Originally Posted by markos
Originally Posted by Hilltopper1972
Originally Posted by SusieQ
It's good that you are both aware that you need to start planning the UA time.

Look at this quote by Dr Harley from the Five Steps Workbook (pg 182):
Quote
A point I make repeatedly in both Love Busters and His Needs Her Needs is that romantic love cannot be created or sustained without time for undivided attention. You don't have to be a genius to discover that unless you schedule time to meet each other's emotional needs, it won't get done.

If either my H or myself said "we'll see" it wouldn't happen. We sit down with our schedules on Sun or Mon and we try to plan out the week with at least one date night. Then we line up our babysitter for our weekly date night.

Approach your W and respectfully request that you two start scheduling your UA time weekly, say on every Sunday night so that it can become a habit. Be upbeat and don't approach her when either of you is in a bad mood. Let us know what she thinks of doing this.

Ok fair enough, here is what I did:

I set a Gmail calendar reminder every single Sunday for 730pm, which is when the kids go down, that goes both to my wife via email and Text that reads, "Hill/Grace Plan UA time + One Date". This way its not really ME bugging her about it, it is instead the CALENDAR reminding her we need to do it and plan for a babysitter.

What I think is that you came up with a great plan to avoid having to ask your wife how she feels and respectfully persuade her that UA time, dates, and babysitting are a good thing. And so I don't think you will have any long term success with this approach, because you are ignoring the important issue of her feelings and her good reasons for not being enthusiastic about all this.

Shoot you're right, at least about avoiding the "asking" her part. My wife feels great about UA time, dates, and she acquired a new babysitter. But since we don't plan it and we usually just "wing it", it happens much less than we want it to.

Married 15 years
12 y/o DD
10 y/o DS
6 y/o DD