was extremely hard on both of us. Myself being raging hormonal and him feeling helpless.

He was about 2-3 hours away for his job and I was living with his family until we found an apartment closer to his job.

October 5, 2015 at 7:39am will forever be one of my absolute fondest days and moments of my life. The moment I became a mother.

Now the crappy part: because of his new job, my husband only had 12 hours with us before he had to leave back to work.

It was killer.

It was heartbreaking watching him hold his newborn baby girl and have to say goodbye after only meeting her earlier that morning.

He did not get to spend that first night in the hospital with us, he didn’t get to hold her and watch her sleep all night, he didn’t get to drive us both home the next day and spend the first night at home with us.

He missed out on all that and there is not a day that goes by that he doesn’t wish he would’ve just said “screw this- I’m staying”.

But he did what he had to do for his family and to support us financially.

Now fast forward again a couple of months later, when we are all settled in and getting into our new routine as a family.

I was overwhelmed and busy preoccupied with our newborn and trying to figure out how to care for this little girl who depending on me for everything.

I was home 24/7 with her. I knew her. I knew her wants and needs and I knew which cries were for what and so on.

My husband, because of his job and crazy hours, did not get that time with her.

It was hard. I had postpartum depression.

I felt like a single parent and a part of me resented him.

I resented the fact that he could get a break from the crying and late night feedings and diaper changes.

I resented that he got to come home and she was usually asleep. He got to sit back and relax, then go to bed and repeat the day.

And to be honest, that resentment took a toll on our relationship.

I was angry. I was jealous. I resented my husband and therefore slowly started to ignore him.

I would yell and snap at him for the smallest of things. I thought he didn’t “get it”, I was home all day raising our daughter and we was off to work.

To me, that was a break, but to him that was the hardest part of everyday. Everyday he had to leave us and risk his life and not know if he would make it home that night.

Every day he had to say goodbye to us and it could’ve been the last time we would see each other. I understand that now, but a year ago I didn’t care.

I was so wrapped up in my own world of caring for a child that I was just full of resentment. This was almost our breaking point.

We were both angry.

We both did not TRULY know or fathom what the other was going through on a day-to-day basis. We both thought we knew, but had no clue.

We were both angry. He felt neglected as a husband and I just wanted a break.

I was the stay-at-home mom, which is what I always wanted, but I also wanted freedom and I wanted to just be a wife again. This all led to fights.

More fights than were probably necessary. It led to almost ending our marriage.

We talked about calling it quits, him moving out and what would happen for our daughter. Nobody knew. People knew we fought, but no one knew how deeply we fought.

Our families just thought we were normal fighting married couple, but what no one knew is that we were serious about ending our relationship.

Neither one of us truly wanted this deep down, but we didn’t know what else to do. We were lost. We had lost ourselves as a couple, as man and wife, and we weren’t quite sure how to get “us” back.

We finally decided to go for a drive. We talked.

We talked a LOT.

We opened up to each other about what was TRULY wrong, whether it hurt the other persons feelings or not. At that point we didn’t care to hide anything back because we were at our breaking points with each other.

We had both slowly sort of given up and were just living like roommates and not like two people in love. We decided that we both missed us and how we used to be before we became parents.

We lost a part of us to our daughter and not that we regret it because we love our daughter dearly, but we also needed to balance our love for our child and our love for each other.

We needed rules to a happy marriage in order to save ours.

So we decided and we made more time for us. It wasn’t easy and timing wasn’t always on our side but we stuck it out.

Now I’m not going to lie, we still fought and still do, but it’s not as big of fights. It’s not marriage-ending fights.

Its small everyday tiffs over dumb stuff like dishes, dinner, and my Target addiction. But we can also laugh, joke, and play around like we did before we had our daughter.

We are still learning and working through the rules to a happy marriage.

Our daughter is almost 5 years old (and our youngest is 2.5 years old), but we take it day by day and work on showing our love for each other.

Whether that is through notes left on our nightstand, making breakfast for the other person, or just simply bringing home coffee in the morning.

Some days are harder than others, but at the end of the day making time for each other can do worlds of wonders.

After all of this I realized we kept trying to get “us” back how it used to be, but it will never be how it used to be. And that’s okay!

We are in a totally different stage in our lives and in our relationship. I learned that I didn’t need to go back to how I used to love my husband, but I needed to learn some rules to a happy marriage after kids.

Watching him play with our daughters, watching them laugh, play and learn together makes my heart full. That is what I learned.

I learned to look at my husband in a different light and I’m falling in love with him in a different way.

I’m learning to love him not only has my amazing and supportive husband, but as an incredible father too.

Some Rules to a Happy Marriage We Learned:

• communication is truly everything, speak your feelings
• don’t stop “dating”, leave loving notes to each other, talk about your day, go on date nights, etc.
• don’t let things fester and get bigger than what they are; get it out in the open and work on it together no matter how small because to the other person it may not be small to them
• learn to let the little things go, this sort of contradicts my last point, but I mean things like the way he leaves his socks by the door, or the way he leaves the toilet seat up. Let the small annoyances go that truly don’t matter in the grand scheme
• get a conversation book, we got one at the bookstore and its fun little questions to ask each other to get the conversation going in a fun and relaxing way
• seek professional help if things aren’t getting better (see below)

Now I will say, we were able to work through most things ourselves, but it would have been way easier talking to a professional or even getting marriage counseling books or guides to help us navigate through that hard time.

If you feel like you need more help than just talking to your spouse/significant other, try this resource which has great reviews!

Hopefully these rules to a happy marriage will help you navigate this new journey you and your significant other are going through.