The Things That Bring Us Back
Support for rebuilding connection in your relationship after becoming parents
“I love my partner, but I miss feeling connected to them.”
Before having a baby, connection probably felt a bit easier. There was more time to talk, more opportunities for spontaneity, fewer responsibilities competing for attention, and more space to simply enjoy being together.
Then you became parents. Now your conversations revolve around nap schedules, childcare logistics, grocery lists, and who remembered to pack the extra outfit. Your relationship can begin to feel more like a business partnership than a romantic partnership.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected from your partner lately, I want to start by normalizing something: Disconnection is not the same thing as the absence of love.
Many couples assume that because they feel less connected, something must be wrong with the relationship. In reality, parenthood changes the conditions that previously made connection feel easy. The challenge is not finding your way back to who you were before, the challenge is learning how to connect within who you are becoming now.
The Friendship Beneath the Relationship
When we talk about relationships, we tend to focus on communication, conflict, and intimacy, but one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction is friendship. Friendship is what allows couples to enjoy each other outside of responsibilities.
Relationship researchers and clinical psychologists John and Julie Gottman, talk about “bids for connection” as part of Gottman’s Couples Therapy theory. A bid for connection is any verbal or nonverbal attempt by one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. The Gottmans go so far to define a bid for connection as the fundamental unit of emotional communication. In their observational research, they even used bids as a mechanism to determine the longevity of a relationship (i.e. predict if this marriage will end in divorce or not.)
Bids for connection are simple: one partner points out the sound of a bird chirping nearby, the other partner listens for the bird and remarks at the song in response.
When bids for connection are accepted, we call this “turning towards” each other. My personal belief is that beneath these bids for connection lies friendship, and when we turn towards one another, we feel more connection in the relationship. There is a curiosity to know your partner’s inner world, hear about their thoughts, experiences, and feelings, or share moments together that have nothing to do with productivity.
The difficulty is that friendship, along with connection, can quietly disappear when life becomes consumed by caregiving and logistics. Many couples spend their entire day communicating, but never actually connecting. You may talk constantly about what needs to get done while rarely discussing how either of you are doing. Connection can fade when every conversation becomes task-oriented.
Friendship 🤝🏻 Emotional Intimacy
Emotional intimacy is built when we feel known, understood, supported, and emotionally safe with another person. Emotional intimacy is what creates the foundation for everything else.
You might be thinking… “wait, emotional intimacy, what do you mean? Isn’t intimacy just sex?” No, no, my friend. Intimacy goes far beyond physical intimacy (but don’t worry, because we will get to that topic in the weeks to come.)
Emotional intimacy sounds like:
