I hadn't figured out how to answer yet.

Now I see there's a lot more posts to look at ... I will make sure to respond.

Actually in the surveys Dr. Harley has us fill out each week, it's down to quarters of an hour (.25).

And actually I always measure in half hours. This is the only week I ever remember having a quarter of an hour recorded.

I don't doubt that I do, and I expected 2x4s. No offense taken.


Dr. Harley concurs; we are still on the DJ lesson.


Yes, I spoke to her about this issue first. She hasn't answered, yet, but she did have an angry outburst at me today and kick me out of her email account. Over and over again.

Yes it does, and that is why I posted it.

I was bothered, I measured what was bothering me, I laid it out to look at in the presence of some folks who know some things.

I'm still looking at my data. It explains a lot to me. I don't seem to be drawing firm conclusions for a plan of action, yet.

Y'all realize Dr. Harley prescribes that you measure these numbers together each week and chart them on a graph together, right?

Prisca used to enjoy doing that, many weeks ago (more weeks than the 8 shown in my list here).

The 21 hour week is an outlier. The 21 hours came from getting to go shopping together for a day that week. (All 21 did not come from that day.)

A few weeks before these measurements started, I asked Prisca if we could start doing some things for our UA time besides watching television. I was under the impression she had agreed with me. But when the time came to change our schedule, she didn't want to do anything but watch television together. She agreed to a couple of activities I suggested, but it was reluctant and she resented it later, saying things that gave me to understand she saw it as time that had been spent for me, not time that had been spent for us.

Dr. Harley and our coach encouraged us to pursue a plan we had been working on for getting out of the house more and being together alone. We put that plan together and started to get a few hours a week with that activity. It can give us a maximum of 8. Dr. Harley and our coach also encouraged us to limit TV time UA to only 2 nights a week, and we did that.


I don't know what else I can change. The hours are there if we want to use them. We've shown many times that 15-20 hours can be made in our schedule. I'm ready and willing.


I think we know the answer to that question.

Prisca expressed that pretty adequately.

Thanks. We can and have done better, though.

I wish I had numbers for every week. (We kept them on paper together for several weeks after the MB weekend, and I've submitted a number almost every week since then in the surveys Dr. Harley gives us, but I didn't keep records of the numbers I was submitting until 8 weeks ago.)


As lonely as my wife is, I think she'd love to be smothered in a positive way.

I think of the Hitch basic principle: "no woman wakes up saying, "God, I hope I don't get swept off my feet today!"

I don't harbor any illusions that me posting here is sweeping her off her feet, but as I said I haven't figured out the positive way forward, yet.

This may well be the case, but if so, she hasn't expressed that to me. And she was becoming reluctant about our time together before that.

I've asked Prisca about spending more time together and what I could change to make her more willing to do that, but her main answer has been "You haven't been very easy to be around."


Very true.


For sure. And I think the two of us agree on that.

Actually until today I haven't been watching these numbers very closely, although I've noted they've been below 15 almost every week for awhile.


For sure, but it's not the only thing that's off.


The thing is I would let go of it immediately if I felt we were moving positively forward. In fact in the past I've let go of things too quickly, been too willing to say yes when my taker wasn't really happy.

I know it may be hard to believe that I ever let go of anything.

{But I did avoid posting on this thread for six months...}


That may be so too, but I'm not sure that's what the problem is.

I'm engaged in a program that ought to be teaching me to behave in a very empathetic manner.


I explained over ten weeks ago it was building resentment in me to just watch television. I suggested some activities I'd like to engage in and was disrespectfully judged for suggesting them. I said I was willing to engage in others.

We've made a great attempt with our plans to get out more, but even if we did that perfectly every week it would be only 8 hours. Add two two hour movie nights, and that brings us up to 12.

kilted, I offered to scrapbook with my wife or learn to sew skirts together, if she'd enjoy it.

In fact, scrapbooking appeared on our UA schedule almost every week since the first week we counseled with Steve. But we've never done it.


If my wife started tracking UA time with me again, I'd turn cartwheels in joy.


Yes, I think we do.

Okay, I think I'm done obsessing for the moment. Thank you, everybody, for the feedback, and the challenges. Feel free to pose more.

markos,

Did you post those hours here for our help? Why not be more cooperative in your answers?

When I asked that question, I did NOT know how the reduction affects your relationship with Prisca. I guessed that the effect might be to create a distance between you. I did not know that there was the level of hostility between you that Prisca showed in her interjection.

I didn't think that a high level of unpleasantness and hostility would come about from two weeks of low UA, if that UA was nevertheless enjoyable. I now see that that it was the other way round. The low level of UA might have come about because the time spent together in higher weeks was not enjoyable, or there were other problems with meeting ENS and eliminating LBs.

Is Prisca avoiding you, as she says? Do you know what you have done to make this happen?

I'm asking you a simple question, really. You say yourself that the hours are there if you (both) want to use them, so

what has happened recently to bring about the situation in which you are not using them?

Sorry, SugarCane, I didn't mean to be evasive.


It's making me very disappointed. I don't think it is directly disappointing her. I haven't heard her express that it is a problem to her, but I have heard her express that she is lonely.


Read the previous post above about our history regarding UA for the last several weeks.

I don't think I'm succeeding in making UA enjoyable for her, overall. (Otherwise I'm sure she'd want more of it.) I don't think that's the cause of the hostility, though.


Yes she is. This is the main cause for the variation in UA time.


I did some things to help her out and said I intended to do more and was unable to follow through due to exhaustion.


I hope I'm answering more straightforwardly, now. Am I?


I'm not really sure how recently it is. As I said we've been scheduling some activities from the beginning (like scrapbooking) that I offered to do with her that she just never did follow through with doing with me. And the problem of her wanting to watch television instead of UA time has been around from the beginning.

Yes, markos. You are being more straightforward now. However, it's 3AM here and I must go to bed, so I'll stop writing now!

Oh, okay, I didn't realize the time difference. Thanks for the help.

Several weeks ago I had two weeks off work. During that time I put a priority on spending time with Prisca. I don't have records for those weeks but I'm pretty sure I put down more than fifteen hours together.

Most of it was watching television and movies. I'd agreed to this because I knew Prisca wanted it. I'd told her a couple weeks before that I didn't think we could sustain that and I wouldn't be willing to keep going that way.

During those two weeks things seemed to go very well. Yet every so often I noticed a reluctance to talk on Prisca's part. Increasingly it seemed that something was wrong. Finally one day after I was back at work Prisca blew up at me, and a couple days later she told me she was feeling resentful because she wanted me doing more around the house.

Now I do want to do my share of the domestic support. (I'm fairly certain that today, at this moment, Prisca would dispute that. But it is true that I want to do my share.) And during the two weeks off I was doing some of that. But there were some particular things she was wishing I would do, and I didn't realize what they meant to her, and I was really working hard on the time together and trying to make her happy in other ways.

Prisca let me know her feelings and thoughtfully requested that I take care of some of those things. We worked out a list of chores that I would start accepting as mine. I started working on them, and couldn't seem to fit them all in every day, but I tried to do as good a job as I could.

A week or two after that, we put together a really, really nice schedule. There were 20 hours of UA time to fill, 15 hours of family commitment time, 50 hours I'd be at work or commuting to work, 8 hours of sleep a night for Prisca, 7 hours of sleep a night for me with 8 on the weekends (after this experiment I think I can truthfully say I need 8), and I had 17 hours of chore time scheduled.

One problem with the new schedule was I didn't have enough chore time daily to keep up with what I said I'd do. There was plenty of time on the weekends, though, and I managed to catch up. There were still a few nagging things that needed done and didn't quite seem to fit, but I'll bet we could've made that work with some adjustment.

Yet this corresponds roughly to my first couple of weeks of data above. 20 hours scheduled, 9 accomplished.

Prisca seemed to be happier with the situation, but she was upset with my request that we start branching back out with UA time. Our coach and Dr. Harley told us to count 2 nights of movies a week because Prisca liked it and do some other things, including moving forward with a plan we'd been looking at that would get us out of the house with babysitting.

So we moved forward with that plan, and the time we've been spending together doing it has been quite good. But it doesn't cover all 15 hours, and it also wrecked the previous schedule. We haven't put a new one together yet. The chores started falling by the wayside, and now I'm on the line for not keeping an agreement. I said I'd do these things, and since they aren't getting done Prisca now feels resentment. She's putting things that I said I'd do and did not do as disrespectful judgments each week on her DJ worksheet.

Throw in a couple of appliances going out and some trips to the laundrymat. Which have to happen at night because there's no other time. More pressure on UA time. More pressure on chore time, as well. It's fairly easy to wash dishes while running a load or two of laundry when they are in the same room in our house. It's much more difficult when you have to drive the laundry somewhere else and spend a couple hours there.

I keep trying and trying to meet needs. The day Prisca blew up at me weeks ago I had been doing extensive reading about conversation thinking to work on making sure I could meet that need better for her and maybe make our UA time of more value to her.

Dr. Harley wants us to stay on the disrespectful judgments lesson but also start dividing up household responsibilities using the strategy in his domestic support materials. I think this is a really good idea.

But there's still this issue of UA time, and my understanding is that this is the core of the Marriage Builders program and that it won't work without that. It seems like we've negotiated a number of subjects that were bothering Prisca, I've gone all out for a few weeks (not currently, but a few weeks ago) trying to supply domestic support, we've scheduled, we've done new things Prisca wanted to do and quit doing old things she said she didn't want to do any more, and somehow we're still not accomplishing the policy of undivided attention.

So here's my problem. I don't think this is going to work if we don't follow that policy. I don't think I can make Prisca happy enough by doing all of these other things if she's not receiving fifteen hours of private conversation and affection (not to mention recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment) from me a week. And vice versa. I'm staring that problem in the face. And I'm wondering what to do.

I'm scheduled to talk to our coach tomorrow. I know she's going to talk about Dr. Harley's domestic support materials, and I'm moving forward on that (started a list of household tasks last night, and I added to it today). But I'm going to bring this up as well.

Let me reiterate this again to show how serious I am about this. I offered to sew a skirt!

Can you describe Prisca's schedule in a typical day. Please include breastfeeding, if she is doing that.

Is there any way you can get laundry facilities in your living arrangement? Can you arrange for a diaper service?

You are married for 6 years and you have six children. These are all children of the marriage? So, you have six kids under the age of 6? What assistance is available for childcare? What would Prisca like to have?

I guess I find it somewhat odd that perhaps the most obvious drain your UA time, child care, is not really part of your description of your current family sitch.

In one of her last posts, Prisca mentioned an inability to POJA the issue of contraception. She seemed unhappy about it. Has that issue been resolved?

Prisca feels like I left out a key detail of yesterday, and she's still focusing on the subject, so I'll add that.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with Prisca by instant messenger, about the two lessons we're working on (disrespectful judgments, and now domestic support). At the same time I was logged into our joint email account in another window. The window started closing, and I realized Prisca was remotely logging me out of the account. Repeatedly. She was having an angry outburst.

We went back and forth for awhile, me logging in, her logging me out. Apparently she wants online privacy now.

Finally I changed the password on the account, and logged her out. Yes, that was wrong on my part, and that's what she says I left out of the above. It's what she's focusing on now.

I did change the password back, not long after the original incident, but apparently she didn't realize that until this morning.

kerala, I'm going to answer your questions. I just wanted to add this first. When Prisca spoke to me yesterday about me posting here, her complaint to me was "Tell them how you locked me out of email." And her complaint to me this morning is "oh, so you're going to be so gracious as to let me back into my email today ..." This is what she is focusing on.

I could offer to focus on it, too, but I'd want to focus on her desire for online privacy, and her logging me out of the account, not just my changing the password. If this is the major issue that is plaguing her, I'll focus on it. But it's not the major issue plaguing me, and I don't want to just focus on her side of it.