I would like to see his answer. Thanks though.

Any ladies here ever have the problem about not really thinking about SF a lot? I used to think I had a low sex drive because I really don't think about SF much. They say SF crosses a man's mind every 20 seconds all day, or something like that, might be 20 minutes.

SF used to be just kind of on my list of things to do.

However, I found out that once I was receptive, I usually enjoyed it, and a few minutes into it started thinking how much I love it.

By definition, though, if SF is an EN, and it is being fulfilled, then it isn't pointless. It is meeting a need. It also IS communication. It is also acceptance. It can be a way of saying, "Despite our argument, I desire you anyway."

I just don't see it as pointless is all I'm saying.

I knew a couple that were always late to church. They were always either fighting in the morning, or having sex.

I envy them. My wife and I have the friendship conversation thing down. She loves my companionship and I love hers. But I'd trade peace for a little more passion to be honest.

I believe that makeup sex would be pointless to my wife. I'm not disputing that. But it wouldn't be pointless to me.

just my $0.02 : )

SF is very high on my EN list.

After learning what I have learned about MB, my opinion is that the desire for "make up" procedures of any kind is a remnant of dysfunctional thinking. It's part of a "cycle." We fight and then we make up and then we fight and then we make up and then we fight and then we...

It seems exhilirating and exciting, but to have "make up" procedures means that we are still having fights with our spouse.

We should be working to eliminate LBs in our marriage - that includes fighting. Fighting involves SDs, DJs, and AOs; therefore, fighting is LBing activity. Negotiating is a way of resolving issues without making Love Bank withdrawls. Negotiating is healthy.

Here's another thought: If you associate great sex and fighting, you may be training / conditioning yourself (and your spouse) to continue fighting. I think it's fairly easy to see why.

I think about SF often. Always have. Now that we are re-connecting and I am able to honestly say what I like and we are having GREAT sex, I think about it even more. At first the frequency of these thoughts surprised me.

Think about what you just said. That's some dysfunctional mess right there.


I do NOT admire couples who fight frequently and who are late all the time.

I admire couples who can Negotiate and have great sex and meet their community obligations.

You betcha!

Take it a step further. I associate INTIMACY and LOVE with fighting (without realizing it). So if I consciously choose to stop fighting, I am unconsciously closing my pathway to intimacy because of beliefs that I was unaware of.

I've always believed the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy and indifference. So if you are fighting with me, it must mean that you care about me at least a little. Because if you didn't fight with me but just ignored me and didn't engage, well, that would mean that you don't care about me at all.

What we learn as a child DOES deeply effect how we look at things like love, sex, etc. Because our beliefs are what drive our actions more than anything, and we can't sustain changes to our actions without some understanding of the underlying beliefs that drove our bad actions.

O/T, thanks for the refresher onPOJA. And I especially like ML's point that the goal is ROMANTIC LOVE.

Yes, yes, yes...

This is why IC is important. Only when we can see how we are and why is it possible to make long lasting changes, especially if the spouse is not on board to make any changes.

Melody I brought up the counseling with Steve and said he could ask all those questions about needing % on the en's and wantig to have the entire list not just 10....he looked at me and said I misunderstood and he didn't need to know that he was just curious now so no need to make a session to get that info! I said we still need to have one to get things going in the right direction....he will think about it...that's all I am getting now.

And yes we read that article over this past weekend together....I pointed out that this is exactly what has happened in our marriage.

He spends his most enjoyable time with his brother...therefore his brother makes huge love bank deposits and that is why he is so attached to the brother and rejects his marriage/family.

"So when your husband has a terrific time without you, the time he spends with you will pale in comparison"

There is no activity to compete with his hunting/brother time....he is eurphoric about the experience....I have never seen him at any other time in my life like this doing any other activity....he would throw all us all to the wind to go do it in a flash and while in it has told me so....of course now 6mos out from it he has since come down to reality and says things like it was just a easy way to destress or it's boring and nothing to do up there....before that "it's the most important thing in my life.....if I had the meanes I'd be gone ALL the time"....funny how it's boring now.

Sorry this got off the SF stuff I just wanted to respond....there is no balance we haven't had a vacaction just us 2 in 7yrs or so now....5-6 as a family...it was a quick weekend trip with the boys once. All his time is working or hunting....that's it.

Interestingly, when H and I shared our ENQs, his ranking of SF did not even make the top 5. And this is a very high drive guy. But for him, SF is part of an entire package that includes affection (his #1 EN), communication, honesty, RC, etc. All of those ranked up there before SF. We talked about it because frankly, I was surprised, especially after he shared where he ranked how much he would ideally like to have SF and it was 6+ times/week! (and the EN ranked #6?)

He says he just defines it differently and if the entire package isn't there, then SF just becomes S.

I understand where he's coming from. I was just surprised he didn't jump at the chance to rank it his #1 need.

On the subject of fulfilling that need, I also offer up this: timing is everything. The last thing I wan't to do at midnight is clean the kitchen, balance the checkbook, go for a 4 mile hike, even have a long intimate conversation. You can also add SF to that list. I am an early riser by nature and by 10PM am starting to fade, and by 11PM, I am usually comatose. H and I have had a lot of conversations about this over the years..it really reared its head the first year we were married. We finally worked it out that he comes to bed when I do and then if he wants to get up and watch TV or read a book until midnight, he does.

My best time for a workout, a run, a long bike ride is about 6-7AM (sometimes even earlier!) H is comatose at that hour. Since he doesn't run (he does work out at the gym, but that's my last choice unless the weather is bad), he's happy enough to see me do it at a time when he's sleeping. On weekends, I'll come home, shower and hop back into bed!

Yes, I but it was not so that there was something WRONG, but just that I thought we needed to do more things to consciously improve things. For example:

RC: Very little together. Always in some business, like a church activity, charity, or school or group activity.

RC: As our children were grown, we were still in the same rut of going on a big vacation with extended family. While I like traditions like that, I would also like to spend time traveling lighter and just the two of us going places.

UA and Conversation: Since she went back to work full time when all the children were out of the house, she is tired and just wants to relax, and "veg out", if she's not running to one of the activities above.

Affection: Not enough. She comes from a family that cares for each other, but does not show affection.

Rather than make it an ad hoc verbal list, because that made her defensive, feeling dumped on, I came back later and suggested we fill out the ENQ and LBQ. At this point, she had read Chapter 1 of HNHN, and concluded that, "Dr. Harley is just trying to blame the spouse who has been cheated on for causing the affair." She refused to read more, and refused to look at the ENQ.

So I have implemented MB on my own.

I suggested we take more short weekend trips, because there are lots of things to see and do within 2 or 3 hours of our home, which we have not done in 20 or 30 years, and some we have never taken the time to do. That has worked out well, until she had so many elderly relatives fall ill in her family, about the time I started posting here. Every weekend and every vacation day was consumed with caring for them, 100 miles away.

That is a bad marriage where the partners will eventually fall out of love. Fighting erodes intimacy, causes withdrawal and will eventually cause the couple to fall out of love. With fights come lovebusters, so every fight depletes their love banks a little more each time. Fighting is one of the worse things you can do in a marriage.

You do know that Dr Harley tells people not to ever fight, right?

Retread, have you ever just been honest and told her you are unhappy? Most people don't get hints or beating around the bush. Maybe if she knew your true feelings she would become willing to deal with the problem? But she can't make that choice if you don't get her a complete perspective of the problem. She may be defensive........at first. But that will probably evaporate over time when she sees that you goal is to have a happy marriage.

Melody, I am very direct, and I calmly lay out anything that I think needs changing, even if it is not making me "unhappy". My wife is like some of the others described earlier by their husbands, in that she thinks you should do what you feel like, you should be "in the mood", that planning or making conscious efforts to be loving is "phony" and demonstrates "that you really don't feel that way".

I believe in doing what makes you feel good, too, but I was raised to confront what was bothering you. If you had some chores hanging over your head, get up and go do the one that bothers you the most. If you are tired and sore from exercising yesterday, get up and go do a little exercise today, just to stay in the habit. No matter how many real problems I have on my plate, I can put them aside for a short while by doing something recreational. My wife can't do that. She cannot enjoy what she is doing 100% for thinking about some chore, or worry at work or home or family.

This is probably the case with lots of couples by the time they reach age 40; their basic beliefs and principles instilled at childhood and in school come into play and to the surface, and may be quite at odds with each other.

Trying to introduce my wife to the Harley MB concepts upset the status quo. She might not have been as happy as she thought she was, but she feels threatened by change. She is very set in her ways, too, like most people are by age 35 or 40 (she's 57).

Realizing what an Exceptional Marriage is, and how to build one, is so outside the norm of divorce, fighting, sulking and power struggles of most couples, or even the normalcy of good marriages, that 90% of people don't even know such a thing exists.

It's like someone coming to America from Cuba or East Africa, where all the cars are tough old beaters. They have never seen a new Cadillac or Mercedes. They have never seen a new Corolla. Wow! If you had visited them in Cuba or Tanzania and tried to describe a what the new model cars were like, they would not be able to picture it in their minds, even though every one of those beater cars in Dar Es Salaam started out as a shiny new car. ... Just like every beat up, worn out marriage started out shiny and new.

Well, quit trying to imagine Palm Beach, filled with new cars.
Go there and see for yourself.
And just like you can restore a dull, dented car to new condition, you can do the same with your marriage - even better, you can turn your old Corolla into a new Lexus.

That's a great admission though. What are you doing about it? Are you in IC? I can't recall...

Just sharing: Your statement above reminded me of something. One of the most disturbing memories I have as a teen was sitting on the porch with another girl who was just a bit older than me...16 or 17...she lived in the neighborhood. It was a beautiful sunny day. We were wearing shorts & T-shirts. We were comparing the differences in our complexions when I noticed that she had a few marks on her arms & legs so I asked her about them. She said they were because of her boyfriend. I did not understand. (I was young & uninformed.) She looked me in the eye and told me



Yes...that has truth to it in many situations. Dr H explains this concept in the newsletter about Withdrawl versus Conflict.

Chris, I'm going to respond to you on MY thread because it is WAY off topic here, but as a great thing for me to type out.

I love make up sex. We don't really have huge fights but we're still struggling with radical honesty. My hubby gives and gives and gives and will not tell me if he's not happy with things. About the only way to get the O&H that is my number one need is to make him angry. Then he tells me how much I've annoyed him with some things I did and since reading marriage builders stuff that makes me love him loads and I drag him off to bed.

I suspect me needling him to make him be honest with me is a love buster for him though, only its one I don't know how to manage without.

]

Thats interesting, and I can see how I used to think the same way. There were TWO states of mind in marriage to me, Conflict and Withdrawal. I was not aware of the THIRD option, which is true intimacy. And true intimacy does not include fighting, ie: conflict. In fact, conflict leads to withdrawal eventually.

RC, it took some convincing for me to train my husband to be honest. He was used to going along to get along and only stopped when I demonstrated over and over how damaging it was to our marriage. I think my H was concerned that he would be punished for complaining I have learned to PRAISE HIM when he makes complaints. After a while it just becomes HABIT to be honest about your likes and dislikes.

One thing that helped tremendously was handing him the article about "Complaints in Marriage. That newsletter made alot of sense to him. here

For me, "conflict" does not = fighting. Conflict for me means differences of opinion.

It's how people address these differences which makes the difference. Do we POJA or do we fight?