The greatest gift a lover has to give a lover is emotionally attuned attention and timely responsiveness -Dr. Sue Johnson

The best parenting experince happens when there is a strong bond of love between parents, emotional closeness and a willingness to repair and regain closeness when conflict arise -Wanjiku Jane

Your spouse is arguably the most important person when it comes to raising your children. This is especially true when you live together or are co-parenting. The more in sync you are with your spouse, the easier it is to raise your children. The following are some advantages of raising children harmoniously with your spouse:

1. Companionship – you have someone to share the experience of parenting with and grow old together.
2. Help – two are better than one because they help each other in a complementary way. Be it emotionally, financially or simply walking the parenting journey together.
3. Encouragement – when you are down in the gutters, your spouse can be of immense help to cheer you up. Parenting challenges are easier to bear when you encourage each other.
4. Raising balanced children who have both the father and mother’s influence.

Much as there is a plethora of reasons why it is advantageous to raise your children with your spouse, challenges emerge often and can cause chaos in joyful joint parenting. These rough patches in parenting are common and normal. They act as a pointer that things are off between you and your spouse. However, if they occur too often, they can cause irreparable damage and annihilate all the benefits of raising children together. These conflicts divide love by tossing each spouse to self preservation mode to avoid being hurt.

When each spouse engaged in self-preservation, the chasm increases and the closeness wanes. By not receiving loving gestures from their spouse or expressing loving actions towards each other, the relationship suffers and each experiences immense hurt and pain.

In this state of affair, raising children together becomes stressful and unfulfilling. You fall from lovers deeply attuned to each other, to parents – putting your children and their needs above your love for each other. Parenting becomes the only way you connect. Being on one page with your spouse and making amends amicably when things get out of hand helps enrich your union and your parenting.

The following are ways in which you can maintain the love and intimacy bond between you and your spouse which will help you enjoy a loving marital life as well as a fulfilling parenting journey.

Related: 5 Mindsets That Make Parenting More Fulfiling

1. Unified Vision Of Love

When you set out to raise your children together, it is imperative that you have a unified vision of where you aspire to go with regards to your love. You have to agree on how you will make time to water, nutrure and grow your fond and tender feelings for each other.

If you do not agree, your parenting journey will be rife with frequent disagreements, fights and clashing ideas. This will minimise cooperation and drag the achievement of the parenting ideals you hold. To achieve harmony and raise your children in a unified way, work to ensure the love between you is alive and growing. as Dr. Gottman say, “The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship between themselves because that relationship nourishes the child.”

It requires alot of emotional investment to maintain love as the family grows, responsibilities increase and personal changes take place. In your own unique way show each other love and make it a priority to keep discovering and tending to each other in a loving way.

2. Intimacy

Intimacy is a feeling of being close and deeply connected to a person. Intimacy between lovers is a sacred bond that the two have. It requires vulnerability, trust and receptiveness.

When couples are married for longer periods, it is common for the intimacy to wane especially after the birth of children and parenting which takes precedence over the husband-wife relationship. Unbeknownst to the couple, neglecting the intimacy needs leads to loneliness and frequent fights.

Endeavour to be attuned to the intimacy needs of your spouse and communicate clearly how you need your spouse to meet yours. In most marriages, intimacy needs are different. One spouse might need intimacy in terms of deep emotional connection while the other craves intimacy as passionate and erotic sex.

It is a great error and perpetual source of conflict to think that your spouse has the same intimacy needs as you. Strive to understand your partner’s intimacy needs and meet them the best way you can. Intimacy needs are only met by spouses. It is a huge red flag in the marriage if one partner starts to seek intimacy somewhere else.

When the intimacy between you flourishes, parenting and raising a family adds more joy and fulfillment to your union. You experience fewer conflicts and you are also able to make amends quickly whenever squabbles arise.

3. Having Difficult Conversations

Marriage and parenting life is filled with challenges. How well you navigate the challenges will be a result of how you communicate when they arise. Most often, emotions are high during these conversations. However, it becomes much more manageable if each one contributes to making the communication environment safe.

Some of the ways to make the conversational environment safe are outlined below:

1. Listening attentively to your spouse
2. Validating your spouse and hearing him/her
3. Asking questions to seek clarity
4. Using open and curious body language such as nodding and receptive eye contact
5. Being open to finding solutions and ways to prevent the occurrence of the same in future
6. Offering heartfelt apologies, forgiveness and importantly, a change in behaviour

When the environment is hostile, spouses experience more hurt and pain than what the issue at hand has dealt them. Be it needs not being met, financial issues, sickness or a parenting issue. This environment is characterised by spouses being against each other as opposed to uniting against the issue at hand. Often, it results from a loss of connection and intimacy which leads to the spouses being blinded by their resentment, anger and frustration towards each other.

Ways in which an environment is made hostile:

1. Harsh criticism and attack on each other’s character.
2. Closed and disengaged body language
3. Eye-rolling
4. Invalidating or dismissing what your spouse is saying or feeling
5. Gaslighting
6. Bringing back past events
7. Not taking responsibility, being accountable or refusing to give apologies or receive forgiveness

As pointed out by marriage researcher Dr. John Gottmann, how couples start arguments predicts how long their marriage will last. Always seek to create a peaceful, safe and caring environment whenever conflict arises. Most conflicts escalate rapidly like fire on dry land if the environment is hostile.

4. Growing Together

Just like your children grow, so do you. Celebrate and encourage your spouse to grow. This helps them to feel a sense of personal growth which is an esteem human need according to Dr. Maslow. When your spouse grows, you feel encouraged and inspired. So do your children. Expecting your spouse to remain the same or hindering their quest for personal growth is a sign of selfishness, controlling character and insecurity.

An uninspired spouse is like a rotten apple in a basket filled with good ones – he/she can inflict the entire family or drag them down whenever they have a project or starting something new. On the other hand, if you both grow and overcome challenges, you are likely to offer support, encouragement and hold space for each other including your children as they pursue new endevours.

As you churn decades together, seek out ways to learn and discover new things together as a couple. This will enhance the bond between the two of you and make your marriage more fun. As an example, you can enroll in a class together, take on a dancing class, go hiking or travel together. The essence is to do new things together and share the learning experience as a couple.

5. Accountability

Accountability is the ability and willingness to take responsibility as a spouse and carry out your duties as required.

Accountability is intricately tied to responsibility. Each one has to do what is required to keep the marriage and family in good health.

Lack of accountability for a prolonged period shifts the weight to one spouse who can easily suffer burnout, overwhelm and resentment. All these emotions stress the intimacy between couples and inadvertently affect the parent-child relationship and the parenting process altogether.

Being a responsible spouse brings peace and a spirit of cooperation. You both experience less stress. Remember, dependability and reliability, which are key to a fulfilling marriage thrive on each spouse being accountable. This means that each one should prioritise the marriage above other trifling things.

6. Respect

Respect is the willingness to treat each other with consideration with regard to their opinions, feelings and who they are as a person.

Respect is about making your significant other feel safe in the midst of a conflict or argument. It is about knowing you cannot take your pain away by making your spouse look bad or feel worse than you do by belittling, criticising or attacking their character.

It is said familiarity breeds contempt. This is very true for couples who have been married for longer periods. Disrespect often stems from feeling indispensable or a feeling of superiority. When you feel like you can do without your spouse or that your spouse cannot survive without you, you are at risk of showing disrespect. This can take many forms such as hurtful demeaning comments, dismissive body language, ignoring or trashing your spouse’s suggestions and opinions or spreading malicious information about your spouse to your kids, friends and family.

The other kind of disrespect is speaking ill about your spouse to your children or being rude and inconsiderate to your spouse before your children. This not only hurts your spouse but also deeply hurts your child and could cause him dysfunctional relationships in the future as explained by Mark Wolynn in his book It Dint Start With You.

Children carry the pain and hurt their parents experienced as a sign of unspoken loyalty. Always be respectful towards your spouse because your children might carry the pain or joy you bring to your spouse or seek partners who will treat them in the exact way you treat your spouse. As the saying goes, what goes around, comes around.

Through the marital ups and downs, aim to make your spouse feel safe to be genuine and imperfect around you.

Strive to maintain the same level of respect you had for him/her when you were dating. As I point out in my book, Parenting With Intent, self-awareness will help you seek understanding and oneness with your spouse as opposed to being disrespectful.

7. Support And Encouragement

Being there for your spouse adds to the emotional marital bank account. It is deeply satisfying to know that the person you love is a pillar to lean on and your cheerleader. This enhances not only the love between the two of you but also a deep sense of connection to self. Just like a child relies on a parent to have a coherent self, couples experience the same satisfaction when they are given support and encouragement by their better halves.

When your spouse discourages and withdraws support, you experience a deep sense of abandonment and if you are not emotionally strong or if you are too dependent on your spouse’s validation, you might doubt yourself or begin to lose trust in yourself. Communicate your need for encouragement and support and allow your partner to help you as much as he/she can. You can always look for additional support from friends and family.

Being supportive can be as simple as listening to your spouse, validating them and giving assurance that you will be there for them unconditionally. To be more supportive, always look for ways to be there for each other in small ways. Offering support and encouragement also helps the giver experience love. Love involves giving and considering the other before self. The more you encourage and support, the fonder you grow towards your spouse.

8. Understanding

Your spouse will not be able to meet all your needs all the time. You need to be understanding when they are emotionally drained, overwhelmed or unwell. Most married people think that their spouse is supposed to be their everything. This is a deadly delusion. Whereas your spouse can cater to most of your emotional needs, you need to be clear in your communication on how you would like your needs to be met.

To foster understanding, strive to see each other as humans. Not as a God who can accurately anticipate what you need and provide it promptly. The more you understand each other, the more you are open to growing as a couple. Also, understanding keeps blame and criticism at bay thereby making emotional resources to nurture love and repair during conflicts readily available.

9. Gratitude.

Gratitude is the antidote to taking things for granted.

When you both exude gratitude, you water the marriage and you have more positive and warm feelings towards each other. This makes it easier to parent your children and to remain optimistic when life’s curveballs come your way.

Being appreciative also adds immensely to your emotional bank and makes it easy to repair the relationship when conflict arises. A good practice is to spend as little as two minutes each day acknowledging the difference your spouse makes in your life and that of your family. Doing this over the span of your marriage will help the two of you remain close and not take each other for granted.

To use gratitude to your advantage, use the 5:1 principle. For every complaint or criticism you have towards your spouse, give 5 things you genuinely appreciate about them. This not only helps reduce the severity of the complaint but it also helps your spouse feel that he/she does not let you down often. Remember, lovers have a deep need to be seen as competent, reliable and good people by their spouses.

10. Stop Comparing

You will never experience a rich and fulfilling marriage and parenting journey if you constantly compare your journey to other couples and parents. You have to invest time and emotional resources into your marriage and make it the best experience for you, your spouse and your family at large. All couples irrespective of their social or economic standing experience the ups and downs of marriage.

To avoid the trappings of comparison, carve out time to nurture, repair and maintain your intimacy and marriage. It is far easier to look at other couples and think that they have it better than you, but in reality, you are projecting what you need in your marriage to another couple. Great marriages and families require time and emotional investment. Comparison slowly corrodes your willingness and enthusiasm to work on yours.

Comparison creates a defeatist mindset. This means that by constantly comparing unfavorably to other couples, you start to believe that your union is doomed and that you will never experience the joy, fulfillment and love that others enjoy.

Focus on your union. Celebrate the milestones. Look forward to greater things and instead of comparison, thank God for the abundance of love in other marriages and believe that your union is capable to be rich, fulfilling and filled with love as any other.