Constant Change

"We're still going to go out dancing and see our friends!"
"Yeah?"
"No, we're having a baby."

"But we're still going to have lots of sex."
"Yeah?"
"No, we're having a baby."

When this conversation went on between Turk and Carla on Scrubs, it resonated. I recalled when a friend had a baby and their sex life stalled immediately. The reason? Her husband didn't think of her as his lover, his wife, even a woman; she was a mother, and mothers aren't sexy.

This was a difficult one for me, because while she did embrace the Mom role totally and completely (I do think it consumed her), I know there were a lot of other things that contributed to their relationship problems after their first son was born. But aside from their sitaution, more and more often I hear about this happening.

I've heard it from both ends, and with a number of excuses. They see their partner as a mother/father and it's just not sexy. There's so much closeness with a new baby that the intimacy once shared with a partner is not important. Time time time time time, there's just no time.

It's so sad that it comes to that so often. Nothing is the same after a baby comes into a relationship, especially the relationship itself. People who choose to have a child sometimes claim that's not the case, but I don't think it's so much that things didn't change; I think it's that the couple decided the changes that would come with the baby were worth the sacrifice or change. And obviously, the intimate relationship is not the only thing that experiences a dramatic change when the baby enters the picture.

"It doesn't feel like a sacrifice," my friend will tell me. "I just don't want to do those things anymore." But the thing is, we aren't interested in giving up our vacations, our weekends, our evenings, our snuggle time, our intimate time, or any of the things that you trade for the love of a child. It's worth it for many people and it's the right choice for many people. It's not the right choice for us.