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Readtime: 9 min
The Lowdown:
When parenting takes over, relationships can quickly become more practical than personal. Here's your expert-backed guide to escape the survival loop and start reconnecting as partners.
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- After having kids, daily chats naturally shift toward schedules and bills, slowly crowding out emotional closeness.
- Men often feel desire out of nowhere, but most women need emotional connection or engagement to get there first.
- Real connection at this stage comes from small, daily gestures rather than forced, high-pressure date nights.
- Eharmony’s resident dating and relationship expert Susie Kim offers practical tips and advice to reconnect with your partner
It’s a slow burn that catches a lot of couples off guard. The days and weeks you once reserved solely for each other slowly morph into a relentless group exercise in managing the household calendar. You stop taking time for yourselves, and start running a continuous, exhausting loop of school drop-offs, Woolies trips, and whatever task is currently burning highest on the to-do list.
Before long, you’re both completely exhausted. Survival mode becomes the baseline, the bedroom goes quiet, and trying to chase the original “spark” feels incredibly daunting when you barely have the energy to stay awake past 9pm.
But according to Susie Kim, eharmony’s resident dating and relationship expert, this shift is completely normal. Having kids fundamentally changes the structure of intimacy, and expecting things to feel exactly the way they did at the beginning of your relationship is only going to create unnecessary frustration.
“For long-term couples, the phrase ‘keeping the spark alive’ can feel daunting, as though the relationship should feel exactly like it did at the beginning. But the spark naturally changes over time, and that’s okay!” says Susie.
However, that doesn’t mean you should let your intimate life fall to pieces. If you want to move past the logistics and learn how to reconnect – both physically and mentally – after becoming parents, here’s the strategy to get back on track.
Related: How to Improve Relationship Communication
Stop Treating Your Partner Like a Coworker
When you are deep in the parenting trenches, communication naturally becomes functional. You’re constantly triaging tasks just to get through the week. The problem arises when you let the relationship stay purely functional for too long. Thankfully, rebuilding that connection doesn’t require a massive overhaul; it just requires a little bit of deliberate effort.
“For long-term couples, especially after kids, communication can slowly become more practical than personal. Rebuilding intimacy often means gently adding the emotional layer back in – checking in, showing affection, saying what you appreciate and making small moments of connection part of everyday life again,” Susie tells Man of Many.
“It doesn’t have to be dramatic, consistency is much more powerful than grand gestures.”
Try this: Next time you send your partner text, skip the grocery reminder and send something completely unprompted about why you appreciate them. It takes five seconds, but it instantly breaks the functional household dynamic.
How to Understand Responsive vs. Spontaneous Desire
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about intimacy is assuming their partner’s drive operates exactly like theirs. When spontaneous advances stop happening, it’s easy to assume the attraction is dead. However, Susie points out that partners are often wired entirely differently when it comes to getting in the mood, regardless of gender dynamics (but often most common in heterosexual couples).
“Most women experience responsive desire, where arousal emerges in response to connection or stimulation, while most men experience spontaneous desire, where arousal simply arises spontaneously. Rather than chasing the old spark or relying on spontaneous desire, I encourage couples to create intentional rituals to generate it.”
In plain terms: if you or your partner rely on responsive desire, waiting around for someone to suddenly jump your bones out of nowhere after a gruelling day with the kids is a losing strategy. Desire at this stage of life is something you have to actively cultivate through emotional closeness first.
Some examples of cultivating this connection throughout the day include:
- Lightening the mental load: Stepping in to handle dinner, or taking a chore off your partner’s plate without being asked creates the mental space needed to transition out of ‘parent mode.’
- Non-sexual physical touch: Building a runway for intimacy means offering physical affection that has absolutely no strings attached. Holding hands on the couch or offering a quick shoulder rub helps lower cortisol levels and rebuilds physical safety.
- Active, phone-free check-ins: Responsive desire triggers when a partner feels completely seen and valued. Protecting just ten minutes at the end of the day to sit together, look each other in the eye, and talk about how you are both truly coping can re-establish the team dynamic before the lights go out.
Redefining What Intimacy Means After Having Kids
Pre-kids, intimacy probably meant one specific thing. Post-kids, the definition often changes completely. When energy levels and privacy are at an all-time low, the things that make your partner feel connected and desirable shift from physical acts to emotional support.
“For many people, becoming parents also changes what intimacy means. It may become more about feeling supported, appreciated, seen and emotionally safe,” says Susie.
“A partner doing the small things, like checking in to see how you really are, noticing you’re exhausted or making time to ask how you really are, can become deeply intimate in this stage of life.”
If you want to lay the groundwork for physical intimacy later, start by noticing when they are drowning in tasks and step in before you are even asked. Taking something off their plate is the modern equivalent of buying flowers.
How to Talk to Your Partner About Sex (Without the Pressure)
If you try to talk about your sex life while your partner is frantically making school lunches or right as you are both crashing into bed at midnight, it’s more than likely going to blow up in your face. Timing and emotional safety are everything when you are trying to transition out of survival mode.
“Choose a calm, low-pressure moment outside the bedroom,” Susie advises. “That helps take the pressure off and gives you both space to talk about intimacy without it feeling like something needs to happen immediately.”
But before you dive right into what’s working and what’s not working, it’s important to acknowledge the reality first, and make your partner feel seen.
“Body confidence, energy levels and desire can all shift, so starting from a place of appreciation can make a big difference. You want your partner to feel desired, valued and comfortable in their own skin,” explains Susie.
“It can also be helpful to keep things light and playful, introducing the topic with humour and lightness rather than sitting down for a serious talk.”
Another way to lean into potentially difficult conversations is to first let your partner know you see how hard they are working and that you’re on the same team. Once they feel safe and appreciated rather than critiqued, talking about your relationship, including intimacy needs, becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Focus on the Small Moments, Not Just Date Night
The difference between the couples who make it out of the early parenting years completely locked in and those who drift apart doesn’t come down to lucky genetics or immaculate schedules. It comes down to a daily choice to remain a team.
“Couples who come through that stage still feeling connected tend to keep creating little moments of emotional closeness. That might be checking in properly, showing appreciation, laughing together, offering affection, or noticing when the other person is struggling.
“It doesn’t always have to be date nights or grand gestures – often it’s those everyday signals of, ‘I see you, I appreciate you, and we’re still a team’.”
Basically: stop letting your hellos and goodbyes become a routine tap on the shoulder. Take three seconds to look your partner in the eye and kiss them deeply. It costs absolutely nothing, but it keeps the fire burning outside the bedroom.
The Good News: The Love is Still There
If your relationship currently feels more functional than romantic, try not to mistake a new life stage for a broken bond. The foundation you built together hasn’t disappeared – it’s most likely buried under the weight of school lunches, piles of laundry, and daily logistics.
“Couples who struggle usually aren’t lacking love; they’ve often just let the relationship become too functional for too long,” Susie reassures. “The encouraging thing is that the connection can be rebuilt. It starts with small, consistent moments of warmth, curiosity and care.”
You don’t need to book an expensive, high-pressure holiday to fix things, and you don’t need to magically recreate the exact relationship you had in your twenties. Reclaiming your partnership simply means committing to the small, daily moments that say, ‘I see you, I appreciate you, and we’re still a team.’
Common Questions About Maintaining Intimacy in a Relationship
Opportunity, time, and energy become incredibly hard to find once you become parents. Plus, the definition of intimacy often changes during this life stage. For many, feeling connected becomes less about spontaneous physical acts and more about feeling supported, emotionally safe, and truly seen by their partner amidst the daily chaos.
Spontaneous desire is when arousal simply arises out of nowhere, which is more common for men. Responsive desire is when arousal emerges in response to connection, emotional closeness, or physical stimulation, which is how most women experience it. While these patterns are often discussed in the context of heterosexual couples, understanding this dynamic is just as important for same-sex partnerships. A relationship can easily feature two spontaneous desire types, two responsive types, or a mix of both. Recognising where you and your partner sit on the spectrum allows you to actively create the right setting for connection, rather than waiting for desire to magically happen on its own.
Start from a place of appreciation and acknowledge how hard you both are working to make your partner feel valued and seen. From there, move the conversation to a calm, low-pressure moment entirely outside of the bedroom. Keeping the tone light, playful, and collaborative avoids making the discussion feel like a heavy critique or a performance review.
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