How have you achieved a happy marriage AND kids??

[Rivoli]

Just been reading another thread where a woman got absolutely mauled for saying how wonderful her husband was, and other posters were saying things like "just wait till you have kids" and calling her boasty etc. I also had a separate conversation with 2 friends recently who both said their marriage went down the drain as soon as kids arrived.

Are there ANY couples out there who are still happy / in love / generally content even after babies arrive? We are TCC and I am always worrying about how a DC will impact our relationship.

Obviously the challenges of having a DC are colossal / vast / enormous / life-changing - and I don't need to list them all on here. A change and challenges in the relationship / marriage are to be expected. But is it possible to remain generally happy in your marriage and loving with one another? Has anyone done this, and if so how?

Married for nearly 4 years and have 2 children a boy and a girl 18 months apart. It's bloody hard, we don't have any time to ourselves and it doesnt of the time feel like a tag team but we love it and are very happy together.

Following this post as I believe I may have been the individual you were referring to in your post :) I'm so heartened to hear these wonderful tips for keeping things sane once baby arrives. Thank you so much OP for putting this post up as it's so lovely to see some wonderful good news comments :) xxxx

We were happy from the day we got together till the day he died, despite having DS early on and losing babies to miscarriage. He was a single dad when we met so there was no massive shock at having a baby and how that affected our relationship on his part. I never felt like he didn't pull his weight with DS and we made a good team.

We've got three young children very close together. There have been many times we've really hated each other but we have learned to just say 'that's just the tiredness and stress talking. Let's just make up again'.

I won't lie though, no sex for ages- too bloody knackered!!

Me and DH have a good relationship. There have been some trying times since having kids but we are more or less as happy now as we were when we met. I do think the same approach to parenting helps a lot.

He is hands on and took time off work when the kids were little - I often feel very lucky.

Doesn’t stop me moaning about him of course!

Oh yeah, the sex went to pack. The only thing that made either of our eyes light up was sleep. . .

andnone I am so sorry for your loss

I didn't find my marriage suffered at all when DS came along. If anything, we are much happier now (not that we were unhappy before!). So that really hasn't been my experience.

Ah @BKJ89 ! I actually just came back online because I thought I'd try to find you again and link you to this thread! I thought people were really unfair to you on your thread. I too have been uplifted by the responses on here. I hope it made you feel better too

I think kids have made our relationship stronger. It is exhausting but I think we pull together when there is adversity. GPs on both sides help loads which we are so lucky with.

Kindness and understanding and sympathy - knowing each other’s weaknesses and supporting each other go a long way.

I started reading mumsnet way before kids and actually found it really helpful to casually chat to my husband about some of the situations people found themselves in. For example, I remember reading about someone who had clung onto their baby when it was newborn and inadvertently pushed her husband away so by the time she was ready to hand baby over for a breather a few weeks in he had no confidence and the baby wouldn’t settle for him. We talked about what we would do in that situation and what we could do to avoid it.

There are lots of common ‘pitfalls’ like that that come up time and time again, bringing them up in a casual ‘ooo I read this what do you think’ kind of way is a good way of opening dialogue about expectations.

I’d say for us the keys have been kindness to each other mixed in with a willingness to get stuck into domestic drudgery and an ability to see that things will get easier in the future. And don’t get sucked into competitive tiredness or whose day was hardest!!

it's not until you have kids that you realise what sort of parents you both are and how you deal with the stress of it all

I think this is interesting. I’m a new mum but a long standing step mum and have been able to see how my DH is as a dad since 6ish months in to us being together. We were good, cohesive, consistent parents to my DSC before our baby arrived and we are now to our shared child. We promised to never be competitive about who was the most tired, to hold a solid front, never undermine each other and to “be kind”. It’s early days with this baby but we’ve never been closer or happier. I feel completely supported, he’s exactly what and where I need. He was wonderful in my pregnancy which was a bit nervy after many miscarriages, he was my rock in labour and tireless holding the fort while I recovered from a hairy delivery. His love for our baby shines through every pore in his face and we love each other more for having made her together. Sex life is great, we laugh more than ever, my DSC are crazy about her and my middle of the night fears about lobbing a grenade into our relatively peaceful lives by having a baby have so far began unfounded.

My mum once said the greatest love in her life was for us, her children, and she was very envious of the people she knew who loved their spouses as much. It’s a completely different kind of love I have for my husband, my step children and my baby but how I feel for my husband and step children is stronger and deeper now I have my daughter. I feel it in my heart like a great warm light encompassing all of them and our marriage is stronger than ever. I spent today up to my elbows in poo and she’s spewed fountains of puke and dribble, it’s not glamorous, I’m ageing by the day, but my god I’m happy and my husband said he’s never fancied me more

@Rivoli Ahh thank you so much; I just happened to find yours when I was looking through various threads and thought i'd pop in for a peek. Thankfully, things seemed to have quietened down a little now on mine haha.
It really is truly wonderful to see so many lovely stories about how much the ladies in this thread have grown to love their DH even more since having children but also still understand that it's perfectly normal to want to wring their necks occasionally too haha.
Thank you again for starting this thread and for restoring my faith in marriage and children! You're a superstar. x

I think there is an odd, disconcerting jolt at the point where you realise that, rather than your partner/spouse being the one you would unthinkingly take a bullet for, you realise that you’d both sacrifice one another without a second thought to save your child, if only one person could be saved.

I found that hard to deal with initially, the triangulation of what had been a very happy longterm one on one relationship. Then it becomes natural.

Be lucky enough to marry a man who is sufficiently grown up to accept that while your children are small you won’t always be the centre of each other’s world,. Be lucky enough to discover that when they grow up you still love each other and enjoy spending time together. Basically marry someone lovely .. (a lot of luck involved I’m afraid..)

Me and dp are still it love and happy, and the dds (age 8 and 6) seem pretty happy too.

The difference in my experience to friends who's relationship broke down after kids was that do pulled his weight with housework, night waking etc. If he hadn't I think it would have quickly killed my love for him.

Got a 3 year old and 8 month old with DH. Life and relationship has completely changed and I find it a daily challenge not to kill DH just being honest 😂 we disagree on most things and he infuriates me with the 'ive been at work all day why is the house a mess' ect BUT we are getting through it by having regular date nights thanks to MIL and I had CBT for extreme anxiety after my first born. I also remind myself what a great father he is and how proud I am of his achievements and the little things he does to show he loves me X

20 years married, we had one terrible patch, DH sister did something dreadful but I was still grieving as DD had died, we were all grieving.

We shared workload after dc came along and still had a laugh. Plus as much as this sounds bad I have known a couple of my women friends have bloody awful relationships because they were desperate for dc and the man was just an irrelevance from the start really.

Married 3 years (been together 5) with an 18 month old and I would say we are even more happy then before.
The first few months were a real challenge and after the birth we really had a bad patch. But now things are great.
I think if you've got a strong relationship and allow for a bit of madness/arguments in the first year, you'll be even better than before

Together 15 years, 2 children (one adopted, who was actually my niece and one ours). Respect, understanding, compromise and honesty is our focus. We are both so in love with one another, and I adore him in every single way.

I took care of my niece after her mother passed away, and he stood by me throughout it all. He has raised her as his own since she was 3.

We have now had our own and the way he loves the children and comes home so excited to see us just makes me love him.

We share all household responsibilities, we both enjoy cooking so that's never an issue. We both always prioritise one another no matter what and are always supportive of our ambitions and career aspirations.

Even now when we are at work we both communicate with one another as our day progresses, just general chit chat. I love him, I really do. I know he loves me too, his colleagues always tell me how much he talks about me when they go out, it's hilarious yet lovely.

He's a police officer, I'm a solicitor, both our roles are very, very demanding, but as I said before, we both make compromises and trust one another completely.

Our relationship started as a friendship and then developed, we have faced challenges our biggest being going through adoption, but he has been there for me every step of the way.

I find it so terrible when women get so angry and bitter that others are happy. There ARE good men out there, just as there are horrible women. It's not always the mans fault that the relationship ended, some fail to accept their own fault.

Appreciating your partner is a good thing, and it's good to let them know. Why would you not want to value the person you love?

This post has gone on, but I'll end it with saying, I do love hearing positive stories. My husbands grandparents have been together for 65 years, and they're still so in love.

Haven’t rtft but honestly? Both of us having been married before to people we just weren’t compatible with long term. Those “starter marriages” which produced no children but a heap of insight to what all parties could have done better allowed myself and DH to have a frankness if conversation very early on in our relationship that kind I’d set the tone from there.

We knew there was a click there from week 2 and by week 10 we’d had the babies conversation and I was pregnant at 33.

We have just had DC3 and we have been through an absolute fuckton of crazy since getting together just over 4 years ago. We swipe at each other when sleep deprived and super stressed and sometimes we parent differently and his/my way pisses the other off. The key for us is just to speak about it frankly and considerately and without barb.

Our previous marriages were long running tense, unhappy and stressful relationships with no winners. Our previous spouses appear to have gone on to have their own families and good partnerships which definitely shows sometimes you’ve got to go through a lot of shut to know what you really want in life and how divorce can actually benefit the consequent relationships you have.

*so many typos. in my defence it’s 4am

@Aria2015 I could’ve written your post!

We’ve been together nearly 13 years and it completely changed our marriage (for the worse) and all my friends are the exact same, and a lot of it is from resentment.

My DH is absolutely amazing too and does so much now but when DD was newborn he didn’t and it really was hard. 18 months on and it has definitely got easier and I feel like we are getting back to that happy place slowly...but OP I would be lying if I said our relationship hadn’t suffered.

All our friends with children were together 10+ years before children like us and all have had similar struggles. The hardest thing is not falling in to a competition of who is most tired!

We had always been fairly equal before but once DD was born there was a definite shift. I then suddenly noticed how little DH had ever really done around the house but I had just done it without realising despite us BOTH working full time.

Also, the love I had for my DD eclipsed anything I had ever felt. DH had always been the love of my life but now there is a new love that is so much stronger than anything I’d ever felt. I feel bad because sometimes I can tell DH doesn’t understand what has changed and I know deep down it is me that’s changed. Motherhood has changed me.

We've been together 28 years and married for 25. We had 9 years before we had kids, and the tougher years were early on. With new babies he was great, and as he worked from home at that time I always had help if I needed it, and as the years have gone on we've just got stronger. We've always had each other's back in terms of parental discipline, and have always made time just for us too. Each year we'd try and go away alone, from 1 night locally when they were small, to a week abroad when they were bigger (thankfully my parents have always been great at that stuff). I love that my girls have grown up knowing that calm and loving relationships are perfectly possible, and not accept someone who didn't make you feel great about yourself.

Together 34 years, married for 33 this year, and ds is 23.

We had ds when we were ready, I was 29 and dh 34. His sea time was over, or almost, and it was shore jobs thereafter, albeit away from home at times. I went part time after ds was born, so took on most of the domestic heavy lifting, and still do, but as dh will be retiring this year, he will be inducted into how a dishwasher and washing machine functions, and that plates don't walk themselves to the sink. He will also learn that there isn't a fairy who restock his drawers with clean clothes. In his defence, I haven't worked for 13 years since I moved abroad to join him, and I do have a very nice life, so doing these things doesn't take too much time out of my day.

We each have time to do our own thing...and you learn not to resent the weekends spent away doing his thing (or level the playing field online shopping and make him pay the bill).

After all this time, dh still makes me laugh, brings me tea in bed each morning, doesn't query vets bills for the cats, is willing to help (driving me to a funeral in UK this weekend), and puts up with my mother. I don't try hard to change him, and he does the same for me.