EP 150: Navigating Difficulties & Maintaining Connection in Partnerships After Children with Kara Hoppe & Stan Tatkin

In this episode, Stan, and Kara discuss their new co-authored book "Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents." Many couples experience new challenges in their relationship after the birth of a new baby and need tools and support for navigating these common issues. They discuss "primitives" and "ambassadors" as terms for people in relationship, maintaining presence and attention during sex, and the importance of committing to shared values as a relationship buoy during the postpartum period where both parents, and especially the birthing partner, are pushed to new edges.

Bio

Dr. Stan and Kara Hoppe, M.A. co-authored Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents. Baby Bomb is based on the premise that successful partnering is the first step for couples to become successful parents. Kara Hoppe has an M.A. in Clinical psychology, and is a feminist, mother, and teacher. Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT is a teacher, clinician, researcher, and developer of the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy® (PACT). Stan has written dozens of academic articles and six bestselling books.

What They Share

--Primitives vs. Ambassadors in relationships

--Managing stress during the postpartum period

--Nurturing relationship while nurturing baby

--Sexual re-negotiations postpartum

--Witnessing and tending to after a new baby

What You'll Hear

--How a baby changes a relationship and maintaining it

--"Primitives" run show when stress is present and operate on more primitive instincts

--What keeps us behaving properly is a shared idea of why we do what we do

--Tendencies under stress to act and react automatically instead of pausing and reflecting

--Pro-self vs. pro-relationship

--Primitive as lower-brain functions and ambassadors as part of brain that correct errors, predict, plan, mediate impulses and emotion

--Helping couples create shared space where both people can be themselves with safety and security

--Both partners push and agree to limits and boundaries

--Acknowledging and starting dialogue when one is feeling neglected or disconnected

--Nurturing couple relationships as priority along with parenting

--Using inclusive language to mitigate difficult conversations in relationship

--Stress and transition of new child on relationship

--Working preventatively on relationships

--Any physical contact is meaningful for a stressed relationship postpartum

--Sex renegotiations in relationship after a child

--Presence, attention, curiosity with the partner enhances love-making and relationship satisfaction

--Grieving process of loss of two-person couplehood versus becoming parents

--Readjust to reality of emotions, body, libido changing after a baby

--Witnessing individual and partner developmental changes as one would with the baby

--Libido as life force energy and emotional energy

--Libidinal energy is a concern for parenting and in partnerships

--First 18 months of development critical and consistent contact for right-brain

--Equality can't mean sameness in postpartum; Birthing person needs more care postpartum

--Partner offering care, comfort, and resources to birthing partner

--Being okay with feeling vulnerable and being needy postpartum

--Biologically mother regulates baby and partner regulates mother

--Pair-bond to raise baby together with both parents

--Attachment orientation differences in couples therapy

--Gender stereotypes in sexual desire and couples therapy

--"Bids" in postpartum where one seeks out connection from partner

--Purpose over feeling and principles that protect us from whimsy of our feelings

--Importance of humility and acknowledging wrong-doing in partnerships and families

--Relationships as practice

Resources

Website: https://www.karahoppe.com/baby-bomb-book

IG: @karahoppe @drstantatkin