Can Having a Child Save a Struggling Relationship?

by Micaha | Dec 20, 2022 | Relationships

It is stressful to feel like your relationship is struggling. It is even more stressful to not know what you can do to help fix it. Sometimes, that stress leads to desperation. One way that couples try to solve their relationship issues is by choosing to have a baby. The idea is that bringing a child into the world will create something magical that will awaken a shared love as you watch after this new baby.

Will Having a Child Save Your Marriage?

Generally, this is not the type of question that can be given a “Yes/No” answer. There are likely some relationships that have been saved by bringing a child into the world, so a firm “no” is overstating the variability in relationships and personalities. 

However, in a general sense, having a child *in order to* save a relationship can be very risky. That is because:

• Children Are Stressful – It is true that bringing a child into the world can enhance a strong relationship considerably. It is a joy that many couples share. But if a partnership is already experiencing some very heavy challenges, adding additional stress to those challenges can lead to further problems with less ability to solve them. 
• Children Are Costly – Finances are the number one cause of stress in a relationship. If your finances are already a source of disconnect, a child is only going to make those challenges worse, which could lead to more arguments. 
• Coparenting Requires Communication – Both partners are gong to want to parent differently. In order to make sure that there is harmony in the household with how you parent, you will need to make sure that you’re communicating effectively. Typically, a struggling couple is not communicating the way they need to, in which case coparenting can make it worse. 
• Pregnancy Separates Couples Experiences – Both partners typically struggle to understand each other during pregnancy itself. One partner may not be able to empathize with the experience of the pregnant one or be able to show them they care, and the other may not feel well enough to meet their partner’s needs.
• Having a Child Reduces Time for Physical/Emotional Intimacy – If you’re struggling with a lack of physical or emotional intimacy, it is not likely to improve with a child. It becomes more difficult to find time to connect, with a child taking up much of your alone time. 

In a marriage, two partners need to be able to talk, show and accept love, communicate in a healthy way, and find ways to overcome obstacles together in order to maintain intimacy and affection. If those are already struggles, bringing a new life into the world is unlikely to help and may make it worse.

Children Are Wonderful – But Not a Miracle Cure

It is possible for a child to reconnect two partners and strengthen their bond. But it also shouldn’t be something you assume will happen, or used to try to save a failing relationship. If you and your partner both want a child, but you also have your struggles, then it is always a good idea to consider couples counseling. 

Before having a child, couples counseling can strengthen your relationship and make it easier for you both to withstand the stresses of parenthood. After you have a baby, couples counseling can provide the guidance you need to maintain intimacy, show love, and make sure that you’re responding to each partner’s needs.

If you’re interested in NYC couples counseling, call Flourish Psychology today. We are a Brooklyn based boutique private practice that works with couples throughout New York to strengthen their marriages and support their mutual growth. Learn more or get started by filling out our online form.

Brooklyn Couples Therapy: Benefits of a Safe Space for Both Partners

by Micaha | Dec 16, 2022 | Relationships

Most couples who come to therapy have already had the same argument many times. They know what the other person is going to say before they say it. They know how the conversation ends. Someone gets defensive, someone shuts down, something that needed to be said doesn’t get said clearly enough, and the issue stays unresolved until the next time it surfaces.

The problem isn’t that the two people don’t care about each other or don’t want things to be different. The problem is that the environment where they’re trying to work things out — the kitchen, the car, the end of a long day — doesn’t support the kind of conversation that actually moves something forward. The history between them, the accumulated tension, and the absence of any structure to keep the conversation on track all work against them.

Couples therapy in Brooklyn provides something that conversation at home rarely does: a structured, neutral space where both people can say what they actually mean and actually be heard.

What Gets in the Way at Home

The dynamics that make communication difficult in a relationship don’t pause because both people want to have a productive conversation. The patterns that developed over months or years — the defensiveness, the withdrawal, the tendency for certain topics to escalate before they’ve even really started — are activated by the same environment where they formed.

One partner may feel that any attempt to raise a concern is heard as an attack. The other may feel that their perspective never fully lands before the conversation has moved somewhere else. Both people may care deeply about the relationship and still find that their conversations about it produce more damage than resolution.

A therapist’s office changes the environmental conditions. There’s a neutral third party whose only investment is in the quality of the conversation. There’s structure that keeps things from escalating in the familiar ways. There’s time and space specifically designated for a conversation that doesn’t have to happen between other obligations.

What a Safe Space Provides

Flourish Psychology’s approach to couples counseling is built around the premise that both people in the room matter equally — that neither partner’s perspective is the correct one and neither person is simply there to be corrected. The therapist’s role is to hold the space for both people, not to arbitrate who is right.

In practice, that means several specific things that a conversation at home rarely produces:

• Each partner can speak without being interrupted — finishing a thought completely before the other person responds, which changes the quality of what gets said and what gets heard.
• Each partner is actively encouraged to listen rather than prepare their response while the other person is still talking.
• When something lands poorly or gets misunderstood, the therapist can help find clearer language — not to change what someone means, but to help it reach the other person more accurately.
• Each person’s strengths in the relationship get named and recognized, not only the areas of conflict.
• The conversation stays in the room rather than bleeding into the rest of the day or the week.

Each of these creates a different quality of exchange than what most couples can produce in their own environment, regardless of how much they love each other or how hard they’re trying.

Why One Partner’s Hesitation Is Normal

One of the more consistent dynamics in couples therapy is that one partner tends to be more ready to pursue it than the other. The hesitant partner is often anticipating a process that feels like blame — an hour of being told what they’ve done wrong by someone who has been briefed by the other person.

That’s not what couples therapy at Flourish looks like. The therapist has no prior relationship with either person. There is no brief, no predetermined side, and no agenda other than helping both people communicate more effectively and understand each other more clearly. The value of couples therapy is that it treats the relationship as the subject rather than treating one person as the problem.

For partners who are hesitant, knowing that the space is genuinely designed for both of them — not structured to confirm one person’s account of what’s happening — makes the process feel less like walking into something adversarial.

Couples at Every Stage

Couples counseling at Flourish Psychology is available to couples at every stage of a relationship — dating, engaged, married, long-term, and non-traditional partnerships. The work doesn’t require a relationship to be at a breaking point to be useful. Some couples come to therapy when things have become genuinely difficult. Others come when they want to build better communication before a major transition — a marriage, a move, a child — creates new pressures they’d rather be prepared for.

Both are appropriate starting points. The structure that therapy provides is valuable whether the relationship is in crisis or simply ready for something better than what it currently has.

Flourish Psychology provides couples therapy in Brooklyn at 300 Cadman Plaza West, Floor 12, and via online therapy for couples throughout New York. Call 917-737-9475 or reach out through the contact page to schedule a session.