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A friend of mine was recently venting about her spouse of 10 years—a man she genuinely adores. They both work. They have kids. Every day is a relay race of school pickups, doctors’ appointments, dinner prep and the endless mental load of keeping a family running. By the time bedtime rolls around, the thought of curling up together for even one episode of The Bear feels impossible. They’re both so burnt, they’d rather retreat to their phones.
It’s a dynamic I keep hearing about from millennial parents: They’re not falling out of love, but they’re running out of energy.
Historically, divorce was often the culminating result of what one might call a “mismatch,” either couples who chose each other for the wrong reasons (remember the average age of marriage was 22 for women and 24 for men in 1980) or unions upended by infidelity. But in 2026, it feels like modern marriages are buckling under the weight of exhaustion. Quite simply, there aren’t enough hours in the day to prioritize each other and—no matter how much we want to—our energy levels are so depleted, something’s gotta give.
Research suggests this isn’t just anecdotal. A recent study, published in Healthcare, reviewed scientific research from 2010 onwards and argues that parental burnout is not only prevalent, but a significant cause of marital breakdowns. Another, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family this past spring, backs up the claim, showing that exhaustion leads to marriage dissatisfaction and vice versa.
This isn’t about disliking our spouses. (In fact, the Healthcare study suggests these “unhappy” marriages often start from a place of love, and deteriorate incrementally.) It’s about reaching the end of the day with so little left that romance becomes another task competing for our already scarce attention.
Melissa Paul, a relationship and couples therapist based in Brooklyn , confirms that exhaustion comes up often with her clients. It makes her think of her own partnership, too. “Whenever I have a minute of relaxation—you know, when our kids are asleep and I’ve had time to decompress and my husband and I are laughing about something stupid, I’m like: ‘Oh right, I really do like you.’ But the circumstances to uncover that time together can be so taxing.”
Generationally, it’s a modern woman problem, Paul explains. “Nowadays, when you enter a partnership, you have two people who are performing in their career, super motivated, ambitious. Then, you enter the child-rearing years where there’s just so much more labor than in the past.”
The pandemic also exacerbated marital burnout, she says, citing the collective trauma followed by a quick return to an ultra-busy familial state (just with more isolation and less social support). “More expenses, less resources,” she adds. “It takes a toll on how we come together.”
There are, of course, steps you can take when you feel too exhausted to invest in the very relationship that’s supposed to sustain you. Date night can feel good, but also like just another thing on your list—booking a sitter, making a restaurant reservation, staying up past 9 p.m. We’d forgive you for getting hit with a feeling of, oof, let’s just not.
So how to get out of this rut? Paul says couples must actively turn toward each other. If your marriage matters, you have to choose it—and be clear that it deserves your attention above all else. “It’s about openly recognizing the fact that you feel disconnected and burnt out and at the same time reminding each other of your values and priorities. You have to figure out how to work each other in.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean elaborate plans or grand romantic gestures. Often, it’s the small moments that matter: putting the phone down for 10 minutes, asking a real question after the kids are asleep, making your partner coffee before they ask, choosing kindness when you’re both running on empty.
Paul is also quick to point out that marriages rarely end because of one catastrophic moment. “Divorce is often the result of thousands of paper cuts,” she says. It’s the balance of positive interactions versus negative ones that matters most. (Relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman famously recommends aiming for five positive interactions for every negative one.)
If this sounds eye-roll inducing, Paul says you have to do your best to get over it. After all, we show up for our kids, for our work, for our friends. The harder question is whether we’re still showing up for the person we chose to build a life with. Because sometimes the problem isn’t that love has disappeared. It’s that we can’t keep our eyes open long enough to see it.
