This is a comment by keith on the post “An Intimate Conversation, Part One“.
“After our first child, my partner withdrew from me completely which I would describe as no physical affection for 2 years. Smiles were rare. I can’t speak for her, but in reflection I would say that for me there was no sense of being desired by her. Everything became mechanical including communication.
“To get to the point I would say that men need to transition from husband to father in a way that a woman would transition from wife to mother and set the priority of those roles in a way similiar to how your partner does. Some kind of inter-personal poetry can become thematic. Let’s try family romance. Affirmation and love by proxy.
“A mother receives support from the father (hopefully) and gives support to the child by nurturing. Pretty instinctive. But for the mother to be affirmed in motherhood the father must embrace his child through positive interaction and affirmation. If a father shows no pride in his children, is unavailable, non affirming and critical of their development he is also not affirming the investment of motherhood which will also affect wifehood.
“Maybe—just maybe—the distance in intimacy between a wife and husband equals the distance in intimacy between a father and child. Of course I was never good at math.”
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Photo credit: Flickr / sectionz
Sometimes I feel like all I talk about at the moment is child sexual abuse, but your wife’s reaction is very common in women who have been abused. Suddenly she has this child who reminds her of herself in the bad old days, and you are spending a lot of time being close to the child. So her subconscious could be screaming “be careful, potential child molester” at her all of the time.
I would recommend buying a copy of “The Courage To Heal”, and gently bringing the subject up.
I would say that women tend to get all “touched out” by their newborn, meaning you are in constant contact with this squirming, crying, spitting, poking and peeing little wonder and constantly worrying about everything that you do (“Am I doing this breast-feeding right?” “Is he getting enough?” “Is this going to impact his future development?”)….The exhaustion level is enormous and compounded when nosy relatives criticize a new mother’s handling of her baby….So yeah, taking care of a helpless little human being takes priority over a grown man… That said….having babysitters or close relatives (no matter how nosy or intrusive)… Read more »
I have so much I could say in response to this comment…mostly “I can relate”…but mostly it just makes me depressed to think about it. However I’d contest his last paragraph. I have a pretty solid intimacy with my children, and it stands in direct contrast to the intimacy that my wife shows me.