Does Intimacy Change For Everyone After the Birth of a Child?
There is no blueprint for maintaining intimacy after the arrival of baby. Couples generally feel unconnected during this stage. Couples who feel closely connected to each other, as loving adults, as parents and as spouses of new parents, struggle to find solutions on their relationships.
Sex and intimacy are not the same thing. Some people consider intimacy a prerequisite for sex, and some people experience emotional closeness, or intimacy, as a result of sex. Sexual desire may decrease after baby arrives. Sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety experienced by both parents can also reduce desire. Parenthood changes your marriage relationship.
We know that communication is the essence of intimate relationship. But when couples become parents, everything changes, including intimacy and the communication that supports it. So couples need to find new ways to communicate, and new ways to experience intimacy. For that, we need to redefine intimacy in the context of their new family, and ought to be open to change.
Some couples are indeed finding ways to stay connected after the arrival of baby. But it is not easy. In the first few weeks after becoming parents most feel like going to opposite directions. Husbands should practice caring their female counterpart, who is recovering from a birth, so she could provide the intense love and care required by a baby. They can also establish a habit of caring the baby and doing cores so that the new mother gets couple of hours of sleep.
Express love both as words and deeds. Gestures, words and touch are all ways to communicate and to care for each other. Probably this is what infants experience as love and intimacy. Perhaps new parents too.
The importance of just being physically close cannot be ruled out. It could turn into an important bonding activity. Sometimes, it works and everybody feels closer. One need to find a way to make intimacy a daily practice, and not an overburdened special occasion event.
Treat each other kindly; take turns soothing a fussy baby. The general feeling in a home should be of overall acceptance. Be generous with praise. Be polite to one another. Even a small gesture can help encourage the couple connection. Many new parents redirect their love and energy to honour the needs of their baby.
Building intimacy requires sharing, accepting, listening, and embracing your partner. True sexual intimacy follows emotional intimacy. For many women sex is not pleasurable without the emotional intimacy. Do everything possible to rekindle, reunite, and reinvest in the relationship. It can be restored. Through dedication and love emotional intimacy can reemerge.