cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30568522
I’ve heard several stories about couples that suddenly stop having sex, start snapping at each other for stupid bs, your girlfriend who was so sweet and supporting becomes her mother, a raging, yelling psychopath, looking for excuses to be passive aggressive, inviting her friends back home when all you want to do is rest after your workday, your boyfriend, so passionate about you is suddenly cold towards you and wants to be left alone. Before having a child you were inseparable, now it’s like you hate each other and rant about your loved one with your friends…
I couldn’t survive such a radical personality change.
Does this phase eventually runs its course?
How do you find the mental fortitude to ignore the stupid bs your partner does or says?
How would you describe love to your partner a year after having a baby?
Is there any way to know if you and your partner are going to make it and remain a couple after having a child?
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Namely: there became another human in our lives. Our children became our central focus in our lives.
Being a family is a different dynamic and being a parent is a significant role in life. It is a relentless onslaught of needs and chores for someone that is neither of you. Babies don’t know boundaries and that has a very real effect on their caregivers.
If you’re birthing a baby: be aware of post partem, don’t be afraid to seek help, talk about it, and you deserve a chance to breathe regularly.
If someone is birthing your baby: giving that someone alone time with themselves (usually by having time with said baby yourself) is one of the most important devices for bringing you all together sans conflict.
Essentially if a mother can get the mental load of parenting off for a day–a few hours even–there should not be any (new) trouble acheiving or maintaining intimacy.
Our kid is not quite here but the parenting has already begun. My wife’s sleep is very disrupted due to the incessant kicking, and in turn mine. Sex has been physically impossible for many months and her hormones make it mentally impossible. She’s too tired to do many chores so my load has doubled.
But we are happy, I’m crying tears of joy many times a day, never felt it before. If anything I feel more confident in our relationship, we find ways to be sweet to each other. This is what we wanted and no surprises here. We did the work, therapy, and talked about it and planned constantly.
We were once like that though, communication is a skill that we learned the hard way. If you’re feeling unsure, please don’t have children (yet!). The parenting preparation can take years, don’t rush it.
Good on you for therapy and good communication. Best thing I ever did.
Second time around, this marriage is a world apart from the first. The trust, and depth of love is real. It doesn’t happen by accident, as you have shown.
Glad you have found happiness too, Internet stranger!
Well I’m not sure which was the biggest shock, discovering that I have a partner or discovering that we’re having a baby. Both, as you might imagine, came as quite a surprise to an asexual man in his 50s who has never had a girlfriend. ;)
I don’t think I’ve ever really spoken to an older asexual on the internet before. I know it’s a tangent from the main OP, but do you think you could expand on some things for me?
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When did you realize that you were asexual? And how did you deal with it considering it’s a relatively new term that wouldn’t have really been spoken of when you were growing up.
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Do you find your life fulfilling? I have a social need, but not a sexual need, so it makes it frustrating knowing that I need people, but that a relationship with 99% of the population doesn’t make sense. (Yes, you can find other asexuals out there, but we are exceedingly rare and there are not going to be many, if at all, in your same city.)
I’m younger than you, but not so young that my life as a whole is still being figured out or anything. I’m in my 30s and now secure in my career, but still struggle with social things and figuring out what I need for my life to be fulfilling. I’ve likely been a lifelong asexual. I’ve also never had a partner.
Anyway, sorry if that is too much to ask lol, but I was just curious!
Absolutely, I don’t mind at all.
- That’s complicated. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when there wasn’t a word for it, so I spent a lot of years just thinking I was broken/defective and hating the world as a result (I had some other stuff going on as well, medical problems and such, so I felt like I had just been dumped on and it was somehow the fault of the world and everyone in it.) Puberty was fuckin’ weird because my younger sisters and cousins and such kept bringing home boy/girlfriends and everyone would look at me like ‘Where’s yours?’ They did eventually stop asking questions, but the looks didn’t stop for a long time. I didn’t come across the word ‘asexual’ until maybe ~15 years ago, and even then it kind of took a while to realize that it was an accurate description. So… anywhere from puberty in the late 80s to maybe 10 years ago depending on definition? I kinda went from ‘I’m broken and unlovable’, to ‘This is just how I am and fuck anyone who has a problem with it’, to ‘Oh, there’s a word for that. Hi, I’m Libra and I’m asexual.’
- I do now. When I was younger I keenly felt like I was missing out on what everyone else took for granted, especially that life-partner thing, and I was depressed for many years as a result. What pulled me out of it and made me see the value of my life was two things. First, and this is kinda dark, but I got literally to the point of putting a gun in my mouth and realized that for whatever reason I just couldn’t do it. That left me no option but to find ways to make my life even marginally less unbearable because I had no escape, it immediately got rid of all the excuses I had used to not work on myself, my situation, etc. The second, and this might sound strange, was philosophy. I’ve long been a student of religion (but not a member of one since I was a teenager) and in my 30s I branched out into philosophy as well. There I came across the works of the absurdists like Camus, and the Myth of Sisyphus especially (though it took some time) was a big help. It made me realize that if there is no meaning inherent to anything then I get to decide what it all means to me. I had been deciding sort of subconsciously that life was a hateful, burdensome thing to be endured rather than enjoyed, but I could decide instead that even if I wasn’t leading the kind of life the people around me expected that I was still enjoying the moments, that I could even enjoy the struggle (‘The struggle itself … is enough to fill a man’s heart’). I slowly stopped being an angry, cynical asshole who hated the world and learned to embrace the things I did enjoy about life until I realized one day that that was most things actually. It also helped that I had a good friend for ~25 years who was basically a life partner without being a romantic partner, though he sadly died a few years ago. I still miss having someone to share my life with now sometimes, but most of the time I can fill that void with friends, community, and hobbies (I’m disabled so I have lots of free time for tabletop RPGs, gaming, reading, etc.)
I’m still a little awkward in social situations too, but I’ve gotten much better about it, I’ll actually talk to total strangers in the store instead of being weirded out that someone I don’t know would talk to me, etc. I feel like I fake being a relatively normal, socially well-adjusted adult pretty well, to the point that most of the time I actually feel that way too. I have to imagine that the modern relatively easy access to therapy could speed that process along for most people, but I was born too early and was too poor/stubborn to try to get help so I had to bull my way through it on my own. It sucked, and it has had some lasting consequences that I hope others don’t ever have to go through, but at the other end if it I’m a pretty content person, which I guess is all that matters.
I haven’t really talked with other asexual people (internet or otherwise) myself, so I welcome the opportunity to do so. In fact if you ever want/need someone to talk to about this stuff you are more than welcome to hit up my DMs (does lemmy have DMs? I’m still new here.)
Thank you very much for sharing your story! I’m sorry to hear about your friend, btw. But I’m glad you got to share your life with them for so long. I’m lucky that I have a really good friend right now too at least! They have a family of their own so it’s not as if we can mutually prioritize each other to the same extent, but that’s ok.
Omg I had the same experience during puberty lol. Even into my late teens and early twenties, my mom would kind of bug me about it. When I still wasn’t taking anyone home, she used to drop hints that it would be ok if I was a lesbian and had a girlfriend lol! Thankfully at this point, people stop bringing it up haha.
Yeah I’m definitely working on trying to get rid of the FOMO at this point in time. I have a lot of great people in my life tbh and I’m trying to branch out and be a bit more social with things that scare me. But even if I do, I’ll never really have the “standard” human experience. Gotta figure out how to eventually be ok with that.
I’m not a spiritual or religious person, myself. I briefly looked into Taoism, but it seems that the westernized idealized version of it isn’t what Taoism necessarily is in reality.
Thanks for your offer to chat! Hope you don’t mind if I’m just giving a long winded response here lol.
I found out about asexuality in my teens. Even today, whenever I approach asexual communities, I find that most of them are filled with very young coming of age people who are so extremely “terminally online” to the point where it makes me a bit uncomfortable. And I’m saying this as someone who is terminally online myself. It’s difficult to explain what I mean and I hope I am not offending other asexuals out there. But it’s refreshing to hear from your perspective, as an asexual in the “real world”, with thoughts, feelings, and experiences based more in reality as opposed to in an online hypersensitive safety zone.
Hope the best for you!
Thanks. Yeah the friend might’ve also been asexual? He had one girlfriend in the entire time I knew him, but that didn’t last very long. shrug The subject honestly never came up between us, it was just how it was and we had more interesting shit to do/talk about/etc with our time.
Re:puberty - yeah, my mom a couple times decided to ask me The Gay Question, like if you aren’t bringing home girlfriends maybe you have boyfriends and are just shy about it or something? And I didn’t have the words to explain (or really even understand myself) that I was into boys about as much as I was into girls: not at all. Like I went through some of the motions just because it was what everyone else was doing, but I never understood the point so it never worked out for long. Man, if only I had just been into boys instead, that would’ve been a massive relief. I’d have been parading that shit up and down the street in a pathetic attempt to get me some of that ‘Look, I’m not broken; I may be a little weird but I’m just like you!’ validation. :P
Yeah I’m definitely working on trying to get rid of the FOMO at this point in time. I have a lot of great people in my life tbh and I’m trying to branch out and be a bit more social with things that scare me. But even if I do, I’ll never really have the “standard” human experience. Gotta figure out how to eventually be ok with that.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Once I got out of the depression of my younger years I spent a lot of years I still had to distract myself constantly from that hollowness I felt inside at not having what everyone else had, that loneliness that threatened to overwhelm. I was good at it, and thus I was able to mostly be a nominally-functional adult most of the time. But it did fade, and I think a lot of that had to do with age. The older you get the more you just get used to the way things are, you become more comfortable and pragmatic about who you are, and you don’t miss the things that you decided were less important nearly as much. I was rather surprised to discover a few years ago that it wasn’t gone forever, though. I got a surprise dose when the friend I mentioned died; I had also lost both of my parents in the ~8 years before that, so with that third and most shocking death I pretty much went instantly from feeling like a reasonably well-adjusted person to rudderless and totally alone in the world. In the first week or two I couldn’t not have some kind of live TV or radio on, it was like I had to know for sure that there were definitely still other people in the world right now living their lives just like they always had. I couldn’t sit in a quiet room by myself without feeling it creeping up on me for like a year afterward. But it does get better.
I’m not a spiritual or religious person, myself. I briefly looked into Taoism, but it seems that the westernized idealized version of it isn’t what Taoism necessarily is in reality.
Yeah, fair enough. If I had to slap a label on my spirituality it’d be ‘It’s complicated.’ :P I spent a lot of my life looking for meaning and religion seemed like simultaneously the best place to look but also the hardest place to find it in, it was frustrating and confusing as hell, so I spent a lot of time reading everything I could get my hands on about it, was an atheist for a long time because of that frustration, and… let’s just say that nowadays I’m more of a homebrew kinda guy. ;)
Thanks for your offer to chat! Hope you don’t mind if I’m just giving a long winded response here lol.
Not at all, you might’ve noticed I’m a lil long-winded myself. :P
I found out about asexuality in my teens.
That must’ve been an interesting experience. We often don’t realize how hard it is to think about and understand a thing until we have a name for it, it’s like we need that convenient handle to grab onto to be able to figure it out, and I didn’t have that until years and years later.
Even today, whenever I approach asexual communities, I find that most of them are filled with very young coming of age people who are so extremely “terminally online” to the point where it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t discover these communities until I was in my 40s, but I felt that pretty keenly myself, so I think I know what you mean. Because they’re young and sexuality is normally such a huge part of peoples’ lives at that time it’s hard to escape the constant reminders from all around them of the fact that they’re different, so they seek community online/etc and then turn that community’s group identity (identification with this particular way of being) into their own personal identity, they make themselves so much about this one aspect of their lives. Meanwhile I’m over here like ‘Yeah, I’m asexual, but also I’m a former IT guy, a life-long gamer almost since the birth of video games, an avid student of politics, religion, and philosophy, a big sci-fi nerd’, etc. I have a lot of stuff going on, that’s just one small - and, these days, not even particularly significant - portion of my life, so the idea of people who are all about that is just weird to me.
But it’s refreshing to hear from your perspective, as an asexual in the “real world”, with thoughts, feelings, and experiences based more in reality as opposed to in an online hypersensitive safety zone.
I dunno that I am any more ‘of the real world’ than anyone else, lol. I’m disabled and spend a huge amount of my free time in front of a computer, so I’m as terminally online as anyone else. :P I just had to mostly figure a bunch of this stuff out on my own because it was going on before the internet was a thing.
Hope the best for you!
Thanks, you too!
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Whatever is there before baby will be made a thousand fold. Children are amplifiers.
If you and your partner already have a culture of flexibility and support and caring for each other you will be fine. It will still be work and there will still be tough times, but you’ll be able to get through. You’ll probably come out closer than you thought possible.
If either of you have bubbling resentments or distrust, or very rigid ideas about who should be doing what and when, the difficulties may be insurmountable.
Well, the biggest change in our case was that she basically did not want to be touched for the whole pregnancy plus a full year afterwards. To provide some context and what I mean, she’d get annoyed with holding hands, and really frustrated with hugging. Physical contact is big for me, so that was really rough. Then, she convinced me that every pregnancy is different and that probably wouldn’t happen the next time (it did). It’s been over a decade, and I’ve basically just come to terms with the fact that sex really isn’t a part of our relationship anymore. That was a really, really difficult thing to adjust to, but I did adjust to it. I eventually saw that it had to be a choice, and had to ask myself what was more important. I decided that I liked my relationship with my wife and my kids better than I liked sex. I’m not going to try and convince you that it’s better; it’s not, it’s just different, and I’m good with that. Definitely not everyone would be, YMMV.
I don’t want to frighten you, OP, I’m just telling you my lived experience. It really is different for every person, and having kids is not an easy thing, so it’s going to change you. You can’t say how your partner may change any more than you can know how much you’ll change in five years. Only you and your partner can decide what you’re both willing to put up with. If you want to stay with them, do it. If not, don’t.
Sounds like a medical issue for her tbh. That sucks.
We think it’s probably PCOS, but the
death panelinsurance won’t pay for the test, so we’re treating empirically. It improved some of her symptoms, but not that one, and I’m cool with it. I’ve accepted that this is our relationship.No it’s very normal for dead bedroom after having kids. For some women the sexual drive is purely an instinctual thing to reproduce, nothing to do with enjoyment
Go on deadbedrooms subreddit and there are thousands of identical scenarios to this
That’s a very negative and unproductive subreddit, one of the reasons I left Reddit. I also felt that way at one point.
Your statement is verifiably false. Women’s hormones shift during and after pregnancy, and reduction (or sometimes increase) in libido is natural. Breastfeeding is well known for reducing, it also acts like birth control. OTC Birth control also commonly reduces libido. Physically sex is difficult during pregnancy.
My pregnant wife and I have dealt with this by learning other ways to show affection, a lot of communication, and setting clear boundaries. It’s a challenge we were ready to tackle, so no regrets or incel/deadbedroom feelings here, just wholesome family love. But yes the shift is difficult at times. I had a very high libido before and it dropped off a cliff for the first time in my life. Actually it’s been a relief.
We’re almost to our daughter’s 9th month of life. We’re both overtired and feeling overworked, with precious little of the time we used to spend on hobbies or couple-time. That said, while there’s been a shift towards an expectation culture in the house (vs an ask culture) we haven’t had the sort of challenges listed in that first paragraph.
Some things probably working for us:
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We’ve been together for over a decade and in our home for 9 years
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Our communication style is productive even during arguments (“I feel” statements are much more positive than “you” statements)
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We’re majority wfh so we have the capacity to buffer each others’ needs as parents throughout the day, rather than leaving everything to one person or having additional financial stresses with childcare
Some things definitely working for us:
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Calling each other out for awesome parenting, because very few others will and it’s amazing to feel that validation
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Proactively taking something off of each other’s plates, whether that’s cleaning or laundry, dishes or bottles, whatever task is getting done is one that doesn’t have to be done later
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Knowing about spoon theory and being sensitive to how much bandwidth each other has left. It’s way harder to recharge from past depleted, so being flexible and recognizing when I or my partner are reaching that point and stepping in or voicing a need for support goes a long way for both of us
How do you find the mental fortitude to ignore the stupid bs your partner does or says?
I mean, we’re both sleep deprived so I’m sure there’s stupid coming out of my mouth too. I think it’s much healthier to laugh or work to improve the condition causing stress than it is to feed a negative cycle. If either of us are escalating we missed a chance to bolster each other.
How would you describe love to your partner a year after having a baby?
Gratitude. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a partner who puts in the effort and has put in the effort to help build the communication style that’s worked so well for us.
Is there any way to know if you and your partner are going to make it and remain a couple after having a child?
It really helps to have a relationship built on respect, and knowing enough about yourselves to approach challenges constructively. Build a good foundation with each other, learn to communicate positively, and do your best.
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We broke up before my son was even born. It was for the best though, he’ll never have to go through the breakup.
There’s a movie called Night Bitch that will provide insights into what it’s like being the primary caretaker in today’s world.
a raging, yelling psychopath, looking for excuses to be passive aggressive
My wife once became psycho and start yelling at me because I yawned while reading a story to our baby. At 3am.
All parents are differents, and all babies are different. On my side, 3 first months were pure nightmare and it took until 3 or 4th year before things going back to “normal”.
I won’t lie. Becomming parent is not the “wonderfull experience” depicted by society. There is no magic hormone that makes you happy of wiping shit at 4am, or hearing scream during hours because that little potatos decided to screw your day. But, there are hormons that will makes that little shit the most important things in the world.
You won’t be a couple anymore, you will be parents. You’ll find a new balance, hopefully with your partner, but things will nerver be the same. it’s scary, but it’s also the most natural thing in the world.
Is there any way to know if you and your partner are going to make it and remain a couple after having a child?
I think if you already went through hard times with success, like loss of work, serious illness or injury, depression, harassment, trauma, whatever, you are well prepared for parenting and should be able to go through without damage. If you have lived your life peacefully without any waves until now, parenting might be challenging for your relationship.
We used to be cool.
