Parenting Mistake No.34 – Loving Your Kids More Than Your Partner

I see this a lot.

However great the initial love story, once kids come in to the picture, the frame completely changes.

Post bundle of joy, your partner becomes less lover and confidante and more a useful second set of hands (‘that nappy is not going to change itself you know!’) Or worse, the slightly lessor competitor, in a brand new game neither of you know how to play. Despite the (awe-inspiring) shared parental bond, it’s not unusual to feel you have gained two children for the price of one (‘No, not like that! Here, let me). Those first few months are a doozy. I recommend doing whatever you need to get through it with your sense of humour and sanity intact.

It’s in the months and years that follow where the real danger lies.

Somewhere between the sleep deprivation and the tag-teaming, between pureeing carrot and packing their lunch, it can be easy to lose sight of your other half. Remember him? The one you fall asleep in front of the telly with. That bloke you are always reminding to bring home more wine. That shadowy figure who you only notice when not racing to sport, heading to work, or staying up late to stick glitter on a creation for the Easter Hat parade.

There is even an actual term for it – “the middle-aged blur”.

Karl Pillemer, who interviewed 700 couples for his 2015 book 30 Lessons in Loving, says one of his biggest finds was how dangerous this “middle-aged blur” could be for relationships over time. “It was amazing how few of them could remember a time they had spent alone with their partner–it was what they’d given up,” he explains.

James Sexton, a divorce lawyer who wrote the book ‘If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late’ agrees, citing ‘Slippage’ as the biggest threat to long term relationships. It’s easy to do. We get lazy and start to take the other person for granted. Something has to slip – especially with kids clamoring for your attention.

And in some cases, it doesn’t just slip, it falls. Hard.

One minute you are young and in love. The next you are some barely recognisable matyr, never up for a shag and too busy doing french braids and 4th grade calculus to have time for a meaningful connection. With your partner – the person who got you in this mess to begin with.

I am certainly not advocating you love your children any less (and from experience, this is nearly impossible). I am only urging you not to forget that one day, sooner than you think, the nest might indeed decide to empty. And, if there has been too much ‘slippage’ in the intervening years, you may find yourself eating dinner with a stranger.

Belinda Luscombe*, in the article that prompted this post, sums it up best with the reminder that, ‘The only way to prevent this sad metamorphosis is to remember that the kids are not the reason you got together; they’re a very absorbing project you have undertaken with each other, like a three-dimensional, moving jigsaw puzzle that talks back and leaves its underwear in the bathroom. You don’t want to focus on it so much that you can no longer figure out each other.”

Which is ironic really – as by that stage your focus and your figure are pretty much shot 😉

This GET HAPPIER post is brought to you by someone who knows that parenting was a lot easier when I was raising my non-existent kid hypothetically.

*Belinda Luscombe is an editor-at-large at TIME, the author of Marriageology: The Art and Science of Staying Together and sounds like she has been married almost as long as I have.