Babyproofing Your Marriage
Having a baby should strengthen a marriage, right? Right? Wrong! Unfortunately, in many marriages, the birth of a child can signal the beginning of the end of the relationship between the parents. Babyproofing Your Marriage, the new book by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O’Neill, and Julia Stone, is an absolute must read for new parents (particularly mothers) who want to keep the marriage from being thrown out with the baby’s bath water.
This book tells it like it is in very plain language as far as what problems women will have if they let taking care of home and baby consume their lives. Let’s just say that new husbands can get overlooked and made to feel very insignificant with almost no effort or thought.
So what’s a new mother to do? Well, the authors, all three wives, mothers, and good friends have spelled it out, clearly and succinctly.
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He’s using words like “fix” and “bait-and-switch” and “dog.” He is full of frustration, hurt, and resignation. She’s using words like “taken for granted” and “not on my radar.” Grand Canyon? Great Divide? You tell us. All we know for sure is how it went down in our houses.
The three of us are average women with normal, healthy sexual appetites. Before we became moms we enjoyed sex; we were earnest students of the “how to drive your man wild” type articles in Cosmopolitan; we wanted sex almost as much as our husbands did, and were usually happy to oblige even when we didn’t. But as mothers of small children, sex became less and less of a priority for us. Even after we had celebrated our babies’ first birthdays, sex, once a weekly affair, still felt like a monthly chore, right up there with rearranging our sock drawers. We gave so much to our kids that there was nothing left to give our husbands. It wasn’t deliberate. It just happened.
While we decamped to the other side of the canyon, our husbands were left behind, still wanting that emotional and physical connection with us and feeling deeply hurt by our repeated rejections. Only as we began working on this book and talking to other guys who weren’t our husbands (i.e., those without a stake in the outcome of the discussion), we realized that this festering lack of intimacy was at the root of much of the discord in our marriages.
Was it really such a big deal to go from having sex once or twice a week to once or twice a month? Our friend Larry told us, “Just as in real estate the three most important things are location, location, location; in marriage, the three most important things for men are sex, sex, and sex.” At first, we thought he was exaggerating, but turns out he wasn’t at all.
To put this comment in perspective, we asked other male friends what their wives did for them that made them as happy as having sex. Their answer? “Nothing makes us as happy as having sex.” Not a four-course dinner? “No.” Not a weekend away with the guys? “No.” Not a willingness to sit with them through some movie with lots of exploding robots and crashing cars? “Nope.” Their response was unanimous: “This is the number one issue. One-thousandfold.”
“Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. We have a great marriage. I’m a pretty easygoing guy. I can deal with finances. I can deal with problems. I can deal with ‘issues.’ I can’t deal with no sex.” — Harrison, married 8 years, 2 kids
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This book is packed with good, simple, easy information to help wives get their marriages back on track. If that last sentence irritates you, and you feel that, as a wife and mother you are doing enough as it is, I can assure you, you need this book.
If you’re a husband who would like more intimacy in your marriage but don’t know how to approach your wife… buy this book. Leave it out on your nightstand. But don’t just buy it, read it. There are plenty of tips for guys, too.
Two thumbs up for Babyproofing Your Marriage, a book that needs to be on every couple’s nightstand. It also would be a great baby shower gift.