Love your kids? Then love your husband more!
by Melissa Chapman for SheKnows.com
Once you become a mother, you're supposed to sublimate your needs and fully encompass this role... many times to the detriment of your marriage. Alisa Bowman says that if you care about the well being of your children, you will do everything possible to nurture your marriage.
HOW COULD YOU?!
Several years ago, author Ayelet Waldman penned a New York Times Modern Love essay in which she unapologetically confessed that she loved her husband more than her kids. And the backlash was severe. Moms decried her statement -- bashing her for admitting that a mother could possibly admit to loving her spouse more deeply than her children.
According to Alisa Bowman, author of Project: Happily Ever After (Running Press, December 2010),no one goes into parenthood thinking, "I can't wait for my marriage to end. Kids are the answer!" Yet putting the kids first does just that: It erodes the marriage.
Also see: 1-Minute antidote to "the honeymoon's over" syndrome
THE HIERARCHY OF LOVE
"Staying happily married is a hard enough exercise as it is without stressing it even more," says Bowman. "The healthiest families have a love hierarchy that looks like this: Mom loves herself. Dad loves himself. Mom loves dad. Dad loves mom. Mom and Dad love the children."
But, she says, it doesn't work in reverse. "If you flip that hierarchy and put the kids at the top, it doesn't work. All of the energy gets sucked into caring for the children. Mom neglects herself. Dad neglects himself. They neglect each other. Their health suffers. They get stressed and mentally compromised. The marriage suffers, and eventually the kids do, too."
NEXT: Read more of Bowman's thoughts on The love hierarchy: Love as a noun, love as a verb, and How kids benefit when marriage comes first!
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