DnM, how long since the D-day?
July 28, 2009.
More in love with her every day.
I forgot that this crowd tends to be extremely detail-focused, and obviously skipped over many of the details that "fill in the cracks" on time spent together, as well as details about how we spend our time that I briefly summarized earlier. If you're really that interested, I could perhaps take some time to journal the minutes to give you an exact, accurate picture of how we're spending time together in a given week. It was an exercise I went over in excruciating detail every week for two years; happy to revisit if it would help someone. It just requires some brief journaling at the end of each day.
Suffice to say that the twenty hours I listed ignored our frequent phone calls, texts, Facetime, photos sent back & forth, etc. Puts us way over twenty hours and we are wholly integrated into one another's lives. People will argue about how to count time together when you're using technology to facilitate it on the forums until they are blue in the face and I'll not deprive them of their joy doing so :-)
The argument over whether or not a double date can count as UA time is an interesting one from an extrovert vs. introvert perspective. Regardless, it's not something we do every week; more like every month or two. I count it if we're in physical contact meeting intimate emotional needs the whole time, but don't count it if the guys go do their thing and the girls go do theirs!
As far as the core UA time goes, "four four-hour dates per week", for us, works out much more like four two to three-hour dates and one five-hour date. Your mileage may vary, and different people enjoy different things...
Yeah, my sense is that lots of what you describe, DNM, doesn't count as true UA time as understood here.
Read up on the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Some will say time spent sharing an iPad shopping together isn't UA time. I say I'm not a Luddite and it sure as heck is :-)
Did your wife ever start coaching or counseling using MB principles?
We had one session with Jennifer Harley Chalmers in January of 2010, who ended our session with a statement similar to "You're two motivated people doing mostly the right things, stop focusing on why things happened and focus on what you need to do now." Worked well, and that got us over the last major hurdle to recovery.
We read "Love Busters", "Surviving An Affair", and "His Needs, Her Needs for Parents" aloud together, typically one chapter each Sunday night. Getting through all three took us about a year. We independently read "Fall In Love, Stay In Love", Dr. Harley's book on how to counsel people using MarriageBuilders (the name escapes me at the moment, sorry!), and bought and started the Devotional book but that one was a bit too religious for my comfort level.
Our marriage quickly moved from the "one reluctant spouse, one enthusiastic spouse" type of couple you typically see on the boards to the "two enthusiastic spouses" type within a few weeks of starting to read "Love Busters" together. My wife saw immediate improvement in how I treated her, and began an ardent proponent of MarriageBuilders. We have a library of the books that we give away regularly and buy new copies of so that our library keeps them. Our kids learn the principles over the breakfast table, and manage their own romantic relationships with care.
In fact, that latter bit concerns me. They are so careful about their relationships that they aren't breaking up enough and trying new people out as often as I think they should...
Well that's what I was wondering. DNM, are you in love with each other?
You can ask either of us. Yes. Constantly thinking about one another. The definition of "in love" is "feeling an overwhelming attraction toward each other". I can't say that it's always been that way over the past four years, but as long as we keep overshooting the mark on time spent with one another and focus on meeting our most important emotional needs, it stays that way. When the drift happens, you feel it, and MarriageBuilders gives you the tools to bring it up with your partner respectfully.
For instance, this past year I hurt my back. I spent three months mostly laying down while healing, and at this moment am working at a standing desk because sitting for more than an hour or so causes intense, painful inflammation. It made it EXCEPTIONALLY difficult to meet one another's most important emotional needs (sex was very painful for me, conversation was kind of dull because I never left the house, we couldn't enjoy our usual recreations together, it was hard to be affectionate when I was crawling around the house, etc.), and eventually my wife reminded me that we didn't seem to be spending the time we should. We came up with a plan to remedy it and stuck with it, and improved things under the new circumstance.
My back is much better, by the way... and our relationship is better, too. Relationships suffer when you're injured. It's really, really hard to remain romantic when you can't move.
The bottom line is that much of what he described here is not what Harley would ever consider UA time. Watching movies, being with friends, playing on computers is not UA time at all. It is not UA time because they are not giving each other their undivided attention.
I disagree strongly with the blanket statements. It's all in how you're doing it. Giving a back rub while watching a movie, followed by some SF? UA time, no question. Sharing an iPad while shopping together online? UA time, no question. Ditto doing research together on a shared computing device and spending hours talking about the topic like we did last week.
The double date thing? We could do a whole topic on how to be alone in a crowd. You're out of the house, you're snuggling in the back seat and holding hands (affection), going to do something fun together (recreation), you're talking about interesting topics that you would not have thought of alone as a couple without some outside stimulation (conversation), and then making love when you get home (SF). Sure, debate the finer points of UA if you like, but when you come home having built a memory and having made MASSIVE love bank deposits all night, it counts.
Texting each other, playing games together, talking on the phone, Facetime, writing messages to one another on Facebook, researching things your spouse is interested in so you can talk about them... these all enhance your love for one another.
It's helpful to re-read what Dr. Harley says on the topic:
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3350_attn.html . Sure, there are areas where we can improve. There is ALWAYS room for improvement. The key is this:
The Policy of Undivided Attention:
Give your spouse your undivided attention a minimum of fifteen hours each week, using the time to meet the emotional needs of affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship.
And this:
When I apply the fifteen-hour principle to marriages, I usually recommend that the time be evenly distributed throughout the week, two to three hours each day.
When you're new, obsess about the hours. It's productive and healthy.
When you're already over-shooting the mark because you have an integrated lifestyle -- as we do -- there's no reason to stress out over the house. Make sure you're giving each other undivided attention two to three hours a day. That works in our marriage MUCH better than emphasizing the weekly number.
Today, for instance, is a typical day. We cooked breakfast together. Cleaned up together. Snuggled in bed for another 30 minutes or so chatting, then snoozing another 30 before I had to get up for work. Talked on the phone for about 20 minutes (glad I have a very tolerant boss!) this morning. We're meeting up over lunch. We're going to spend another hour or two together alone tonight going on a drive.
I travel a couple of times a year for work, and typically it's not to places my wife is interested in going. Tonight I'm catching a red-eye to New York City, giving the keynote at a convention, then flying home the next morning. We've already planned how we're making up the three hours or so we'll miss tomorrow with our weekend activities together. We spent several hours together yesterday planning our trip (on a shared iPad again! The horror! :-) ) alone with one another to Hawaii for our 20th anniversary knowing we were going to miss a day. Despite that, we plan to Facetime for a couple of hours tomorrow night once I'm back at the hotel.
Is it possible to think you are in love, and not be?
My definition of "In love" is Dr. Harley's: to feel an overwhelming attraction toward one another. The actual "feeling" of being in love is an interesting one, and manifests a bit differently for every person. I measure it by "am I thinking about her most of the time?", and she does the same.
Out of time for now, sorry for any redundancies and the length; I lack the time to shorten it!