How Focusing on Micro Pleasures Can Strengthen Your Relationship While Parenting

By Erin Chen

Three expert-backed ways to strengthen your relationship with your partner during parenthood.

We’ve all read it a thousand times over: raising young children is a three-ring circus, complete with its own juggling acts. Even the delicious snuggles of babyhood, or the funny antics of the preschool years can’t mask the pure exhaustion that comes part and parcel with parenthood. Fulfilling as raising kids may be, it’s little wonder that for many of us, our romantic partnerships often take a back seat. And while this can be a totally normal response to parenthood, it’s also totally normal to be concerned about a drop in intimacy.

“Many couples worry that a dip in sexual frequency will affect how connected they are in the future,” says Erin Chen, MscMed, a trained sex and relationship counselor and the founder of Gilly, a relationship and intimacy app specifically designed for couples with kids. “But it’s not the frequency that matters—it’s how you navigate the ebb and flow.”

Below, Chen walks us through 3 nearly effortless ways to strengthen your relationship and weather the choppy waters of early parenthood with your partner.

1. Focus on Micro Pleasures

As a survival tactic, our brains are used to creating a baseline for our experiences, so they can quickly scan our environments and incoming sensations and emotions for anything out of the norm. This means that over time, we get used to certain touches and stimulations and naturally look for an increase in our baseline experience. While this is a natural process, it also means that it’s easy to fall into the trap of always looking for new and shiny things to “improve” intimacy. 

Training your brain to focus on micro pleasures is a practice in noticing the small pleasures—bringing enough of your attention to them to feel them again.

So training your brain to focus on micro pleasures is a practice in noticing the small pleasures—bringing enough of your attention to them to feel them again. The raisin exercise is a great example of practicing micro pleasures while eating. Another example is to take a few minutes in your day to write a message to your partner—it can be a note of gratitude or sharing a recent memory that made you smile. In the Gilly app, we make this really easy through our love notes feature where we remove the barrier of writer’s block and guide you through quick prompts that help you compose a love note for each other.

Try this practice of 2-3 small doses of daily pleasure over the span of a week and see if you notice a difference in the baseline experience of your senses and with your partner.

2. Expand Your Definition of “Sex”

First, it’s great when couples are asking themselves how they can stay connected, despite feeling too exhausted for sex. It implies that staying connected is important to them and that they are open to the idea that sex is not the only way to cultivate that connection. That, in itself, is something worth celebrating!

Second, what kind of sex are you too tired to have? I’m being cheeky here, but often, the answer is penetrative sex. 

Perhaps, try viewing sex through the lens of pleasure instead. What would feel pleasurable for you, in this moment?

So I want to visit what we mean by “sex” here because most of the time, people already have a predefined view of what sex is and what sex entails. Often, sex equals penetrative sex. Everything else—kissing, touching, fondling—is foreplay. What if sex wasn’t just that? What if sex… was more than that?

I often invite people to pause and explore their definition of what sex is. Whatever they come up with, I then invite them to try expanding that definition. Perhaps, try viewing sex through the lens of pleasure instead. What would feel pleasurable for you, in this moment?

3. Check in Regularly

On a regular basis, every two weeks or so, ask each other: How connected do we feel at the moment? What would help us feel more connected, if needed, in this moment?

Perhaps, it is sex (recall what we discussed just now on what “sex” is). Perhaps, it’s a long walk. Perhaps, it’s playing video games together. Perhaps, it’s time apart. There is no set formula that, if followed, will ensure that you stay connected to your partner through this life season. But, the good news is that there is no set formula so you get to do whatever you want!

Erin is the founder of Gilly, a relationship & intimacy app for couples with kids. She holds a Masters of Science in Medicine in Sexual Health Counseling from the University of Sydney and is a mother of two.

Editor’s note: A version of this story was first published in 2022. It has been updated for timeliness.