Your Children Should Come Second To Your Marriage
“The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship, because that relationship nourishes Baby’s development.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives
I’ll let you take a couple minutes to swallow this one. That’s what happens when you feed your mind off mainstream pop culture bs for so long. You end up falling for anything that resonates the irrefutable truth of society deep into your ears. Fuck dem echo chambers!
Romantic relationships are at their core incredibly fragile organizations. They become all the more fragile when you throw children into their vortex. Many parents make the mistake of putting their kids center stage in their lives. Consequently, their relationship with their spouse takes the good old rusty seat in the back seat of their overpacked car.
Make no mistake here. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t provide care, nurturing and love to your babies that require you to be attuned to them, especially when they are entirely dependent on you.
The idea is rather that you should not make your children the center of your universe. If this idea makes you cringe or feel uncomfortable, it’s about time that you wave goodbye to the old wives tales that society has cemented into your mind.
The truth is that the number one factor that can predict your kids’ healthy emotional growth isn’t the number of extracurriculars they do per year. It isn’t the number of playdates you booked for them this week. It isn’t the infinite supply of gadgets you’ve bought them last Christmas. It is rather the healthy and loving marriage of their parents.
That’s the best gift you can give to your kids. To show them firsthand the importance of modeling love, compassion and understanding by giving the best of you to your life partner. The parenting literature supports the statements I’m writing to you here. Unfortunately, these powerful evidences rarely makes it to the media because still to this day, admitting that you love your spouse more than your kids is taboo af. Yet it shouldn’t be. You were husband and wife before kids came along. You ought not to become solely mommy and daddy when the kids enter the picture.
Kids pick up on so many things, and even though they may not be able to voice what they feel in words, they are nonetheless extremely aware of the dynamics that is present inside a household. They know when the connection between their parents is unhealthy.
They feel it when there’s hatefulness rising through their air. By turning away from your partner instead of turning toward him, you are not only damaging your relationship with your spouse.
You are indirectly affecting the well being of your own kids.
Hence why it is completely faulty to think that "staying together for the kids" is a wise and noble decision. To the contrary, staying in a partnership where emotional disconnection, fighting and resentment is the focus of such a union, you are inflicting way more harm to your children than if you would have taken the decision to part ways. Needless to say, parental fighting is extremely harmful for children.
While divorce does nonetheless cause harm to the family as a whole, the profound pain that it entails can subside throughout the years and with proper healing. However, when kids witness the toxicity ever present between their parents, that creates a dangerous climate for the children to grow up in, and one that does not offer the calm that typically comes after a divorce gets sorted.
Yeah I think it's easier to get more children than more wives. ;) lol 🤣
You are right, while others might disagree, your are very right. What is more important to a child growing up? Being the center and object of all attention from one or both parents or being shown how a functional, loving relationship works and what it looks like. We all want better for our children, relationships are going to be a huge part of their lives. We should be providing a model for them to benchmark their future relationships from. Their parents relationship model should be the starting point for their future relationships. Saying all that, having children is an incredible blessing and we should bestow all the love and affection we can, just not at the expense of the person we have chosen to bring and raise those blessings into this world.
There will always be outliers, situations that don’t fit, and unfortunately they happen more and more in this day and age. Even in those situations, we must be a model for our children of how to get out and move away from, not just turn inward and focus only on. Our children many times walk the same path we do, it is important we show them a how we navigated that path so they can walk it better than we did and avoid the potholes that we stepped in.
Sorry kind of roamed all over the place on that one. Hope I found my way back.
Where have you been during my whole journey on here? Your comment adds so much value to my ideas and they just leave me speechless in the best way. Thanks so much for taking the time to write such insightful responses. I take a lot of pleasure in reading them.😘
Absolutely love that line: “just not at the expense of the person we have chosen to bring and raise those blessings into this world.” 💗 This needs more attention.
You nailed it all the way. 👌💫
I feel the same way about your work on here. There is a lot of the same but little with heart and meaning. You tap into heart and meaning and that is what is important. I grow from reading your words, they are inspired and make me feel inspired. Thank you for having the courage and strength to be vulnerable and open as it brings that helps give me courage to be vulnerable and open as well.
Awww! Wow that is a huge compliment and it means so much more than you know!🖤🖤
Thank you so much:)