I’m happy to say the quiet part out loud. My husbands snoring takes as much sleep away from me as our newborns did when they were hungry.
I don’t actually hate him. I know that. But there are moments I hear from moms ALL OF THE TIME, that convince them they hate their partners — when their partner’s cold makes them act as if they are the sickest human to ever be sick, the moment he asks what’s for dinner while you’re still in the same shirt you’ve been wearing since Tuesday, the moment they say they’re tired — where hate is genuinely the closest word you have.
And then you feel terrible about it, or you don’t. Because you love them, mostly. Because they’re a good person, mostly. Because the last thing you need right now, on top of everything else, is to also be holding onto resentment.
Here’s what I want you to know before we get to the scripts: what you’re experiencing is probably not a marriage problem. It is a transition problem. Research on relationship satisfaction shows that couples experience their sharpest decline in marital happiness in the first year after having a baby — sharper than at any other point in a relationship’s lifespan. This isn’t a reflection of who you married. It’s a reflection of what you’re both being asked to do, with no sleep, no roadmap, and bodies and roles that have been fundamentally reorganized overnight.
The resentment you feel? It’s data. It’s telling you something about unmet needs, invisible labor, and the gap between what you expected partnership to look like and what it actually looks like at 3am with a baby on your chest and a husband who somehow continues to exist as a full and separate human being with needs of his own.
The scripts below won’t fix everything. But they’ll give you somewhere to start — because most of us don’t say what we need to say. We say something adjacent, or we say nothing at all and let it calcify, and six months later we’re fighting about the dishwasher but everyone knows we’re not really fighting about the dishwasher.
Say the real thing. Here’s how.
Scenario 1: They don’t see what needs to be done and you’re exhausted from asking.
The situation: You’ve asked them three times to make the pediatrician appointment. They haven’t. You mentioned the laundry. They looked at it and sat back down. You are running the entire household in your head at all times, and they are living inside it like a guest who is confused about the checkout process.
What you want to say: “Do you even see what I do all day? Do you notice ANY of this?”
What tends to happen: They get defensive. You get angrier. Nothing changes.
The script:
“I need to talk to you about something that’s been building for me, and I want to say it clearly so we can actually solve it. I’m carrying the load of almost everything that keeps this house running — the appointments, the groceries, the tracking, the planning. I’m not asking you to care more. I think you do care. But right now I need you to be responsible for specific things, not just help when I ask. Can we sit down and actually divide the list? Not split it unevenly — divide it so you own things, not assist with them.”
Eve Rodsky’s card-deck is a great resource to help make this conversation go easier, if you are worried about it escalating to an argument, or having a hard time explaining how you feel.
Scenario 2: He went to sleep and you didn’t, and now you want to smother him with a pillow.
The situation: It is 2am. The baby has been up for an hour. He is asleep. You can hear him breathing. The sound of another person’s uninterrupted sleep has never made you feel more homicidal.
What you want to say: Nothing. You want to throw something.
What tends to happen: You silently seethe, handle it alone, and wake up the next morning more depleted and more resentful than the day before.
The script (for the next morning, when everyone is calmer):
“Last night was really hard and I need us to fix the nighttime plan. I know you have work, and I’m not saying your sleep doesn’t matter. But I am saying I cannot be the only one getting up every night — it’s not sustainable and it’s starting to affect how I feel about us, not just how I feel physically. Can we pick two or three nights a week where you take nights? Or a different system that actually gives me some recovery? I need this to change.”
My husband and I found a plan that worked great for us, as I was nursing, he would get up, bring the baby to me, bring them back to their bed when we were done nursing and everyone would go back to sleep. This worked for us, it might not for you, but sleep deprivation isn’t reserved for just moms. Remember that.
The situation: He came home from work and said he was exhausted. You have not slept more than three consecutive hours in four months. You have not eaten a hot meal. You cannot remember the last time you used the bathroom alone. And he is tired.
What you want to say: “You don’t know what tired IS.”
What tends to happen: Either a fight, or you swallow it and add it to the growing internal list of grievances that lives in your chest like a stone.
The script:
“I hear that you’re tired. I believe you. And I also need you to hear me: I am operating at a level of depletion that I don’t have words for. I’m not saying your tired doesn’t count. I’m saying I need you to understand that what I’m carrying right now is beyond what I can sustain without more support from you. Not sympathy — support. Can we talk about what that looks like?”
Scenario 4: You miss who you used to be together, and you don’t know how to say that without it sounding like a complaint.
The situation: You love your baby. You would do all of it again. But you also miss him — the version of him you were with before all of this. You miss being a person he looked at without worry. You miss easy. And you’re scared that what you have now is just... this. Forever.
What you want to say: Nothing. Because saying it feels like admitting something is broken, and you’re not sure you can handle that answer.
The script:
“Can I tell you something that might sound strange? I miss us. Not in a way that means I regret this — I don’t. But I miss the version of us that had room for each other. I want to find our way back to something that feels like us, even if it’s different now. I don’t need a vacation or a date night to fix everything. I just need to know you’re thinking about that too.”
Scenario 5: You’re touched out, and the last thing you want is for him to touch you, and now that’s also a problem.
The situation: A baby has been on your body all day. Your body does not feel like yours. It feels like a resource. And when he reaches for you at the end of the day — even just a hand on your back — something in you recoils, and then you feel guilty about that too.
What you want to say: “Please don’t touch me.” But you’re concerned of what that means for the two of you.
The script:
“I want to explain something that’s been going on for me, because I don’t want you to take it personally — even though I know it might feel that way. I’m touched out. By the end of the day my body has been needed by someone else for so many hours that I have nothing left to give physically. It’s not about you. It’s not about attraction. It’s about the fact that I’m running on empty and my nervous system needs space. Can we find a way to stay connected that doesn’t depend on physical touch right now? I want to figure this out with you, not around you.”
Scenario 6: You said something you regret, and now you need to repair it.
The situation: You said the thing you swore you wouldn’t say. Or you said it in the tone you promised yourself you’d never use. He’s quiet now. You feel awful. But apologizing feels hard when you’re also still so exhausted and so right about the underlying thing.
What you want to say: Sorry. But also: you’re still not wrong.
The script:
“I’m sorry for the way I said that. I’m not sorry for the feeling underneath it — I want us to still talk about that — but the way it came out wasn’t fair, and you didn’t deserve that version of it. I’m running low and it’s coming out sideways. Can we try again?”
A note before you go.
The goal of every script in this series isn’t to sound perfect. It’s to say the real thing instead of the thing that creates more distance.
The resentment that builds in early parenthood — and it does build, in almost every partnership, regardless of how good the relationship is — is not a sign that you chose wrong. It is a sign that you are two people trying to reorganize your entire lives simultaneously, with no sleep and very little support, in a culture that handed you a myth about what this was supposed to look like and then offered you nothing when it didn’t.
You are not a bad wife for feeling this. You are not a bad mother for needing more. You are a person who is doing something extraordinarily hard, and you deserve to say so — out loud, to the person who is in it with you.
The conversation is always worth having. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
If you’re finding that these conversations keep going in circles, or that the resentment has calcified past the point where scripts feel useful, that’s worth talking to a therapist about — individually or together. It doesn’t mean the relationship is broken. It means you need more support than a Wednesday newsletter can give you. There is no shame in that. There is only shame in pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
See you Sunday.
— Erin
P.S. If this one hit close to home, chapter seven of The Myth of the Perfect Mom is entirely about the partnership piece — what the research actually says about why relationships struggle after baby, and what the couples who come out the other side have in common. You can grab a copy wherever books are sold.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.