Contents
- Parents: How can we explain the increase in the number of separations after the birth of the first child?
- Are the couples who last the ones who prepared for the birth, who were in a sense “ripe”?
- Do the couples who hold out have more or less the same profile?
- Infidelity is often the cause of the breakup. Are couples who last not affected? Or do they better accept these “gaps”?
- If the situation is deteriorated, how to find a balance?
- What do we have to want to be able to stay together? Some kind of ideal? A bond stronger than routine? Don’t put the couple above all else?
Parents: How can we explain the increase in the number of separations after the birth of the first child?
Bernard Geberowicz: The birth of the first child, later than before, puts the lives of the members of the couple to the test. These upheavals are internal to everyone, relational (within the couple), family and socio-professional. Most couples gradually find a new balance. Others realize that their plans were not compatible and go their separate ways. The role models each one has built up, of course, plays a role in the decision to separate. Is it a good thing to quickly consider separation as a solution to any relationship conflict? I think it is necessary to think carefully before “daring” to separate. Locking up in a compulsory couple is no longer in order, the “Kleenex” couple is not a model to promote either, from the moment when one takes the responsibility of having a child with someone.
Are the couples who last the ones who prepared for the birth, who were in a sense “ripe”?
B.G. : We can prepare to become parents. Learn to listen to each other, talk to each other, learn to ask and formulate needs other than in the form of reproaches. Stopping contraception, pregnancy, daydreaming are a good time to do this job and take care of the other and the relationship.
But a couple is never “fully ripe” to have a baby. It is also by getting to know the child that we learn to become a parent and that we develop the complementarity and complicity of the “parental team”.
“Un amour au longue cours”, a touching novel that rings true
Do words save time passing by? Can we control desire? How can a couple defy the routine? In this epistolary novel, Anaïs and Franck question and answer each other, evoking their memories, their struggles, their doubts. Their story resembles so many others: a meeting, a marriage, children who are born and grow up. Then the first negative waves, the difficulty in understanding each other, the temptation to infidelity … But Anaïs and Franck have a weapon: an absolute, relentless belief in their love. They even wrote a “Constitution of the couple”, plastered on the fridge, which makes their friends smile, and whose articles resonate like a January 1 to-do list: Article 1, do not criticize the other when he sits. take care of the baby – Article 5, do not tell each other everything – Article 7, get together one evening a week, one weekend a month, one week a year. As well as the generous article 10: accept the weaknesses of the other, support him in everything.
Guided by these benevolent mantras spelled out over the pages, Anaïs and Franck evoke daily life, the testing of reality, their daughters who are growing up, everything that we call “family life” and who is the short life. With its share of improbable, insane, “out of control”. And who will be able to give birth, naked and happy, to the desire to start over together. F. Payen
“A long-term love”, by Jean-Sébastien Hongre, ed. Anne Carrière, € 17.
Do the couples who hold out have more or less the same profile?
B.G. : I don’t believe there are any criteria that can predict the lifespan of a relationship. Those who choose themselves by listing the necessary commonalities are not sure of success. Those who lived a long time in a very “fusional” way before becoming parents risk being disoriented by the bursting of the bubble and the passage from two to three. Couples who are “too” different sometimes also have a hard time lasting.
Regardless of the parents’ backgrounds and backgrounds, everyone must be ready to consider that “nothing will be the same again, and so much the better!” Moreover, the more the couple feels solid (in their eyes and that of their relatives and respective families), the more the risk of conflict decreases.
Infidelity is often the cause of the breakup. Are couples who last not affected? Or do they better accept these “gaps”?
B.G. : Lies hurt more than infidelities. They lead to the loss of confidence in the other, but also in oneself, and therefore in the solidity of the bond. The couples who last, after that, are those who manage to “live with” these traumas, and who manage to recover in a trust and a common desire to reinvest in the relationship. In short, it is about taking responsibility for one’s choices, knowing how to ask for and grant forgiveness, not to make others bear responsibility for their own actions.
If the situation is deteriorated, how to find a balance?
B.G. : Even before the degradation, couples have an interest in taking the time to talk to each other, to explain, to listen to each other, to seek to understand each other. After the birth of a child, recreating intimacy for two is essential. We should not wait for the week of vacation together (which we rarely take at the beginning) but try, at home, to protect a few evenings, when the child is asleep, to cut the screens and be together. Be careful, if each of the members of the couple works a lot, with tiring journeys, and “electronic bracelets” which connect them to the professional world in the evenings and weekends, this decreases the availability for each other (and with child). To know also, sexuality can not return to the top in the weeks which follow the arrival of a child. In question, the fatigue of each one, the emotions turned towards the baby, the consequences of the childbirth, the hormonal modifications. But complicity, tender closeness, the desire to meet together keep the desire alive. Not the search for performance, nor the need to be “on top” or the pernicious idea of going back to “like it was before”!
What do we have to want to be able to stay together? Some kind of ideal? A bond stronger than routine? Don’t put the couple above all else?
B.G. : Routine is not an obstacle, as long as we know that everyday life contains a part of repetitive things. It’s up to everyone to manage to punctuate this life with intense moments, moments of fusion, shared intimacy. Not to have unattainable ideals, but to know how to be demanding with oneself and with others. Complicity and connivance are important. But also the ability to highlight good times, what is going well and not just flaws and blame.