I had a friend recommend I come to this site. I have read the summarized articles, but time commitments do not allow me to read the full ones.
My wife is constantly telling me things aren't working, but when I have attempted to make adjustments based on what I hear her say are important to her - it never appears to be enough. I am committed to our relationship, but honestly sometimes feel like giving up especially since I do not feel like she is 100% committed to making things work.
Due to our particular circumstances I KNOW there is not another person involved in the equation. I'm sure there are things on this site that will help, but don't have time to explore in order to find them.

Start with the questionnaires then, link at the top of the page. You and your wife fill out the Emotional Needs and Love Busters questionnaires, and it would be beneficial if you both read the explanations of them available on this site or in the books (His Needs, Her Needs and Love Busters).

Get over your 'time constraint' issue. Eliminate other things before you try to eliminate working on your marriage. I mean really, do you see how silly that sounds? "I have too many other commitments to have the time to work on my marriage." It's the same as saying, "If anything must be eliminated from my life, I choose that thing to be my marriage." Is that your stance?

Quick links:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4501_enq.html

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4502_lbq.html

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3300_needs.html

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3400_lovebust.html

Those should get you started, and then get educated on the policy of radical honesty, the policy of joint agreement, the concept of undivided attention, and the four guidelines of successful negotiation. All of those can be found in the side links of the last two links above.

She is not on this site and don't know if she would do the questionnaires? My time commitments are my two toddlers, and unless someone can eliminate her job that requires extended traveling - there will be time commitments that we have to work around.

There's also "His Needs, Her Needs" for parents.

While I don't have a job that requires extensive travel, I DO work multiple jobs..my husband does most of the daily caretaking of our young children. I everything else related to our kids, like attending school/preschool functions, most drs. appointments, buying them clothes, etc. We also have normal living stuff, grocery shopping, cleaning house, paying bills. We also have volunteer commitments we have as well as hobbies that we engage in when all of the planets align.

There became a point in our marriage where we HAD to put our marriage first. At that point we had a newborn in the house. The only other alternative, for us, was to let our marriage get so bad that divorce was inevitable. But, for us, the alternative was not a place we didn't want to go to.

ETA: You also may want to take this time to work on your schedule so you can make the time to work on your marriage. I understand taking care of two toddlers takes ALOT of work. Do they nap? Are they sleeping through the night? Have you streamlined basic home tasks so they don't take you very long? (For example, we rarely cook 7 days a week. We do, double recipes whenever we can, so we simply reheat meals the next night. We also are happy with simple meals, like soup and sandwiches, breakfast for dinner, etc.)
Are you maintaining too much stuff? Too big of a house?

Have you explored swapping child care with another parent in the area? You take the kids for a few hours one day, and the other parent takes the kids for a few hours another day? Have you looked into a mother's (or in this case father's ) helper?

I find, for me, waking up a half hour before my kids do gives me some time to myself in the morning. That means I'm up at 5:45 in the morning. But, it's worth it, for me to get the coffee in me so I'm ready for my day.

You print them out. One guy on here printed them all up and put them in a folder to share with his wife. Try that.

The extended traveling is bad for the marriage. You can't have time together if one is not present. Things are not working, she is not 100% committed because she has set up a life that makes an intimate marriage particularly difficult. If she is traveling, how do you know there isn't someone else?

I know because I often travel with her.

Bugs,

You are going to have to find a way to make time. There's really no other way. If you're sure that there are helpful things on this site, you really have no other choice.

Hi BugsBunny! Welcome to Marriage Builders.

What exactly are her complaints about you?

Have you explored swapping child care with another parent in the area? You take the kids for a few hours one day, and the other parent takes the kids for a few hours another day? Have you looked into a mother's (or in this case father's ) helper?
I don't really know anyone well enough here to feel comfortable with that....and the people I do know are either too busy or not comfortable with the fact that I'm male. Don't have a budget to "hire" anyone.

I find, for me, waking up a half hour before my kids do gives me some time to myself in the morning. That means I'm up at 5:45 in the morning. But, it's worth it, for me to get the coffee in me so I'm ready for my day.
I have tried this, and unfortunately the times I tried to get up early for some reason my kids decided to wake up early that day. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions so far. I will try to expore some of them since I'm not here to make excuses, but to find ways to navigate around the challenges I have to deal with.



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They are some of the typical complaints I saw when reading through the summaries.
Don't listen
Don't understand her
Don't respect her
(and others.....but drawing a blank right now).

Many folks around here will probably jump on the travelling thing. How often is she sleeping away from you?

There may not be an affair, but if she is in withdrawl and is out of town for extended times, she is ripe for one. What extraordinary precautions do the two of you have in place to prevent an affair?

If she is out of town so much, is it possible for your family to move closer to one of your relatives to have more childcare support so that on the times when she is home, you can focus on each other and the marriage?

Ok, and did she tell you how to correct those problems? And did you correct them?

It is good that she complains, because complaints are an opportunity for you to correct the problem. It is when she doesn't complain that you should worry.

Hi, Bugs. I have more toddlers than you. Let me encourage you, for the sake of those little guys, to make time to work on the feeling of love between you and their mother. A healthy marriage needs fifteen hours of time spent per week giving each other your undivided attention meeting each other's intimate emotional needs (affection, sexual fulfillment, conversation, and recreational companionship). A troubled marriage needs even more than that to reestablish the feeling of romantic love.

Kudos to you for taking care of your children and showing commitment to your wife by staying with her through this extended traveling situation.

A bunch of Dr. Harley's books are available as unabridged audiobooks read by the author. Perhaps you could get those and listen to them while you are engaged in childcare. It's never too soon to start teaching the little ones.

Bugs, my wife has been telling me for at least three years now that I don't listen to her and don't understand her. Probably longer than that, but I probably wasn't listening.

Here's what has started to make the difference: one day my wife and I had an extended email conversation. I thought I was being as nice as could be and doing the best I could to listen to her and yet she was still extremely upset with me.

I posted the entirety of the conversation here. Several helpful people analyzed the conversation, helped me to see my words as my wife saw them (I was browbeating my wife ) and coached me on how to do a better job.

My wife has seen a major difference. She commented yesterday that we're both smiling a lot more nowadays.

Being a good husband is a skill that can be learned and taught. Get some coaching. It's worth it!

Incidentally, Bugs, we don't have much help with childcare, either. My wife's family has helped some, but now they are very busy with an elderly family member who needs care.

For the time being, we put our kids to bed pretty early most nights (if you don't have the sleep situation figured out, yet, I encourage you to work on that ... and I have some tips). This makes 2-3 hours for us to spend together every night.

Yesterday for the first time we formally scheduled our week of 15 hours of undivided attention time as Marriage Builders teaches. No babysitting involved, although that'd be great to have some day. We are figuring out how to make it work. We know it is worth it for our kids.

If all you need to find is time to study these concepts, it doesn't even have to be time away from your kids. In addition to my audio book suggestion above, another idea would be to take them to the playground and let them run off some energy while you read one of Dr. Harley's books.

My wife is home now caring for our toddlers and reading His Needs, Her Needs.

I have tried to get her to be specific about the things I didn't listen to - and when I ask her to tell me specifically what it is her usual line is that if I didn't listen the first time why should she have to repeat it?
Now, I'm not claiming that I didn't listen, forget, or do something that might have been insensitive or have been perceived to be insensitive - but I am completely frustrated when I am actively trying to be specific in fixing problems, and the responses I get are so general that it is impossible to make any type of corrections based on her response.
Ugh.....I think I'm in overload right now.

Don't want to get off on the affair/other person issue. I can't explain and still remain annonymous which is something I need right now. Will just have to trust that I know she is not seeing anyone else and help me focus on the other issues (which are probably more mine than I would like to admit). I appreciate the suggestions and guess at this point need to focus on trying some of them without trying to do too much and giving up out of overload.

Bugs, you've got the right heart and the right commitment. I know you're trying hard to listen to your wife ... in the way she wants to be listened to. And it looks like, like me, you feel clueless about how to do that. Am I right?

Here is a tip that has really helped me: when your wife tells you something, before you do ANYTHING else, repeat it back to her, paraphrasing in your own words, and ask if you are understanding correctly. Then wait for her to confirm or correct your understanding before going on.

One of my problems was I tended to jump to expressing my own feelings way too soon. Stopping, slowing down, asking to make sure I understood gave my wife a powerful feeling of being listened to, and also helped me understand a lot better, making it possible for me to respond to her needs better.

You can read all about my situation by clicking on my name on the left, then clicking "view posts," then clicking "topics created." You'll see where people taught me to respond to my wife the way she was looking for. I haven't heard my wife tell me that I'm not listening to her in a couple of weeks, now.

Bugs, how do you feel about letting your children watch a video or play quietly for an hour while you read through articles on this site?

I recently embarked on a course of full education in Marriage Builders principles. I'm reading through basically this entire site, starting with the "basic concepts" section which you can click to above, then moving on to the "Q&A columns" section, then the "Articles" section.

You might also be interested in the radio archives; you can pay for audio downloads of Dr. Harley's radio show, I believe, which should teach you a lot of the concepts.

You need a program of education like this in order to learn what you need to know to save your marriage.

By "save your marriage," I don't mean "keep an affair from happening" or "keep a divorce from happening." Those are good goals, but my sights are set higher than that, and yours should be, too. By "save your marriage," I mean turn it into something that fulfills both of you and makes both of you very happy and in love with each other. It's what both of you were probably looking for when you first got married.