Balancing Multiple Family Identities & Relationships
Time to read: 3 mins
From the moment our son was born, there was a titanic shift in our identity & relationship equation. Adding any new person to a relationship creates change but I can't think of anything as transformative as ‘adding’ someone who both the existing parents immediately love more than each other! I recognised this from a distance listening to parent friends but I didn't realise what a change it would create.
Like others, we had a pre-partum plan of things we would do which promptly got forgotten when our son was born. My wife had two key focuses: keeping our baby alive and well and her own recovery. My focus became supporting her and attempting to be of some use for the baby (nappy changing hero over here) and of course our son had a myopic focus, feeding and sleeping. In these tough initial months, it felt we had no headspace to even discuss what the relationship dynamic of our family had become but to make it easy I have tried to illustrate below.
Adding one person to our relationship was an incorrect assumption, we had many more! Suddenly my wife and I were a parent/partner/a new version of ourselves, each identity evolving and trying to learn how to communicate with each other. This created a multitude of ‘hidden’ relationships which have to be managed simultaneously. On our first date night back, Zoe and I are trying to act as partners but all we can talk about is our son, and therefore instead of partners, we were parents wrestling with joint problems like how to make our baby sleep or wean more effectively. Then we are expected to go home, become Romeo and Juliet and talk and do all the things we did in the ‘before’ stage! Everything was (and still is) moving and evolving constantly and therefore without clear communication we didn't recognise that we were attempting to be all three roles at the same time, which invariably leads to us neglecting our own identity and marriage in lieu of parenting. It was blurry in every sense!
After a year or so we finally confronted this and the anxiety immediately started to lessen. I was scared to tell Zoe I felt ‘different’ in myself, that I needed space (to run ultramarathons, or go to the pub with the boys) but I also wanted to be a present dad. I also hated calling my wife, Mum, it felt so weird as she was my attractive and inspirational wife but I didn't know how to connect to that ‘zone’ as much, or navigate from both identities of parent and partner. But communicating helped hugely and it all centred back on me, who did I want to be? How can I organise my life to play these roles, let them co-exist and move effortlessly between them. I started to plan my day and work schedule around this to come up with my ideal day. A useful exercise you can steal with pride (like I did!) on how to balance these.
And guess what? Once I had worked out my inner identity, our relationships all improved, all 9 of them. I found I was happier, in turn I was a better partner to my wife, a better parent to my son and critically we started to find triple wins (like exercising as a three or enjoying dinner as a three). It was a much better version of my ‘before’ life as it was full of connection, full of growth personally and as a family and emotionally three dimensional in a way I still struggle to explain without crying my eyes out. And what's even better it's about to get even more complex, our son reaches 2 and starts to have his own defined personality. We sat watching paw patrol at 6am, he nudged me to move away from him, he wanted his own space to watch his show, his own identity which i’m not needed for!
Zoe’s response
I’d never consciously thought about how many different identities we have adopted since our son was born before reading this! And I completely agree that it’s hard to sometimes switch between roles, for instance on a date night when we have the chance to be just ‘us’ together as partners but invariably slide into parent mode. I think it's natural and sometimes slightly more of a grey area than the defined times Greg outlined but this framing does explain a lot of the frustrations and sometimes challenges I can feel throughout the day.
Like everything to do with self-awareness and development, the more we know about these things, the more we can use them to our advantage and find little hacks to enhance our days / lives like Greg has outlined.
And please tell me I’m not the only one who sometimes searches for dad in my phone when looking to call my husband!
TAKEAWAYS:
Multiple relationships are created due to the multiple identities you now have. Over communicate to help avoid resentment and frustration, with your partner and baby.
Start with yourself. The quickest way to being a great parent/partner is understanding and loving yourself.
Build a routine to find those triple wins. You can be great at all your roles!
