MOTG,

I'm positive I had this same debate with MelodyLane when I first registered (seriously, search my first threads).

In the end, it all boiled down to excuses and not wanting to change habits.

My FIL never wanted to help us. We sat him down and said our marriage was going downhill and we were scared we would divorce - please, help us. You'd be surprised how helpful people are once you put the cards on the table.

We are stronger than ever despite most marriages would have collapsed due to our first son's special needs, me being an expat who can't speak the language here, my postpartum depression.

Do you know what cured it?

Adequate UA time. That's all it was. It's a shame we wasted time trying to find every reason under the sun other than simply walking down the street for two hours, chatting, and holding hands.

Fantastic. My 1000th post, and I'd like to use it wisely by showing you a blast from the past. The same advice to me then, still applies today.

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/u...in=164795&Number=2551857#Post2551857

In two years:
We are completely broke now
That young toddler is now an autistic 4 year old who is unable to function in public
We have another child

BUT...

We are stronger than ever. And it's the UA time. We are more in love now with less money and more children, than before. It really is your choice to make!

I have a hard time putting the information out there to my MIL like that. This is my feeling about it. When I first got sick and my husband was having a hard time dealing with it he ran to them and they came over our house and tried to mediate but it's one sided in a way and he's their Baaaaaby so they will always take his side over mine is my feeling. I wanted my husband to learn about what I was going through with my health and to support me so I could support him, maybe go to the Dr's with me and see what was going on. I don't look sick so a lot of people just assume since I look fine I must feel fine which is totally not the case. Then MIL said well I can go with you to the Dr's...No I'm not married to you MIL thanks for caring but The man I live with, the father of my children, my husband needs to understand this not you. After the "intervention" if you'd call it that I said no more, no more inlaws mediating our marriage. I'm afraid that if we say Oh we are having problems it will open the door for her to try to step in again. I had to ride in her car to SIL party a couple weeks ago and she brings up another couple we know who are getting divorced...their whole situation is crazy and ridiculous but MIL is not a gossip...she brought this up to pry into my head and gain perspective on my opinions. I told her my general feelings but made it not about me.

My mother on the other hand doesn't like me and has no desire to do anything for me, never has. She left me with my Grandmother and moved on with her life when I was 5. Maybe in an emergency she'd help but not on a daily or weekly basis.


SO I have either the over supportive or under supportive. My sisters are easier to work with because they don't ask questions.

Okay so what arrangements can you work out with your sisters?

Have you read this?
Caring for Children Means Caring for Each Other

Well one of my sister was bitching on face book because my kids always get her sick....which is another story all together. So asking her to baby sit on weekly basis is probably going to be a no. My other sister also has a 8 month old so I can ask her once in a while I think weekly is too much. She hardly gets to see her own baby. They also live together so I can probably get a couple times a month out of them.

I read the caring for children. I have still posed the question what other people with small children do, one person replied with the fact that they moved the FIL into the house to take care of their kids. Do you have a nanny? Do you leave the kids with their grandparents all the time? Do you pay for babysitters 4 times a week? Do you pick up your kids from a sitters house and drag them around at 10PM? Do your kids sleep in their own beds at home every night? When your kids spend the night with a Grandparent or Aunt do they wake up every hour on the hour and ask for Mommy and Daddy thus making the people who babysit refuse to do over nights?

I'm asking for what other people with small children do? But instead I'm being told I'm making excuses. What do you do?

My marriage didn't make it, but I know I tried. We used to switch off Friday nights with a friend, my kids would sleep over their house one Friday and her kids would sleep over my house the next. At one point I used to pick up her daughter from preschool so they had even more time, like you had mentioned 5 to 10 pm. Then waking up together the next morning, if he's used to waking up at 5 you'd have 4 good hours by 9am. We live where it's warm all year so it was easy to walk or take a bike ride or go for coffee. But we would pick up the kids more like noon because so the kids could play longer

And then the weeks we had the kids to sleep over was good FC.

We also worked close enough sometimes to meet for lunch during the week. It's not 4 hours but the planning makes LB$ deposits and you're both looking and smelling your best anyway. And my coworkers knew I was going for lunch with my honey so their positive comments added to my LB$ for him too. Because so many don't do that. It helped me start thinking more out of the box. I had depression for a while so being able to think of new ideas was a skill I really needed to get out of that.

I don't mean to make light or anything, I remember how hard it was to find someone you really trust with your kids. My late MiL used to like to have your kids for a sleepover, too, and that was really special for them, but I hear you not everyone has that. UA was always a top EN for me but like you my ex's work schedule did get in the way of it a lot. It kept a pattern of IB going that killed us. Paved the way for huge anger issues.

I want more for you and your family, and I am hoping that you do find some ways to become one another's best friends very quickly. It is such a huge life change to go from State of Conflict back to State of Intimacy again. An awesome thing for your kids to be in a peaceful home every day.

How are you all doing with Love Busters?

What does it matter what we do? What's important is that you and your husband work together and solve this in a way that will work for you. It will very likely look different than what other couples with small children do.

The two of you must start brainstorming together to solve this problem. We cannot do it for you.

But you cannot skip this step. You must find a way to get this time in - there's not people out there who are somehow making it work without the UA time.

It's Dr. Harley who strongly advises couples to have UA outside the home. Markos and I have talked with Dr. Harley at length about this. The reason is because UA at home does not make the massive lovebank deposits that UA outside the house does for most couples. There are some that it will work with, but they are the very small exception.

Markos and I happen to be part of that exception. Dr. Harley seemed intrigued that it actually works for us, because in his experience it doesn't work -- that's how rare it is. He has found one couple in the thousands he's worked with that UA at home actually works. One in thousands.

For most couples, they will find it impossible to fill their lovebanks over the romantic threshold.

The odds that UA at home will work for you is extremely slim. It's not worth the risk of your marriage failing.

Surely if your relatives also struggle then babysitting exchanges would work just as well for them?

Dr H says he and Joyce historcally spent more on babysitters than their mortgage because the alternative is a very costly divorce and supporting two households.

But I don't see anything wrong in getting it for free. Just exchanging with other parents or asking local parents groups or churches for support.

I don't know anyone who has made it work without UA time, so I take this advice seriously.

Surely if your relatives also struggle then babysitting exchanges would work just as well for them?

Dr H says he and Joyce historcally spent more on babysitters than their mortgage because the alternative is a very costly divorce and supporting two households.

But I don't see anything wrong in getting it for free. Just exchanging with other parents or asking local parents groups or churches for support.

I don't know anyone who has made it work without UA time, so I take this advice seriously.

[/quote]


When you are living in a paycheck to pay check position because either the husband or wife got sick and lost their job it's hard to spend more on child care then our mortgage. It's hard to pay our mortgage. We've had better and worse times since the kids were born when I had more children I was babysitting but it's sporadic. I have at least 4 families who want me to be their full time child care provider if/when they or their SO finds a new job or a job at all. For 2 years my child care was really stable I had 2-3 families that I watched kids for on a regular basis. Made every week what I was making at my full time job with out having to pay for day time child care. But right now the economy is bad and therefore so is my business. I have one child and the pay is not enough, this is obviously a stressor and makes it hard to pay for child care or date nights at all. Then my added medical expenses and the fact I changed to name brand meds to stop getting debilitating headaches from the additives adds to the whole bunch. I don't need any advice on making money and I have a friend who swap childcare with me so we can both take a part time job. She is also willing to swap child care for once a week date nights. She the most reliable person I have at my disposal at this point. Her and I also have playdates with our kids together.

I think we are doing well here. My husband has ADD or ADHD as it's now called and has a hard time reading long things so I made an outline of POJA, PORH, love busters and emotional needs. Also the one about resolving conflict. We went through it together and he has made a substantial effort to work on the issues we identified, he even complimented me on the efforts I've made to meet his emotional needs. We have been happy since we went through that together and we have not argued once about anything at all. Anything that has come up we have talked through calmly and I restrained myself from doing one of his love busters. I can only listen to what he is telling and see what he does though. He made plans for a date night tonight not me, he wanted to go to the movies but I said no. I think we are going to get something to eat and I looked through that list of date ideas someone else posted and I made a little game to play at dinner. So hopefully this goes as well as it has been.

I am really happy that you all are doing great with the love busters because it is so much easier to fill a tank with no leaks!

Coming back to say our date night went well and the game I made kept us talking about fun things and fun memories we had together. Oh and I wanted to add that he has even been telling his friends that I have been awesome. It made me feel good to hear that.

Fantastic MOTG.

So how much UA time will you have this week?

Well with Christmas coming and Most of our help is pretty busy.... my husband was asked to bar tend for a party on Friday which will bring in a good amount of money so he took the job. I started sending the kids to bed earlier so that we have from 8-10 with no interruptions (I know that doesn't count), Tuesday night he works both jobs so that's out...Wednesday I hoping to get someone to take the girls so we can go Christmas shopping together for a few hours, Thursday we will be home so likely from 8-10 again with the girls asleep, Friday is the party and hopefully My sister will take the girls on Saturday for a good part of the day we need to complete our shopping and maybe dinner or something after. So maybe we will have 10-12. After the holidays it might get easier.


Our conversations have been awesome since we started following POJA and the resolving conflict rules here and instead of fighting we have ventured out into more meaningful conversation.