Adults
What major life transitions do to a relationship
A new baby. A late diagnosis. A loss. These are the moments that reshape a
relationship, and they often don’t play out as expected. Dr Elena Touroni explains
what these turning points reveal, and what helps.
Most couples who come to therapy do not describe a single catastrophic event. They describe a moment after which things were different; a shift in the texture of the relationship that they cannot quite name, but cannot stop feeling.
In my clinical experience, those shifts very often cluster around transitional moments: the passages of life that change the shape of who you are and what you need from each other. The arrival of a child, or the struggle to conceive one. A diagnosis that
reframes years of shared history. Or a career that disappears via redundancy, or possibly a relocation neither person fully planned for.
Transitions like the examples above do not necessarily break relationships, but they do expose them to potential difficulties that were already there, and sometimes to capacities neither partner knew they had.
One of the biggest upheavals is a baby
The research on this is clear and consistently underreported. Studies by the Gottman Institute found that around two-thirds of couples experience a significant decline in relationship satisfaction within the first three years of becoming parents. It’s one of the most predictable things that happens in a partnership, and one of the least talked about.
Part of the reason is that becoming a parent is an identity transition, not just a practical one. It activates our own earliest experiences of being parented, and for many people it surfaces unresolved feelings from childhood that had no reason to
appear before. The difficulty a couple feels is not always about the relationship directly, but about what parenthood has brought up in each person individually.
What we find is that things tend to move more smoothly when each partner has the space to understand what parenthood has stirred up in them before trying to navigate it together. When a couple can share what this has meant to them personally, where
it has taken them back to, what it has surfaced about their own childhood, something shifts. The conversation stops being about who is doing what and starts being about what each person is carrying. Empathy tends to follow, and from there, genuine
collaboration becomes possible.
A rising trigger for relationship change is late diagnosis of neuro-diverse conditions
We are seeing this increasingly at the clinic. A late diagnosis of ADHD or autism changes how one or both people understand the history of the relationship, not just its future.
For the person diagnosed, patterns that felt like personal failings begin to make sense. There is relief in that, but also grief for the years spent not knowing, for the effort expended masking. The person their partner knew has not changed, but how they understand themselves has, and that changes things between them. For the partner without the diagnosis, research consistently shows that what had looked like indifference, unreliability or laziness often reflects something neurological rather than relational. Understanding this changes the framework from blame to something more workable.
One of the most important things we offer after a late diagnosis is couples sessions. When a partner comes into the room and starts to understand not just what has been difficult but what the person they love has been managing for years, and how things can work differently to support them, the reaction can be very emotional. We have sat with partners who have become tearful in that moment of recognition, not from
sadness but from empathy and understanding and it is at this point both partners become very invested in making practical adjustments in their life because they understand the impact of what they can do to help.
You can read more about what high-functioning ADHD and autism can look like in adults in our guide on the topic, if you suspect your partner may be managing this.
Fertility challenges bring a particular kind of grief to a relationship
For many people, the idea of becoming a parent is part of how they understand who they are and who they will be. When conception does not happen as expected, what is lost is not just a pregnancy but a version of the future that already felt real.
Unlike other forms of loss, infertility grief surrounds the absence of something deeply
desired and anticipated; there is no acknowledged ending, and very little social permission to name it as grief at all. A couple navigating this also exists in a kind of suspension, neither in the life they planned nor in one they can see yet, and the emotional labour of holding that state is enormous.
The reason partners often respond so differently has a lot to do with how each person is wired to manage pain. Research suggests these coping strategies are shaped by what each person feels permitted to express. Someone who manages distress by withdrawing is not indifferent; they are coping in the only way that feels safe to them. Someone who needs to talk and process is not demanding; they are trying to stay connected to something that keeps shifting.
In clinic, the work we do with couples moving through this is not necessarily about the (medical) treatment journey itself. It is about helping each person understand what this transition is doing to them individually: what vision of themselves they are grieving, what they are afraid to hope for, what they need that they have not been able to ask for. When two people can sit together and be honest about what this has
actually cost them personally, they can stop enduring the same thing in parallel and start facing it together. That shift matters. It does not change the medical outcome, but it changes what the relationship can carry.
Redundancy and career change can unsettle a relationship’s foundations
Work provides more than income. It gives structure, identity, and a place in the world
outside the relationship. When that disappears suddenly, or changes so significantly it requires a wholesale rethinking of who someone is professionally, the relationship can feel instantly different, because the identity of one of the people in it has shifted.
What we often see is that the person navigating this is grieving something they may not have permission to name as grief. Professional identity runs deep, and losing it can provoke feelings disproportionate to what is visible on the surface. In the room with couples, we work to create space for that loss to be acknowledged, and for the partner who has not directly experienced it to understand what is actually happening, rather than interpreting withdrawal, irritability, or neediness at face value. When both people have that shared understanding, the relationship stops being the site of the
difficulty and starts becoming a resource for getting through it.
Retirement asks couples to renegotiate who they are to each other
Retirement is one of the transitions most couples do not think to prepare for
relationally. The financial planning is thorough, but the relational planning is almost
never discussed. Research is consistent on this point: retirement carries with it relief,
loss, and confrontation with the unknown, and the marital relationship becomes one
of the primary resources for navigating it.
What we often see is that retirement brings a kind of unfamiliarity. Two people who
have been deeply partnered for decades find that they have been, to some extent, parallel; knowing each other well within a particular structure that no longer exists.
When that structure disappears, they sometimes have to meet each other again, and that can feel strange before it feels good. The couples who navigate it most
successfully treat it as a genuine renegotiation; not a threat to what they have built, but an invitation to build something different. Therapy at this stage is often not about problems at all. It is about possibility.
What these moments have in common
These are just a few examples of transitions that we see coming up in couples therapy. But what they have in common is that they often surface patterns laid down long before a couple met, and sometimes those patterns are holding them back from evolving alongside the changes and challenges of life. The goal of couples therapy is to understand what the moment of transition has revealed, and to use that understanding to build something more solid than what existed before.
The couples who navigate transitions well are not the ones who avoid difficulty. They are the ones who can talk about it without it becoming a verdict on the relationship or on each other.
When to seek support
Not every couple going through a significant transition needs therapy. But many find that having a space to understand what is happening, separate from the day-to-day pressure of managing it, makes the difference between a transition that strengthens the relationship and one that can subtly erode it.
At The Chelsea Psychology Clinic, we work with couples at all stages of partnership, including at the points where something significant has shifted. If you recognise something in this, our assessment process is a good place to start. You can get in touch here.
Find out more about what to expect from couples therapy
Dr Elena Touroni
26 June 2026
Dr Elena Touroni is a founder and Clinic Director of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic. She obtained her BSc in Psychology at the American College of Greece, graduating with first-class honours, before completing her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Surrey. Her career has spanned clinical and managerial roles in the NHS, including Head of Service. Dr Touroni has also led multi-disciplinary teams, developed and delivered national and bespoke training, provided organisational consultancy, and co-founded a private practice in Central London delivering psychological therapy for adults and couples, including those with complex difficulties.
