Episode 68: How to Stop Putting Your Marriage Last Without Guilt

In this solo episode, Kayla opens up about the silent struggle so many couples face after becoming parents—losing connection in the chaos of raising kids. If your marriage has taken a backseat to parenting, you’re not alone. 

What you’ll hear in this episode: 

• Why pouring everything into your kids can hurt your relationship 
• How to reclaim time and intimacy with your partner 
• Simple ways to nurture your marriage, even with a packed schedule 

This is your gentle reminder that you and your relationship still matter. 

🎧 Tune in now!

Thank you so much for joining me this week on today's episode. Be sure to follow me on IG @therapy.with.kayla

I love hearing about your insights and aha! moments from the show. 

About the Podcast Host
Kayla Nettleton is a licensed TX-based therapist, business owner, mom of 3, and marketing coach for therapists.

In her private practice, Kayla helps women break free from cycles of anxiety, perfectionism, and people-pleasing. Her holistic approach guides clients toward authentic, fulfilling lives by reconnecting with their intuition, setting boundaries, and building confidence.

Kayla also works with couples, especially parents balancing marriage and family. She offers both traditional couples therapy and focused intensives (6 to 18 hours) to help partners address key issues like communication, trust, and intimacy.

Through empathy and effective therapeutic tools, Kayla helps couples reconnect, thrive, and create healthier, more supportive relationships—benefiting the entire family. Her practice transforms self-doubt and disconnection into growth, healing, and lasting change.

Find Kayla on IG
@therapy.with.kayla

Email: kayla@kaylanettleton.com

Free Consultation: Schedule a Free 20 minute therapy consultation here.

Never Miss an Episode! Subscribe Here

Transcript

kayla-nettleton_1_03-26-2025_101556: 1:04

Hello. Hello everyone and welcome back to the special series Love After Kids. I'm your host, Kayla Nettleton, and today we are expanding more on some of the topics that we're discussed in the previous episode. And specifically one of those things is how as moms and as parents, we can accidentally and sometimes intentionally. Pour way too much on the side of the parenting than we do in our marriage or relationships. And in the previous episode, we did talk about that in terms of dating, but I really wanted to talk more about that in terms of marriage and how our parenting can impact the relationship that we have with our partners. And for me, this came up for a lot for my husband and I because Our take on parenting was different. My husband didn't and really still doesn't think that there was anything wrong with spanking, but for me, that wasn't something that I wanted to do in our parenting and not that we're going to get into. What is okay and isn't okay. That's not the point of today, but we kind of butt heads in the way that we wanted to discipline our children. And I was coming at this from, well, I'm the professional here. Like this is what I studied. I know the evidence with all of these different ways of disciplining our children and trying to look at discipline in a different way than how we were raised. But in that I was being a little bit contemptuous with my husband, I was kind of like, I know better than you and we need to do it my way, and that's not okay. Again, this is not the point of this episode. What I'm trying to really go into is we can have our mind so much in the parenting and wanting to do things with our kids and for our kids, and helping them grow that we often will put our marriage. On the back burner. We want our focus to be on our kids. When there has to be more, there can't be just all given to our children. Yeah, we decided to have kids and we birthed them and they do need our attention. But if we are only giving our attention to our children and we're not giving any attention to our marriage. That is when things are going to start to fall apart, you are going to start feeling even more disconnected than you may have been before children. And it can be difficult to wrap your mind around this in terms of like, well, are my kids going to suffer if I give attention to my husband or put more into the relationship than I do with my kids? And the answer is no. I mean, honestly. Kids do not need that much one-on-one attention to have a secure relationship with you and to feel loved. But we end up hyper-focusing on the relationship that we have with our kids, that we forget that we still have to cultivate and nurture our marriage, the relationship with our spouse. And it's not about giving your husband attention, it's really about. Looking at your marriage as a whole separate thing. Like you are a person, your husband, the person, your kids are their own people. And then you have your marriage, which is it's owned thing. And so if you're not putting effort into your marriage, things are going to fall apart and you're not gonna be on the same page. And this is what happened to us when I was more focused on doing everything for our kids than. Really putting effort into trying to cultivate a better marriage, to build a better marriage, to really look at our relationship, our marriage, as something that was important and needed time and intentionality and our attention. And so I know when it comes to kids, it can feel almost impossible to. Spend that time and effort in, your marriage, but it doesn't have to be hours and hours of time. It's really about the intentionality of doing things where each of y'all are being seen, where each of y'all are feeling appreciated. It's those little things and sure, some of these things are going to be in. Being able to go on date nights or being able to drop everything and spend time with each other when maybe not all of the chores are done. This is exactly what happened to us recently, is I don't know how, but the stars aligned and my mom had come over for lunch and the little ones. Our three and 5-year-old were like, we wanna go to let uss, we wanna go to let uss. And they, that's what they call my mom. Their grandma is Let uss And my mom was like, yeah, sure, y'all can come over. And my instant reaction or my instant response was like, are you sure? Like, because in my mind, like, oh my God, the two little ones can be a lot. She's like, yeah, yeah, no problem. And so I was like, okay, cool. And I knew that my oldest had been invited to a friend's house, but. That was still pending. We, we didn't know that that was gonna happen. And then the friend's mom texted me and was like, Hey, we want Lana to come over. And I'm like, wow. Awesome. And I'm not gonna lie, my first thought after like the kids were going to be gone, I realized I was gonna have the house to myself or me and my husband were, was. Oh my gosh, I get to do all of these chores in peace. That was the first thought that came to my mind was like, oh, I can do the laundry and watch my show without anyone interrupting me. And then there was another part of me that was like, you and Kyle have been a little bit off because you really haven't had any alone time, and this is the perfect opportunity to do that. And instead of shutting that part of me down, I was like, you know what? You're right. And truthfully, I was in a place within the chores that needed to be done to kind of like help me feel good through the week that had been done. It was good enough. Not everything was finished, but I felt like we were in a good spot to where the rest of it could wait. And sometimes we do have to think about those things. Are there things that need to be done right this second? Yes. Are there things that we can put a pause on or put to the next day or later on in the week so that you and your partner, you and your husband, can spend time with each other in a time when there isn't kids around where you could be alone and do whatever it is that you want or do things that you can't do when they're home together? And so that's what we did. Honestly, I sent my husband a spicy text, which initiated some intimacy.'cause that was something that I was missing. And then we were like, oh my gosh, what do we do next? So I'm like, okay, let's go to the bar down the street. And so we had, a drink and I love that bar'cause it has my favorite non-alcoholic beers. We went there and then we went to another place to have appetizers and it was the reset that we needed. But that would not have happened if we didn't take advantage of that time. And sometimes we don't take advantage of the time where we are alone. And yes, sometimes it is because we are just too exhausted and we do need space to ourself. And I am definitely one of those people who thrives on being able to have alone time. And one of the things that helped me to take advantage of this opportunity was knowing that this week was going, back to normal. The past two weeks had been spring break for our kids and I had no alone time because we had two different spring breaks. Our oldest had a spring break, and then the second week our middle child, had a spring break. And that's difficult, for me to. Always be around people because even when I was working, I'm with people because as a therapist that's what I do. And so I knew this week was going to be a slower week compared to the past two weeks, and I was okay with that. And again, you get to decide what you're okay with leaving for another day. But it takes intentionality in thinking, okay, what are those things that I'm okay with? What is my baseline? Right? Asking yourself like, what is my baseline for me to feel good in the week that I could let some of this stuff go? so the attention cannot just go to your kids and parenting, we have to remember, there also has to be attention put on your marriage, put on your relationship. For it to continue to thrive and to work because it's easy to continue to put stuff off to later in your marriage when we think that our relationship with our kids is more important when it's not. They're both really important and they both require attention that we're not always consciously thinking about that it needs. And so, If you really enjoy kind of these mini episodes, I would encourage you to hop on Instagram. I'm at Therapy dot with Kayla, and I'm doing a little series called Helping You Break Toxic Relationship Patterns in Your Marriage, and I encourage you to hop on and see what's there, These mini episodes are less than three minutes because I think that's the max that Instagram allows you to record on video. So these are really bite-sized things, and I'm talking about different things that you can do that some of us Yes, we've talked about in the podcast. But it's just another place where we can hang out and interact with each other that is different than just you listening to me on the podcast. also, if there are certain topics that you want me to touch on, please send me a message. And if you're enjoying this episode, I would super, super appreciate it if you send it to friends because the more we share. The more that this podcast can grow and I can continue doing it because I absolutely love doing this for y'all, and I love doing it for me too, because it's such a fun and needed topic that is not always talked about. So I, can't wait to talk to y'all next week.