don't know if this applies in Hilltopper's case, but just for the record... and I have friends who also had this experience, so I'm not the only one...my ex thought my son was sleeping through the night in his first month. I nursed him for over a year and I can tell ya, he didn't start sleeping through the night until about month 6-7 when we introduced solid food. But my ex would brag about how his son was sleeping. What was really happening, is, my ex was sleeping so soundly he didn't hear the baby. :-)

heh, not to add fuel...my now 9yo didn't sleep more than two hours at a time until he was 9mos old, and I'm pretty certain that I got pregnant with dd the night my H finally got up to tend him after I'd screamed at him that I was going to DIE OF EXHAUSTION if I didn't get a break and I PLANNED TO TAKE HIM WITH ME IF HE DIDN'T GO GET THAT SCREAMING CHILD THIS INSTANT. I was THAT grateful.

lol. funny now, but man, not at all funny at the time.

Thankfully, the rest of them ranged from 1/2 to three months on all-night sleeping.

I haven't heard any complaints about Hill being non-involved, so I just share that as a 'crazy woman' story.

Baby has been excellent sleeps from about 7pm till 4am or so. Feeds a bit then falls back asleep till about 630am. We're both up during that time as I'm an extremely light sleeper so I hear everything. The children wear both of us out, not just my wife. I cut off an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening from work. The hour in the morning is taking care of the big kids and getting daughter to school each day. The hour in the evening is to come home early, give my wife a breather, and make everyone dinner. We do a lot of things right and have for a long time, but the big one that has brought us to this point is neglecting our marriage entirely. I do it, she does it, period and I'm sure it is unbelievably common.

We spoke a bit this morning about "forward motion" and not posting every little reaction on these forums. It is a great decision(POJA kind) so that we can make some progress with our marriage. I think you'll find that both my wife and I are much more reasonable than has been portrayed by our behavior and responses to our behavior on this forum. We kind of chuckle at the level of intensity of some of the other members that exceeds that of my wife and I!

I love it when POJA is used ... Good job Hill. It will get easier the more you practice it.

You will be ok if you stick to the LESSONS and avoid posting conflicts. That is a disaster! You did great in your "POJA!"

Ok so UA is a big problem for us. Not only do we have an infant that is still breast feeding, but our daily kids and work schedules mean we only get UA at night after 8pm which means were both exhausted typically. This is not the ideal situation to focus but I guess it will have to do. 20 hours is an average of almost 3 hours a day. Currently we get about an hour to two hours at night exclusively watching our favorite shows on TV. Yes I know this is not the best thing to cultivate our EN's but I'm just being honest about what is truthfully going on. So I guess we are spending our time watching other people on reality shows and other stuff and not learning about and enjoying each other, I get it not remotely healthy, uggggh. I'm not surprised at all! I remember back when we were dating(no kids), we'd usually go to dinner, then the bookstore, get wine and snackies with no tv, hang out, cuddle, and of course lots of SF! Go figure we were hot for each other and madly in love. Fast forward 8 years, now we don't do any of those things, and our recreational activity revolves around spending time with other couples with kids our age as well. It is clear to me this needs to change like yesterday. I know its not that many of you haven't told us this, it is more there was so many things we were told to "do" or "not do" it was hard to prioritize and we just ignored that one and postponed it for later. We'll have to come up with a POJA on how to do this as it means our current nightly habits and social arrangements will have to change in order to make our marriage any kind of a priority in our lives. Sounds simple enough so why am I feeling intimidated about it right now?

You are right, you need to find a way to make this happen. You can see the result of putting your marriage LAST. That is not good for your kids. What is best for your kids is to have parents who are in love, because that produces a secure marriage.

TV does not count as UA time. You can count it, but it will not achieve what you are trying to achieve. It should be deducted. I would start hiring babysitters 3 to 4 times a week and find ways to make this work. If you can find a way to cut corners on UA time, I applaud you. But I have been here for 10 years, am in a romantic marriage and have not found a way to do it. Like Dr Harley says:




Policy of Undivided Attention

Caring for Children Means
Caring for Each Other
Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D.


Children desperately need parents who stay married to each other, and love each other. Their future depends on it. Yet, their parents are very likely to lose their love for each other after they arrive, because they forget why they married.
They didn't marry to raise children -- they married to meet each other's intimate emotional needs. And the presence of children tends to make them think that they don't have time and energy to meet those needs anymore. When that happens, they lose their primary motive to be married -- their love for each other.

A man and woman usually decide to marry because they have formed a very successful romantic relationship -- they are in love with each other and are meeting each other's intimate emotional needs. They want to make that romantic relationship last a lifetime, so they marry. At the time, they are optimistic about keeping their love for each other alive, and they don't expect anything to threaten that love -- least of all, children. But if they were to understand how their love was created, and how it is sustained, they would immediately see why children are such a risk.

The two essential ingredients of a romantic relationship -- being in love and meeting intimate emotional needs -- are inseparable. A man and woman love each other because they meet each other's intimate emotional needs, and they meet each other's intimate emotional needs because they love each other. If either one of those factors suffers, the other suffers as well. That's why it's relatively difficult to keep a romantic relationship on track -- it's very fragile.

If living conditions make the meeting of intimate emotional needs more difficult or even impossible to provide, the love a couple has for each other is at risk. They usually don't see their loss of love coming, because they think their love is based on chemistry (they are made for each other) or their willingness to be in love (their love for each other is a decision) -- factors they think guarantee a lifetime of love. But what really sustains love in marriage is neither of those. It is their effectiveness in meeting each other's intimate emotional needs.

continued here

Wife and I declined another offer to hang out with some other friends tonight. In fact we declined two offers that normally we would have accommodated. Its not because we don't want to go hang out with friends, its that we need to be smart and spend that time together. Tentatively we are putting kids down at 730, drinking tea, and reading the workbook, then maybe some scrabble on a Friday night. She asked me about her running Sat morning, I told her the truth that I felt this was not a good idea because it would postpone us spending time together on a morning where nobody works and there is no school. She said, "ok how about I get up really early?", I said sure. At this point I'll have a positive attitude and see if she'll honor that commitment, because if she has a hard time waking up and goes running anyways, that would be a massive LB on a couple of levels. I'm gonna make sure we both go to sleep early tonight so that it is a bit easier for her.

How are the finances?

Go buy a baby jogger stroller, and start thinking about running together.

Improving health and fitness while improving your marriage?

Win/win.

Or, would there be any chance of joining something like the YMCA?

DH and I can't run together (I'm a 5.7mph pace and he's a 4.2mph pace, it just doesn't work. But, we can certainly run side by side on different treadmills.

And, the YMCAs around here have childcare for free.

We are members and we used to go all the time before baby. I have bad knees from playing basketball my whole life. I've expressed lifting weights together but she doesn't want to. Not a huge deal, and I understand that. We used to walk quite a bit while pushing stroller which was nice, but she is into something more intense.

Why can't you walk on one treadmill and she run on the other? Or on ellipticals next to each other?

Or swimming? Water Aerobics? One on One Basketball? Table Tennis?

There's so many things you can do together, and on the treadmill/bike/elliptical machines you don't have to go the same speed.

And, it's free babysitting. LOL

She's open to the working out, gonna investigate it. That would be incredibly sexy and meaningful on my end. Wife might take a bit to come around though.

Hey, Hilltopper:

Stop stewing. Your wife says it's a real problem for her, so knock it off, Bud! Apparently this is still a present problem. She can see when you're feeling this way.

Let me tell you what causes the stewing: it's when you feel like your wife should be doing something, and she's not. Or she's doing it a different way, or she's doing something you think she shouldn't do. In other words, you feel just a little bit like you've got a right to control her, or you are pointed in that direction.

Have more patience with your wife, friend, or this is not going to work. She is very much on board with the concepts here and with posting here and with working with your marriage. She is going to need some time to learn everything. Be patient with her.

You are going to need her to be patient with you, too. You probably need to realize that you are not an easy man to live with and have a romantic relationship with. You should probably express some gratitude to your wife for dealing with that. I'll bet it would go a long way.

If you expect her to be patient with you for your faults and slips (you have some of those, right?) then you are probably going to need to extend the same kind of patience to her. New habits take time to form.

So, what are you doing nice for your wife today?

PoJA workout!

Brainstorm ideas for how you can work out together at a pace and/or intensity that would be pleasant for you both.

Multiple solutions!

Work through those solutions to find the one that you both enthusiastically agree on.

Don't waffle, don't "compromise." It's enthusiastic agreement.

I won't whack you on that one, as I'm guilty of just giving in to whatever the wife wants, and it's her that really pushes me - "You don't seem too enthusiastic..."

No stewing bro but when I mentioned this my wife mentioned why you likely wrote this. Wife sent me an unprovoked stinger cause kids were a little rough so I gave the "huh I don't get it face". We worked through it in two mins flat, learned some things, and are enjoying lovely day with kids. Thx for staying on me I understand where and why you are coming from!

Don't do that any more.

Hey, Hill, this was not a rhetorical question....

Hill, you two have a chemical issue at this point. Running and weight lifting are great to help reset. UA isn't all day. When would you be cool with her taking some time Saturday? I agree with HHH, take the baby in a stroller and leave the kids at the neighbor and take a stroll together, too. Not either -or. What do you think?