Much confusion and many pitfalls could be avoided with a little knowledge and preparation for married couples to figure things out as best as they can for passionate lovemaking during pregnancy or after children.
Let's set the stage. At the start of the children years, younger marriages often find couples still adjusting to new roles, struggling through the loss of independence and privacy, and blending their lives together. Deeper financial security exists farther down the road, with expensive items like a house and cars being a huge drain on the present budget. The husband and wife may still be launching careers, especially his, with hopes of her being able to stay home at least part time. The husband’s lack of availability hurts, as he attempts to create more income. Those who marry or have children later may have fewer financial or career pressures, but other issues, like time and energy, can come into play.
The bottom line? Pay attention that the baby may be a catalyst to bring to the surface or compound already-existing stressors on intimacy—as well as adding new ones. Your sex life will need wise protection and loving encouragement in those times of marriage when huge adjustments and stress attack it. The children years more than qualify.
The hallmark and central task of a marriage in these years becomes achieving maturity. This requires huge doses of self-control flavored with creativity, love, and playfulness. Maturity can be characterized as learning to postpone immediate pleasure for long-term gain (delayed gratification), living comfortably with ambiguity and mess as solutions are discovered, and proactively learning needed skills while capitalizing on your strengths.
Though the children years are a time of disciplining your lives along with your sexuality and lovemaking, they are also a time of growth and of expanding the sense of “us”. A couple must not give up on the pursuit passionate lovemaking, but must become more flexible, seizing opportunities despite the mood, and at times must settle for a quickie rather than nothing at all.
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