A new baby! How exciting! You must be thrilled!

These are the expectations that the world holds when a new baby enters a family. Certainly, these things are (we hope!) true; but they do not tell the whole story. No wonder that many couples are afraid to let others know just how difficult their lives have now become.

In studying couples views of their marriage after a baby entered the family, John Gottman found that 67% of couples reported a decline in relationship satisfaction. For mothers this drop came at about 6 months; for fathers it was more likely to be experienced around the end of the baby's first year. This can be a rather depressing statistic, unless you look at the flipside of that figure. He also found that 33% of the couples did not report that decline. He then began to study the differences in these two groups.

The transition from a couple to a family is a very difficult one. As a twosome, it is easy to just pick up and go to a movie or out with friends. During pregnancy, the focus is on the mother-to-be, with lots of positive attention, gifts, advice and support. When the baby arrives, it can be a time of great joy, but also great change. No matter how much preparation a couple goes through, the changes are still overwhelming.

What usually happens at this point, however, is that couples begin to think that they are somehow not getting it. They think that others must be having a much better time of it and that they are somehow flawed as parents. And who wants to admit to being less than perfect? Couples often argue about things that weren't even on their radar before. Think about all the changes that take place when a baby enters the family (main points summarized from Gottman's "Bringing Baby Home" research and the book And Baby Makes Three):

A profound relationship shift occurs

Here’s a quote from Rajneesh, an Indian mystic:

The moment a child is born the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.

And I would add, so is a Father!

Both the father and mother go through these profound relationship shifts. Before they were sons and daughters; now they are a father or a mother of a helpless newborn. There are many new responsibilities. Often roles become more defined along traditional lines. And life is looked at in new terms - before baby and after baby.

It is very important for couples to work at becoming more of a "we" than two individuals at this time, working on their friendship and closeness. Getting help from family and friends to ensure some time together without focusing on the baby is important. Sharing the bond that this new baby creates is a source of love and joy.

Relationships change

Many couples find that there is increased conflict when a baby arrives. There is much less time for conversation and closeness, including sex, and the relationship can suffer. New parents are often stunned by the sheer amount of work that is involved. They find they have lost the ability to even finish a sentence, much less a normal task!

Here again, getting help in whatever form can help to ease the stressors. But realizing that this change is normal is the most important step toward maintaining relationship satisfaction during this time. Things do get better as the baby gets older and the rewards increase as that new baby begins to interact with you.

Fathers often withdraw

Fathers sometimes find that women are more supported in the parenting role than fathers. Today's fathers often want to be more involved with parenting than the fathers of the past. But sometimes they find it is difficult to stay involved and are only too happy to get back to the working world.

It is important to keep fathers fully involved with their children through this period of time by participating in the feeding, bathing, changing, and mostly playing. Fathers play differently than mothers, in most cases. They are very important and shine in the area of play!

There are physical and psychological changes

There is no question that most new parents are sleep deprived and often under a lot of stress. This can lead to sadness, irritability and depression, at the very time in life when outsiders are expecting you to be overwhelmingly joyful. Sexual desire may decline or disappear. The mother may be nursing, uncomfortable, too tired to think about sex. One or both of the parents may become emotionally unavailable to the other. Sometimes postpartum depression sets in, or a longer-term depression develops. Just the lack of sleep, in and of itself, is enough to bring about depression!

Addressing issues

The most important first step in beginning to understand these changes is to recognize that they are normal and that all couples go through them in some way or another. Beginning to talk to each other and to other friends or family members about some of the changes will ease the feeling of isolation and failure. Just because these feelings arise does not mean that the marriage is in trouble. You will develop a deep love together for this new little being and this will strengthen your bond.

As Gottman put it, "Emotional communication and emotional connection are the keys to success during the transition to parenthood." What can you do to be more emotionally connected to your spouse during this time of "joyous stress?" Remember that keeping your relationship healthy is the first step toward building a strong family!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?

I wrote in my last post about how your view of the world impacts your relationships. You learn a way of being in your family of origin (the family you grew up in) and you and your partner both came from entirely different families. Even if you think you have a lot in common, it is soon apparent that differences in expectations can cause you a lot of pain and conflict. Today I'd like to talk about three common expectations that can give us trouble in our relationships.

1. The Happiness Expectation

One of the expectations that we often bring to a relationship is that marriage, or another person, will make us happy. I long ago framed an old cover copy of LIFE magazine, in which one half showed the wife lounging in bed being served breakfast on a tray by her adoring spouse. The other half of the cover showed the spouse, also lounging in bed being served breakfast by his adoring spouse! I am sure that I found this particularly enduring because of some of my own unfulfilled expectations. We expect the behavior of our partner to bring us happiness. For example, I fully assumed that my husband would be the one to handle the trash in our family. My father always took care of that chore in my family or origin. I assumed that taking out the trash was equal to an act of love. My husband, however, had a different idea. His mother took care of the trash and he considered it women's work. We battled that difference for many years before finally reaching peace. We still both try to pass off the task to the other, but we don't any longer make the same assumptions as to who owns the problem.

This idea that we our happiness depends on another person's behavior is a troublemaker. Happiness begins as an inside job and expecting your partner to fulfill all your needs will only lead to frustration – and unhappiness! I spent my early married years waiting for my husband to bring me flowers. That is not the way he shows me love and when I realized that, I began to buy myself flowers.

2. The Change Expectation

Another expectation that causes problems is assuming that your partner will change after you are married. If you don't like the package prior to the wedding day, don't assume that you can bring about change. I will admit that change does happen in response to each other in a relationship. Sometimes it’s changes we want; other times it’s changes we didn’t expect. But assuming that you will be the change agent in forming your partner into the perfect man or woman of your dreams is sheer fantasy.

Barbara Streisand said, "Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?" This is not a funny joke. Many people, when asked what they saw initially in their spouse, will produce a list of qualities and behaviors that were once endearing. Often these are the same qualities or behaviors now topping their complaint list! Perhaps your partner was spontaneous and fun loving. In later years, that might translate into "unpredictable" and "irresponsible." Or maybe you were serious and down-to-earth, only to hear now that you are "no fun," and "too boring." Beginning to accept your partner "as-is" is the beginning of a healthy relationship. We are often attracted to a person who is very different from us or our family and then spend a lifetime trying to make that person more like us!

3. The Peace-At-All-Costs Expectation

Many of us came from families where conflict was avoided at all costs. In those families, it is considered taboo to bring up topics that will cause anyone to become even the slightest bit upset. In other families, yelling and arguing are considered the norm and are not upsetting. Isn't it interesting that we seem to gravitate to someone who is the opposite of what we are accustomed to? Often the two types will marry and before long will wonder why there is such a disagreement in how arguments are solved. But the expectation that everything will always be smooth and that disagreements won't need to be worked out is also a poor start to a relationship.

Recognizing that these expectations exist is a good starting place for understanding why it is that two people who started out thinking that their relationship was perfect, find out soon enough that there is work to be done to make the relationship last!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?

When my husband and I were engaged to be married (40 years ago this month!), we were required by our church to have several sessions of pre-marital counseling. The pastor who counseled us was an older, single man. He asked us how we handled conflict. I answered, "That's easy! We fight and fight and fight and then I cry and he gives in!" I was dead serious. The pastor suggested that perhaps we weren't ready to get married and should put off our decision until we had worked out better ways to solve our conflicts.

Being all-wise at the age of 21, we were quite sure that this pastor, having never been married, couldn't possibly know what was best for us and had no right to tell us we weren't ready for marriage. Besides, our method was working quite nicely (for me at least), so we ignored his comments and proceeded to use this very method of conflict resolution for the next 6 or 8 years. I was the master of the long pout and could hold out for several days, if necessary, to get my way. My husband, himself a conflict avoider, wasn't happy with the outcome at times, but since his goal was to keep me happy at all costs, this method worked for him as well. We would kiss and make up and have great make-up sex!

A funny change happened about 8 or 10 years into our marriage however. At some point, my tears stopped moving my husband to give in, and we gradually realized that our methods weren't getting either of us any satisfaction. We began the long process of learning to fight fairly, learning to negotiate, learning to look at the possibility that we might both have a valid point in any given situation. Many methods, books, counselors, retreats, friends helped us along the way. I plan to bring some of those ideas to you in later posts, but today I want to talk about how my own world view changed.

We establish our world view in our family of origin (the family we grew up in) and usually don't realize that we are acting out of that world view. My world view was that the most important thing about an argument was being "right." If I wasn't "right" then my whole belief system began to crumble around me. I needed to be "right" to prove that I was a loveable, "okay" human being. If I was "wrong," then there must be something fatally flawed about me. Many of us suffer from this black and white thinking.

One of the most important changes you can make in your relationship is to begin to accept the fact that your partner's position on a given subject has equal validity to your own and that there is a possibility that you are both "right." For example, you might assert that the "way" to get to the grocery store is by taking certain streets, making sure that all of your turns are left turns. Your partner, however, may choose a route that goes past some familiar landmark and assert that this is the correct route. Is there a "right" way to get to the grocery store? Obviously, this is a simple example, and many far-more-complex examples abound in any relationship. What is the "right" way to discipline your child? Or the "right" way to clean the kitchen? Or the "right" way to celebrate a holiday? Or the "right" way to spend or save your money?

When I began to accept that both my husband and I had valid points in a disagreement, our relationship began to grow. I began to understand that we could both hold different ideas at the same time and both be "right." I began to look at the world as a place where not only black and white exists, but many colors and shades in between.

Think of some areas where you might be willing to consider your partner's point of view and begin to change the way you see the world!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?