Your Relationship Deserves to Be Part of the Parenting Plan

When you’re raising a complicated kid, there is always something more urgent.

A school problem. A therapy appointment. A meltdown. A sibling who also needs something. A decision that somehow has to be made RIGHT NOW. 

And somewhere underneath all of that (probably last on the list) is your relationship with your partner. Quietly waiting its turn. Which, if we’re being realistic, may be sometime in 2034 when, even if they’re still living at home, maybe the kids will be quiet for 5 minutes in a row..

The problem is that the relationship between the adults is not actually separate from all the parenting stress. It is part of the system the whole family is living inside.

Raising kids who need more support can require enormous amounts of time, energy, money and emotional bandwidth. If the relationship between the adults is also full of tension, resentment or repeated conflict, that becomes one more place where everybody is getting depleted.

This does not mean you need a perfectly harmonious partnership. Please. If you have found the relationship in which nobody gets irritated, defensive, exhausted or weird about how the dishwasher is loaded, congratulations and also I would like to move in with you.

What matters is having enough connection and security to get through hard things together.

And one of the hardest parts is remembering that your own regulation cannot depend entirely on your partner regulating first.

It is incredibly tempting to think:

“If they would just stop doing that, I could calm down.”
“If they would listen to me, I wouldn’t get so upset.”
“If they would handle this differently, everything would be easier.”

Your partner may, in fact, be doing something deeply irritating. They may even be wrong. But if your nervous system is waiting for their nervous system to straighten itself out before you can feel okay, you are handing over a lot of control.

So here is one thing to try:

When conflict starts building, ask yourself, “What would it look like for me to stay in my own seat?”

Lowering your voice?
Taking a minute before saying the Thing?
Just noticing that your heart is racing and your jaw is clenched before the argument gets to Level 47?

It counts if you calm yourself down while your partner stays upset. You did not fail at co-regulation because the other person stayed dysregulated. Even if the other nervous system is activated, what you do when you keep yourself together is to keep two activated nervous systems from escalating together.

That is useful work.

Remember, too, that stress has a lovely habit of resurrecting the relationship strategies we learned a very long time ago (like when we were 5 years old and saw how our adults did it).

Maybe you shut down.
Maybe you get loud.
Maybe you leave.
Maybe you immediately start trying to make everyone happy.

Those patterns usually came from somewhere, and at some point, they may even have helped you cope. But sometimes adult relationships end up feeling like two much younger versions of ourselves trying to run the show.

Which is why another useful question during conflict is:

“How old do I feel right now?”

Not literally. But if the answer is somewhere around seven, twelve or sixteen, that is useful information. It may be a sign that what is happening with your partner is touching something much older than the current disagreement. And that matters because of the pressure that parenting puts on the relationship between the adults.

When everyone is stressed, it’s very easy to stop seeing your partner as your partner and start seeing them as The Person Who Did Not Put The Lunchbox Away Correctly.

Connection gets replaced by logistics. Conversations become status meetings. And suddenly you’re not two people who chose to create a life together. You’re the exhausted co-managers of Kid Operations, LLC.

So here is the second thing to try:

Instead of waiting for a crisis, create one tiny ritual of connection with your partner.

Ten minutes after the kids go to bed.
Coffee together before everyone wakes up.
A quick walk around the block.
Sitting on the couch together without folding laundry.

And try very hard not to spend the entire time discussing your child. The goal isn’t to solve anything. It’s simply to remember that there is still a relationship underneath all the parenting.

Because the goal between the adults isn’t constant agreement. It’s enough trust, regulation and connection that you can disagree without the whole system catching fire.

Raising complicated kids is a long game. The relationship between the adults does not have to be perfect. But it does deserve to be part of the plan.

If parenting stress has started swallowing up your relationship, or if you are finding it hard to stay grounded when everyone else in the house is activated, schedule a 1:1 coaching session with me. We can look at the patterns that are draining you and find some practical ways to make family life feel more manageable.

xo G