Sexual Wellness, Sex Education + Pleasure
Jennifer Litner
16 Ways Shame Shows Up During Sex and How It ...
16 Ways Shame Shows Up During Sex and How It Can Impact Your Relationship

Communication

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6 Tips for If You and Your Partner Aren't on the Same Page About Kids

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Compromise is typically a good way to navigate relationship disagreements, but what about when it comes to kids? There’s no way to have half a child or only parent them for half of their life. Being responsible for a human life is a huge decision and navigating disagreement around it is understandably stressful. Hopefully this guide will help you navigate it as effectively as possible. 

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  • Remember that kids aren’t the answer to your relationship problems

    • Think and talk about the relationship itself. Is it strong and allowing you to grow as a person? Do you feel like your best self in the relationship? If you’re looking to have kids in the hopes it will bring you and your partner together, definitely step back and reconsider both because it will more than likely cause more strain on the relationship.

  • Ask yourself the hard questions and then ask each other

    • What are you hoping kids will bring to your life that you don’t experience now? 

    • What are you afraid of if you do have kids? 

    • What happened in your parents’ or caregivers’ marriages after having kids? 

    • Will you feel unfulfilled if you don’t have kids?

    • Will you resent your partner if you do have kids and end up with a responsibility you may not want? 

    • What hesitations do you have about having kids and are there ways to compromise to work around them? 

  • Remember that this is you and your partner versus the problem at hand, not you versus your partner

  • Avoid ultimatums

    • Ultimatums are no good for anyone. Threats are not the way to make a life changing decision and will only breed resentment. 

  • See a professional

    • Some problems are simply too big to tackle yourself and there’s no reason to white knuckle through it. Talking to a therapist like the ones at Embrace Sexual Wellness is a great start to navigating this disagreement. 

  • Don’t go in with an agenda; go in with an open mind and open ears

    • If you try to get combative right from the start, it will only create more tension. 

  • Recognize when it’s healthier to split ways

    • Breakups usually aren’t easy, especially when they’re not due to a lack of love. Sometimes, you might just be fundamentally incompatible and staying in a relationship like that won’t allow you to get your needs met

    • Sacrificing your happiness is a lose-lose situation. Everyone involved deserves to find happiness and to have their needs met

Resources:

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Tips for Managing Conflict in Relationships

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All relationships at some point will encounter conflict. It takes work to nurture the relationship and work through conflict, but it certainly can be a daunting task. Not everyone is fortunate enough to grow up around role models of healthy relationships which can make navigating relationship conflict even more frustrating. Luckily, relationship conflict is nothing new and there are tons of ways to make it less stressful for you and your partner(s). It’s important to be able to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy conflict management, to understand one’s own emotion regulation capacity, and to communicate effectively and efficiently. No two relationships are made the same so not every tactic will work for every person or dynamic, but there are general principles that have a wide range of applications. Let’s talk about some of them.

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Healthy Conflict Vs. Abusive Conflict 

Healthy conflict is when...

  • Partners choose words that are respectful and don’t attack a person’s character, call them names, or raise their voice at them. 

  • All partners feel safe bringing up issues without fear of retaliation.

  • Partners practice active listening and healthy communication techniques (more on those later!). 

  • Boundaries are respected. 

  • Apologies are genuine and not predicated on excuses or invalidating the recipient’s feelings.

  • The goal is to ultimately find the underlying foundational cause of the conflict in order to address the problem at the root.

  • All people involved are in a clear, wise minded headspace coming into the argument. 

  • Partners are making requests instead of complaints. For example, instead of “you never ask me how my day was when I come home,” you might try something like “hey when my day is over I like to decompress by talking about it. Would you mind making an effort to ask me about it?”.

It may be an abusive conflict if...

  • It involves physical harm, emotional manipulation, yelling, name-calling, or personal attacks.

  • The conflict surrounds one partner attempting to overly control the other(s) such as disallowing socializing outside the relationship.

  • The conflict surrounds a partner’s jealous or possessive behavior. 

  • Conflict arises more often than not and the relationship feels like a constant uphill battle full of arguments.

  • The same issues come up repeatedly without appropriate behavioral changes being made.  

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Communication Tips

  • Speak your mind in a timely manner, don’t let resentment build

  • Take time outs if needed. When one or multiple partners are in an intense emotional headspace, it’s near impossible to have a productive, effective conversation. Make time to cool down when needed but set a specific time limit for the break, whether that’s minutes, hours, or days, so that the conversation doesn’t accidentally fall by the wayside. 

  • Speak from the “I” perspective and avoid making assumptions about the offending person’s intent. For example, instead of “you don’t care about my hobbies,” you might say something like “I feel unappreciated when you neglect to listen to me talk about my hobbies.” 

  • Approach the conflict as all partner(s) versus the conflict rather than partner(s) versus partner(s). The goal is to work together to solve the problem, not to create adversity. 

  • Practice genuine, reparative apologizing. To learn more about how to do that, check out this Time Magazine article.

  • When possible, give the other party/ies the benefit of the doubt. Most people are trying their very best at any given moment. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t hold them accountable or you shouldn’t have your needs met, only that you should do your best to give them grace.

  • Figure out what coping tactics work best to regulate your own emotions. Emotion regulation and interpersonal communication skills based in dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) work well for many people.

  • Try to prioritize being effective over being right. Sometimes you may need to agree to disagree instead of beating a dead horse and sowing additional discord.

If you incorporate these tips and skills into your conflict management and you still encounter significant obstacles, consider working with a systemically trained relationship therapist like our team of clinicians. Conflict arises in all healthy relationships and does not mean the relationship is doomed. The difference between healthy and abusive relationships in terms of conflict is how it is handled. The better everyone involved understands emotion regulation and conflict management, the more effective conflict management will become. All relationships are a work in progress and luckily, by definition, you don’t need to work on it alone.   

Additional Resources  

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Consent Violations and How to Handle Them 

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Content warning: This article will discuss consent violation and sexual assault. No graphic descriptions will be included, but it may nonetheless be upsetting or triggering to some readers. There are resources available at the end of the article for finding sexual assault survivor support. 

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month so we’ll be covering different types of consent violations and how to handle them. Consent can be a tricky, nebulous topic and ultimately, there will be no “one size fits all” guide to handling consent violations because each circumstance is different. That being said, there are certainly general guidelines that are widely applicable, which is what this article will cover. 

Consent is a mutual agreement between involved parties to engage in a specified activity; for the purposes of this article, consent refers to sexual consent, but consent is relevant in all aspects of interpersonal interactions. Consent must be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific. A coerced “yes” does not count as consent and consent for one activity does not imply consent for other activities. Furthermore, consent is only valid when the involved parties are on the same page about what they are consenting to. There are endless ways to ascertain consent and while it may feel awkward at first, dealing with a little bit of awkwardness is far preferable to violating someone’s boundaries.

If you are unsure of how to go about establishing boundaries and consent, please refer to these resources:

Consent violations can result from a variety of circumstances. Some people are unable to give consent, like minors, people with advanced intellectual disabilities, and non-sober people. In other instances, someone can give consent in theory but if consent is not attained in the ways discussed above, it cannot qualify as consent. A prime example of this is stealthing which refers to non-consensual condom removal. Regardless of whether or not the sex acts being performed were consensual, if that consent was given with the understanding that a condom would be used, failure to adhere to that invalidates the consent. When the terms of the consent have been changed without everyone involved being informed, it cannot qualify as consent.

It’s difficult to advise a response to consent violation because every situation is unique. For consent violations that occur within a romantic relationship, you may want to repair it. If it’s accessible to you, it’s a great first step to seek professional help from a relationally trained psychotherapist.

If this is inaccessible, here are some general tips:  

  • First and foremost, take care of yourself physically and emotionally. Do you need to be alone, do you need company, do you need to talk things through? Gauge your immediate needs and address them to whatever extent is accessible to you. 

    • Though independent internal processing is absolutely beneficial, there is a fine line between that and isolating oneself which can stifle the healing process. If you’re uncomfortable speaking to someone you know, consider calling a sexual assault crisis hotline (additional hotlines listed below). 

  • If you are unfamiliar with your own boundaries and comfort levels with various sexual activities, do that work first so you will be able to give your partner(s) guidance to avoid something similar in the future. Should you struggle with this process, Embrace Sexual Wellness has another article about communication and boundaries here. 

  • Scarleteen has an excellent worksheet for navigating your own trauma response which may be useful through this process as well. 

  • It’s nearly impossible to have a relationship without hurting each other at some point. The important part is how you move forward in a way that feels safe and comfortable for everyone involved. 

  • It’s valid if you feel like you cannot repair the relationship after a consent violation. Though it’s easier said than done, prioritizing your needs, even if that means breaking things off, is the only way to ensure your healing process does not become stunted. 

While there are varying definitions of consent violations, the most important consideration is how you feel. Healthy, consensual sex should never leave any participants feeling uncomfortable or violated. If you are a survivor of a consent violation, resources like the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) and Planned Parenthood have thorough guides on how to proceed. If you have been accused of sexual assault, Teen Vogue has a guide for responding appropriately.

Additional Hotlines 

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