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Sex After Kids: How to Actually Talk to Your Partner About Intimacy

From the Good Inside podcast, episode with Dr. Jessica Shepard

Dr Becky Kennedy

Dr Becky Kennedy, Clinical Psychologist

3 min read

Is It Okay to Show Emotions in Front of Kids?

Introduction

Here's a truth almost no one warns you about: kids change your sex life. Not just because you're tired (though, yes, exhausted), and not just because your body has been through it (though, yes, that too). They change it because the entire relationship reorganizes around keeping small humans alive - and somewhere in that reorganization, the conversation about intimacy quietly drops off the to-do list.

And then one day you realize: we haven’t talked about sex in… a really long time.

On a recent episode of Good Inside, Dr. Becky sat down with Dr Jessica Shepard to talk about exactly this - how to reopen the conversation about sex and closeness with your partner after kids. Here are three tips you can use this week.

1. Rebrand the conversation: closeness, not just sex

So many couples think they have a sex problem when what they actually have is a closeness problem. Here's what I mean. Most nights, after the kids are down, you go to separate rooms. Or you sit on the same couch watching different shows. Or you're next to each other in bed, scrolling independently for an hour before falling asleep.

And then someone initiates sex.

That is an enormous gap to close in a single moment. For lots of people, going from two strangers on phones in the same bed to intimate physical connection in the span of thirty seconds… their body and heart just don’t work that way. 

So instead of having a sex/no-sex conversation, try having a closeness conversation. 

Try something like: "I've been thinking - what could we actually do together at night? How can we just feel close again? Could we pick one show and watch it together, no phones? Could we do - and I mean this, don’t roll your eyes! - a puzzle together? Give each other short back massages after the kids are down? What's something small we could do together?”

This reframes everything. You're not negotiating about sex. You're asking: what builds the bridge? Because once the bridge is there, closeness isn’t all or nothing - and sex has a real shot as a continuation of closeness not initiation of it.  Plus, even if it doesn't every night, you've gotten back something a lot of couples lose without realizing - the actual us underneath the parenting logistics.

2. If mental load is in the way of intimacy, get on the same team

Here's a trap so many couples fall into. One partner initiates. The other partner feels a flash of resentment - how could I possibly want to be close to you right now, I do everything, I'm exhausted —-and pulls away. The other partner feels rejected. Both go to bed feeling more distant than they were an hour ago.

Notice what just happened: you became opposite teams.

The shift is to name what you're both actually after - and you're both, underneath it all, after the same thing.

Try something like: "I think we're both looking to feel closer to each other. And maybe what we each need to get there, especially after a long day, is different. When you want to have sex, I hear you saying you want to feel closer. What I need first, to feel that way, is to feel seen. Right now my head is full of the soccer carpool, the camp sign-ups, the pediatrician appointment I still need to schedule - and I'm exhausted from carrying all of it. If you took some of that on, or honestly even just started to name it and thank me for it, that's what helps me feel seen. And when I feel seen, I feel reconnected - to myself, and then to you."

That is a wildly different conversation than "Are you kidding me?” Same feeling underneath. Completely different result.

3. Talk about desire - as information, not as insult

This is the conversation most couples never have. What do you actually like? What do you not like? What does your partner think you like, because at some point years ago you didn't say otherwise, and now it's just become The Thing You Do?

The reason this conversation is so hard is that anything we say lands as a verdict. "I don't love it when you…" sounds like "you've been doing it wrong for ten years." And so we don't say anything. And then resentment grows in the silence.

The reframe is this: you're sharing information so your partner can know you more deeply. That's it. Not a complaint or a critique… information. You are letting them in on something about you they didn't have access to before.

Here's a small exercise that helps with the defensiveness. Before the conversation, take five minutes alone and think about yourself - not as someone's partner, not as a parent, just as a person in a body. What do you actually like? What feels good? What have you been curious about? What used to feel good that doesn't anymore, and what might feel good now that didn't before? Write it down if it helps. You're not building a case against your partner. You're getting to know yourself first, so you have something real to share.

Then when you talk, you can frame it that way: "I want to tell you some things about me. Not because anything is wrong, but because I realized I've never actually said them out loud. And I want you to know me better."

That sentence does something almost magical to defensiveness. Because now your partner isn't being graded. They're being trusted.

The common thread

Notice what these three have in common: none of them are really about sex. They're about the conditions that make closeness possible - building a bridge before you ask anyone to cross it, getting on the same team about the mental load, and treating what you each want as information to share, not ammunition to attack.

That’s what intimacy after kids actually asks of a partnership. Not a perfect candlelit night. Just a shared activity, a real conversation, and telling the truth.

Listen to the full episode

For more on this, listen to the full episode of Good Inside with Dr. Jessica Shepard.

One more thing

One of the things I'm proudest of about the Good Inside app is that it's finally a parenting resource that actually takes into account that you - the parent - are a whole person. Yes, the app helps you with the baby stuff, the tantrum stuff, the lying stuff, the defiance stuff, the puberty stuff, the social media stuff. All of it.

But it probably most supports you. Your emotional coping skills. The triggers you didn't know you had until you became a parent. The communication patterns in your partnership that aren't quite working anymore. Because here's the thing - the way you show up for your kids and the way you show up in your relationship are not two separate projects. They're the same project. And you deserve a resource that treats them that way.

Check it out here - it's the best investment you can make in your family this year.

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