Intimacy and connection during chronic stress and parenting

Can you remember when it was just the two of you? Staying up late chatting and laughing together, having take-away leftovers for breakfast at 10 a.m., or jumping in the car for a spontaneous adventure just because you felt like it?

Becoming parents can make these things harder, or non-existent. Finding the time to be the couple who fell in love gets put on pause for the kids' 8 am Saturday football game, or to resolve yet another argument about a toy. 

When you’re touched out, exhausted and emotionally drained, the last thing you might want to do is connect with another human being. So, how do you keep the passion alive, find time to be the sexy, playful couple that fell in love and be parents?

Did you know you’re not alone? 

Many UK parents don't have the same level of social support as previous generations, and today's parents have been recorded as the loneliest. Many of us don't live near our parents and don't know our neighbours. To have any hope of meeting the high cost of living, most parents need to work, often full-time. Social media promotes unrealistic expectations for what a good parent, a normal home, and a healthy relationship look like. This can create added pressure and feelings of failure when you can't meet the impossible expectations.

It’s no wonder that a Bright Horizons study in 2025 showed an estimate of 72% of working parents and as many as 77% of parents of children with additional needs showed signs of burnout. Some symptoms of parental burnout include:

• feeling emotionally disconnected
• exhausted
• irritable
• loss of self-confidence
• tummy problems
• headaches
• brain fog

Any of those sound familiar? These symptoms don't create the foundation for connection and intimacy. So, it makes sense that this pressure gets in the way of connection for you and your partner.

How stress impacts your relationships

When we’re chronically stressed, most of us will either get irritable and snappy or isolate and shut down. This creates distance from the people we care about. We call this survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are some of the common ways you might have heard this talked about. When we’re in survival mode, our availability for social connections and leaning into others for safety gets switched off, we go into self-preservation.

Often in relationships, you find that one person becomes snappy, and the other withdraws. The Gottman Institute includes these as two out of four common behaviours that can cause relationships to break down. These behaviours have been named ‘The Four Horsemen,’ based on the biblical harbingers of the apocalypse, and they are: 

• Criticism sounds like “You never help out with the kids. You’re so selfish.” It is an attack on someone’s character and feels judgemental to the receiver.
• Contempt sounds like “Wow, maybe if you listened for once, we wouldn’t be having this conversation again. But I guess that’s too much to ask.” It’s often peppered with sarcasm, superiority and/or belittles the receiver.
• Defensiveness sounds like “I only forgot because you didn’t remind me – why is it always my fault?” Defensiveness deflects responsibility and focuses blame elsewhere.
• Stonewalling is when a person shuts down, is emotionally unavailable and doesn’t engage. They might walk away when you’re talking, not say anything or shrug. Relationships where stonewalling is present are most likely to end in separation.

How therapy can help 

Reaching out for help can feel scary, for most of us, doing something new or unfamiliar comes with apprehension. It can be helpful to have an idea of what to expect, and so here are some of the things that do or don’t happen in couples therapy and how they can help:

• Tools to manage stress – Learn how stress is showing up in your relationship and find ways to manage it together. 
• Look back to move forward – Identify the deeper issues behind your current challenges and break unhealthy patterns.
• Reignite intimacy – Emotionally and physically, at a safe pace for both of you.
• Rebuild trust – It’s not just affairs that damage trust; when we do small things regularly that hurt the person we love, we also erode trust.
• Healthy communication – Instead of refereeing your fights, your therapist will help you find new ways to communicate respectfully and compassionately

Things you can do right now

Sometimes one or both of you aren’t ready to start therapy just yet, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck. There are plenty of things you can do in the meantime that can help!

• Personal counselling – If your partner isn’t ready, that’s OK. Even one of you making changes can help. When we act differently, people respond differently.
• Reminisce - Remember what first drew you to each other and reminisce about the early days. Is there anything about back then that you’d like more of now?
• Plan a date - Maybe get a little dressed up or have an adventure somewhere for an afternoon. Arrange for the kids to have play dates, stay with grandparents, or take an afternoon off work while they’re at school. It doesn’t have to be expensive; the intention is to avoid distractions and have fun together.
• The two-minute hug – It literally takes two minutes, wrap your arms around each other and snuggle in for two minutes. No distractions, set a time, and focus on feeling held and holding. This boosts oxytocin (the connection hormone) and lowers cortisol (a stress hormone). It's important to listen to yourself if this feels too intense; that’s OK. Listen to that and don’t do it, try one of the other suggestions instead.
• Create a love list - Write a list of things that make you feel cared for, hang it up somewhere you’ll see it: the fridge, front door, or make it your phone screensaver. They might be joint things or individual ones that help you feel close. Something like “A hug when I come home” or “put a load of laundry on before you jump in the shower.” Things that make you feel cared for are important.

To sum it all up 

Lots of people feel embarrassed to admit when things aren’t going well in their relationship, and many parents are finding it hard to connect. One organisation in the UK that offers couples therapy held 20,000 couple sessions in a single year, so you’re not alone, even though it might still feel that way.

Things to remember:

If you’re feeling disconnected, one or both of you are probably in survival mode. Try to make and use a list of things that help you feel connected when this happens, so you can lean into each other instead of away.

If your partner isn’t ready to consider therapy, it doesn’t mean you need to stay stuck, too, and you don’t have to do it alone. Individual counselling can help you make the changes you need, and it’s likely to create change in your relationship too.

Wherever you are in your journey towards or through counselling, please know that every step forward is progress and every step back is an opportunity to learn something new, and that’s still progress.