How Babies Can Lead to Divorce

Yes, I hear you - how can something as wonderful as a precious new life lead to divorce? But it can, and it does. Unfortunately it's so little discussed, that some people even consider having a baby with the aim of saving their marriage - when in fact, it's more likely to have the opposite effect.

It's not the baby's fault, of course - it's the changes the birth brings about in the parents. Having a baby is a momentous, transformative event, and nothing in the couple's relationship will ever be quite the same again. Most people underestimate its impact until it happens to them!

In most Western societies these days, people marry for love. Newlyweds imagine that wonderful, intoxicating devotion to each other will last forever, and that adding a baby to their relationship will only make their love stronger.

But that's not necessarily true.

When a woman gives birth, an amazing transformation takes place. She is no longer just a woman, she is a mother. She gains a new, over-riding purpose in life - her child. Everything else in life comes second.

To put it in a nutshell, most new mothers have fallen madly in love. And we all know it's very hard to be madly in love with two people at the same time.

So what about the husband? Go to any gathering of new mums, and you'll barely hear him mentioned, except to sympathise with each other about his demands for sex, or his helplessness with the baby. You'd hardly guess any of these women married for love!

Of course, such feelings aren't universal. But they are the norm - so much so, that a friend of mine who resumed an active sex life with her husband soon after the birth, didn't dare say so - she felt she'd be ridiculed.

A mother who recently appeared on Oprah saying she loved her husband more than her kids was not only pilloried - she even received death threats. Notice she didn't say "I don't love my children". She said "I love my children, but I love my husband more. I married him because I loved him more than all the world, and I still do." And yet, mothers around America wrote saying she was a bad mother, and that her children should be taken away.

It's obvious that for most women, it's normal to love your children more than you love your husband. That doesn't mean you don't love your husband - but it does mean that he's no longer the love of your life, and that change is something men are totally unprepared for.

When his wife is pregnant for the first time, the average man has no inkling the new baby is going to affect his status in her eyes. He fondly imagines that once the baby is born, their relationship will go back to normal. And that includes their sex life - because for a man, sex and love are inextricably intertwined.

He's not naive - it's simply that for him, the arrival of a baby won't change his love for his wife. He has no reason to suspect his wife's reaction will be different.

Can you imagine, then, how he feels when the baby arrives and suddenly, his wife seems to have lost interest in him?

He may - should - understand that sex isn't on the cards at first, because his wife needs time to heal. He may appreciate that she's stressed while she adjusts to the demands of motherhood. But if that behaviour continues for months, he feels rejected. As far as a man is concerned, if you don't want sex, you obviously don't love him.

He may respond by becoming short-tempered, impatient or overly demanding. The wife is likely to respond in the same vein - how can he be so inconsiderate when she's so overwhelmed? The result is bickering and discontent. She finds herself wondering why the man she loved has disappeared - not realising that from his viewpoint, the woman he loved disappeared first! From here, it's all too easy for these minor problems to escalate until the rift is too great for the couple to remain together.

I'm not saying a woman should "submit" to sex to keep her husband happy - but I've learned from experience that even when I don't feel 'in the mood", it's worth indulging in a cuddle, because I'll often change my mind as a result, and enjoy myself. So long as your partner understands having a cuddle doesn't guarantee the whole nine yards, it's a win-win.

I'm not writing this Hub as advice to women about to have a baby, anyway. I'm writing it to women who are facing a marriage breakdown, and blaming it all on their partner. I'd like you to think back to when the baby - or babies - arrived. Did your sex life suffer? If it did, it probably didn't matter to you, because you had fallen in love with your children. Your husband didn't have that compensation - not because he didn't love his kids, but because he wasn't in love with them. Could his disappointment and resentment at your behaviour have sown the seed for your separation?

If you can see your own circumstances here, it may not be too late to save your marriage. It will take communication with your man, which can be difficult to reopen - marriage counselling would be a good idea.

Of course, some women have no desire to re-ignite the spark with their husband. Some women would even say - he's a father now, that's just a father's lot. Sorry, but that's not the deal he signed up for when he married you. It's not the deal you signed up for either, but you have a new love affair. He doesn't. In the old days, the shame of divorce was such that men would stick it out in a loveless (or sexless) marriage - perhaps taking a mistress if he could afford it. These days, men and women are brought up to believe we have a right to be happy, and mistresses are not an acceptable solution - leaving is.

I do have one example of a relationship where a baby had a positive effect. A friend of mine (let's call her Wendy) was a serial monogamist - each new relationship would start with high hopes, but after two or three years, she would move on.

I always thought Wendy was a victim of what I call shooting star love - the kind of love which movies and TV tell us is the "real thing", but which is often closer to infatuation. That kind of love wears off, and two years is often when it happens - the stars fade from your eyes, and you either find you have nothing in common, or forge a deeper bond which is less dramatic but more lasting. I suspected Wendy was addicted to the excitement of romance, so she was abandoning her relationships as soon as the "spark" started to fade, without giving herself a chance to find out if there was something more lasting underneath.

Relationship number five (or was it six?) was coming to its inevitable conclusion, but this guy, Brian, wasn't willing to give up. He came around with flowers, chocolates and a very persuasive line - and they found themselves in bed together. The next day, Wendy regretted it. Brian kept chasing her and she kept fobbing him off - until she discovered she was pregnant!

Wendy wouldn't consider an abortion - so instead of dumping Brian, she married him. Twelve years and another two children later, they're still happily together. In Wendy's case, having a baby finally forced her to stick with a relationship long enough for it to move into its next phase. However, it's not a strategy I would recommend because it is so high risk - you can't hand a baby back, if you find it doesn't have the effect you're looking for!

*
All text copyright Marisa Wright. Mum and baby photo thanks to Lindsayshaver, pregnancy photo with thanks from Paula G Furio, black and white couple photo courtesy of Hamed Masoumi. All on Flickr.