Your relationship should be about enjoying your connection, not just managing your responsibilities.
Region 1 of 180%
Why Bother With This?
Research tells us that for the majority of couples, relationship satisfaction takes a serious hit within the first few years of parenting. Unfortunately, the research also tells us that for most couples this relationship satisfaction never recovers, unless they take meaningful action to repair and reorganize the relationship.
What couples often notice are the symptoms of the problem: “roommate mode,” feeling disconnected or like “all we do is solve logistics together,” avoiding difficult conversations, things escalating more quickly than they used to… these are what may be visible in the room.
But in the blinding speed and chaos of parenting, it can be hard to know the cause of these symptoms. What about our lives as parents is adding the most strain? What is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of where we should start?
Whatever issues were present in your relationship before parenting are probably still part of the story. But parenting itself adds, or exacerbates, certain layers and textures to the relationship on its own. That’s where this tool comes in. It can help you self-assess for various dynamics that can surface once a couple starts parenting. It helps to answer the question “Which parts of becoming parents have added the most stress for us specifically?”
How Does It Work?
This tool uses a collection of statements. Your job is to rate how true the statement feels to you on a scale of 1 to 10.
Pay attention to your initial reaction to a given item. Sometimes we get a “hit” on a feeling or experience, but then our cognitive self wants to come in and bury that hit in thoughts and rationalizations. Letting yourself be as authentic as possible will give you more accurate data to work from, even if some of that data is uncomfortable to acknowledge.
Go through each of the below items and give them a score. There are many items to score, but each one should be very quick. It’s not about dwelling, it’s about authentic felt sense. More instructions await you below the items.
⚠ Notice if there are areas where you feel compelled to soften or obscure your experience by giving it a higher score than you really feel. This is probably information about what feels “off limits” in your relationship. If an area feels off limits, that is strong evidence that something in that region isn’t working — and that it may be harder to address than other areas.
A little acknowledgement: I could not figure out a way to write this with totally inclusive language to babies, single children, and families with multiple children without making it very weird (“baby/babies/child/children”). Please substitute the correct language for your family.
Done! Now What?
You will have noticed that the assessment is organized into “Regions.” These regions reflect specific layers and dynamics that parenting often introduces or intensifies. Once you have completed the assessment, add up your scores for each region. Regions with the highest scores probably need the least work (unless, as mentioned, you artificially inflated the scores out of fear). Regions with the lowest scores are probably a good indication of where things may benefit from some attention. Consider the following as a rough guide (/50):
40–50 Strong area, woo hoo!
30–39 Functioning, but under stress may become a greater pain point
20–29 Probably a challenging area, worth some attention
Below 10 Active distress, consider bringing in support
Your scores by Region
Your scores by family
What Do I Do With This Information?
As you go through your results, one layer to consider is that these are only YOUR ratings. Your partner may feel very differently about things than you do. As such, a next step could be to have them complete it if they haven’t already, and compare: are there regions where you both have a low score? Additionally, if one person scores high in a given area and another person scores low in that same area, you may have uncovered an important inequity (which is fertile soil for resentments to grow). Use the results as data, from which you can probably draw your own conclusions about what may be afoot.
Once you know your score(s), take a beat to reflect on what you see. Some of it may feel like “Yeah definitely already knew this was a problem,” and some of it may feel like something you haven’t really looked at yet. This assessment tries to give you a little sample of the most common dynamics that emerge around parenting. These dynamics are places where couples may or may not have tension, resentment, unprocessed hurts, etc. that have specifically arisen or intensified as a product of adding parenting to the mix.
You can think of these regions like “trailheads” that can send you off in a specific direction, or even bring totally new regions to mind that are pertinent to you. There is much more to cover in each of them than is captured here, but they can give you a sense of potential areas that require further exploration. Maybe they spark awareness of other layers or patterns that are related but different to what is in the assessment. Maybe your score in a region was mostly okay, but one item surfaced a sense of “Oh yeah, actually that one thing did happen and we’ve never talked about it.”
Some of the regions speak to things that likely happened in the past, but may need to be revisited and processed (like “Birth”). Some of the regions speak to ongoing patterns or distributions that may need to be reorganized. If the region has been flagged for you as needing attention, use your own knowledge to assess for what is needed to address it. It’s about using these markers to better understand the unique terrain of your relationship, given what you see here and what you already know.
Now that you know your terrain, you can decide what you want to do with it. The first question is “do I want to take action with my partner?” If the answer is no, then okay! You’ve gotten a perspective to chew on independently. That’s great! Contemplation is an important part of change. Taking what you’ve learned as more information to help you understand the situation is a perfectly fine use of this tool.
Putting Your Insights into Action
If you DO want to take action, the first step is to decide where you want to start. Depending on the state of the relationship, you may want to choose to start somewhere that feels the easiest. Maybe not a LOW low score, but a medium low score. Or an area where you feel more equipped to have successful discussions. The goal is to BE STRATEGIC. You do not have to go for the biggest most troublesome issue first. If your relationship is feeling pretty strained, it may not even be wise to start there. Start somewhere that it feels like you can be fairly successful, and build to the harder topics. The goal is INTENTIONALITY: approach your results thoughtfully, using the vast amount of knowledge you have about your partner, yourself, and how your relationship functions.[Use the “next steps” sections and/or the mapping tool on the last page to support your reflection.]
Once you have chosen an area to address, consider opening a conversation with your partner. “I think we might benefit from talking about ________.” Going in with a sense of the “bigger picture” issues gives you an opportunity to address those directly, rather than addressing the individual instances that are likely a symptom of that bigger picture. Meaning that if I am now aware that I don’t feel like our tasks are distributed in a way that feels good to me, we can talk about that AS A PATTERN. That makes it easier to address holistically, instead of only dealing with it in the individual instances where the pattern lives. It’s the difference between arguing about who is going to do bath tonight, versus having a comprehensive conversation about who does what and how that feels to both people.
Awareness Supports Change
Whatever you’ve learned about your relationship’s specific strengths and areas for growth, I hope you are able to hold one important truth: AWARENESS IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD CHANGE. Even taking a look at your relationship in this way is a major piece of information. It tells me that you value your relationship, you want it to succeed, and you are willing to do uncomfortable things in order to tend to it. That’s amazing! Those are CRITICAL ingredients to successful relationships, and your willingness to do this assessment tells me you have them. Good luck using what you’ve learned here to move forward. It’s true what they say: relationships can be hard work. But having some signposts can at least help you set off in a useful direction.
If Things Feel Overwhelming
If you are looking at this assessment and feeling overwhelmed, you are not alone. Parenting can really do a number on a relationship, and I know personally there was a time in my own marriage where doing this assessment would have left me feeling pretty hopeless. If that’s the case, consider the possibility of support. Rebuilding a relationship that is in the “things have fallen apart” stage is much easier than rebuilding a relationship where things fell apart 10 years ago and now we’ve been eroding our connection for the last decade. Reach out to a trusted mentor or friend, talk to trusted “elders,” or consider couples counseling. Couples counseling, in particular, is a shortcut to getting things back on track much faster than they likely otherwise would. Needing help is normal, but being willing to pursue the help you need is a sign of maturity and commitment. If your relationship needs support, I warmly encourage you to reach for help. You don’t have to figure this out on your own.
Stick around! I hope this has felt helpful. Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram or TikTok at @bbproofyourrelationship and keep your eyes peeled for more tools and supports.
Mapping Your Relationship Terrain
Use the below to capture the results of your assessment and chart next steps. Reflect on your own scores on this page, and then use the next page to explore potential next steps based on which category/categories you are considering working with. All of this is food for thought, meant to give you some potential “trailheads” and directions for potential focus, as well as what may be needed to address a given trailhead.
Identify 2-3 regions where your relationship scored very high.
Identify 2-3 regions where things are okay, but may benefit from a little work.
Identify 2-3 regions for growth, where you may need to focus some time.
Areas that feel the most urgent to me due to the impact they have on me personally:
Areas that need work, but feel like we could pretty easily tackle them and succeed:
Areas that we will really struggle to address & may need outside help to shift:
Were there any individual instances, memories, or dynamics that arose during the assessment that are not a “Region,” but should probably be addressed? If so, list them here:
Consider the general closeness and safety of your relationship right now. Use this information to reflect on the above.
Given this, where does your intuition tell you to start?
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