Coupling, Parenting, and Executive Function: The Trifecta of Marriage
A successful marriage requires constant care and attention to three very important areas. Specifically, your coupling, parenting and financial relationships function together to form a strong whole. The neglect of one can threaten the balance of the whole. Typically, in the early stages of marriage, this balance is fairly automatic. You are still engaged in significant coupling while working on agreements about making and spending money. When kids come along, parenting is added to the mix and certainly demands focus. Over time, however, financial and parenting stress can take over the time and energy that you have for coupling and before you know it, your intimate connection to one another feels elusive.
It goes without saying that you can’t ignore your parenting duties or your financial responsibilities. Unfortunately, the same urgency does not compel a focus on your coupling life. Before you know it, every ounce of coupling is spent talking about the kids and money and the fatigue that both bring. It is easy to forsake intimacy for an early bedtime, or an accidental snooze while putting the kids to bed. It is easy to decide not to spend money on dinner and a babysitter when the kids are begging for Disney World or new bicycles. What is not easy is working your way back to one another after a decade of neglect.
A commitment to coupling throughout your marriage is the reward for the later years when finances are in order and children are adults. This is what you have been working for and this is the time that you get to reap the benefit of the hard work. After all of those years of planning for the future, you deserve to be excited when the future finally gets here. It is easy to put coupling on the back burner when compared to the urgency of parenting and financial attentiveness. It is not easy to pull coupling off of the back burner when that is all that is left connecting you in your daily life. The bottom line is that attention to money, kids and each other are of equal importance for today and tomorrow.