???

As I said before, not everyone who is meant to be in our life, are you meant to be in love with. I said before, some people that I had that, "I have to get to know them feeling, they have to be in my life", it was just about a friendship, they still had an impact in my life, and were important to my life.

That is what I thought the relationship with my wife would be, but it was taken farther. Now we are married.
There is nothing wrong with us having that in love feeling/marriage. As I have said, I just don't know that I want that in this relationship. I love her greatly, and have done many things because of that love, but no, its not that romantic in love.

lol. It's a book about how people who cross your path have some insight for you, so you need to hang onto them until you've learned what they have to give, and you'll know the insightful people by the vibrations they give off, etc...lol

Sound familiar?

Okay, so you felt a feeling that you were meant to be with the woman who is now your wife. And you entered into marriage with her, a relationship where you vowed to be together until death do you part.

And you have the feeling that life my consist of a series of people you are meant to be with, one for a while, then another later with whom you have that "meant to be with feeling," then another. Looking back on all of them fondly and feeling good about how you grew with them.

Is that correct?

To some extent that is correct Markos. Sometimes these are friends that we have (same sex or opposite), sometimes they are relationships we have.

Did you feel this way when you got married, Tom?

The problem with this is, this is how YOU feel, not how your wife feels. You are imposing YOUR will on her. YOU are forcing her to bend to how YOU see things, without giving any thought whatsoever to how she feels.

See all the YOU's in there Tom?

Why don't YOU just tell your wife what YOU'RE doing and planning and see if she agrees to it. If she does, fine. If not...

Guys, if you keep giving Tom good advice, he may eventually take it. Work on himself and his marriage. And then he and his wife will both be happy.

We simply can't have that around here. How am I going to waste time if Tom wakes up from the fog?!?!

Made it through Christmas and the family portion of the holidays unscathed. It was quite stressful and took a lot of work, but well worth it.
Now we are in the "down time" portion of vacation and....home alone. Wife is out of town for a couple days visiting family, I stayed home to work on things around the house.
Positives: Quite time and ability to get a lot done.
Negatives: All alone. Just me, the cat, and the dog.

What I wouldn't give to have a quiet house all to myself for a couple of days. I guess it's all in your perspective.

Well it has been a couple of months since I have been on here and given any updates. Oddly enough there is not much to report. Life is pretty much status quo. We have both been extremely busy and hvae had very little extra time. As a result we spend very little time together. On the positive, this does not give opportunity for any major dramas or problems to arise, but the negative, there is very little fun time together.

We have both been so busy that we hardly make a fuss about the fact that we are not spending much time together. I will say that we are still hoping to have a baby, but we don't see each other very often, thus the possibility of that are not great right now.

Life itself is going okay, just trying to take everything in stride and not take things so seriously.

*Sidenote* Only because I know some people would ask; the relationship with the friend that gets brought up at times; there is not much there, mostly just a regular coworker.

Mostly.

Really, out of what I wrote, that is the one word you focus on. To me that is semantics. Yes I said mostly, for me that means someone I still consider a friend, but interact with only on coworker terms. The occasional conversation that doesn't deal with work, but hardly.
Not someone that I get excited about talking to or am attracted to anymore.

You think everything is semantics and you're not interested in following marriage builders advice.

How is that not following MB advice. The friendship the way it was is no longer around and I am perfectly happy with that. I haven't tried to keep that friendship going and have focused more on my wife. I thought that would be a good thing?

You have a 92 page thread and you are still not following any of the concepts.

*Avoid invidiual relationships with members of the opposite sex - I am doing that.
*Love Busters - I am doing my best to avoid those. I am not perfect, but I try to avoid them.
*Disrespectful Judgements - those are harder to avoid, but I am trying.
*15 Hours together - We have tried off and on to spend more time together, but we are both so busy that it just does not happen. When we are home together we try and make it be time spent together. We are just not home at the same time as much anymore.

How are you doing on:

Meeting Emotional Needs
Radical Honesty
Policy of Joint Agreement

as for your 15 hours, it doesn't 'just not happen'.

You are BOTH making CHOICES to make it not happen. You are both choosing to put other things before it, you are choosing to prioritize your marriage almost last.

You are currently enjoying the marriage of your choice.

Are you happy that way? (and I'm being serious)

Please, do not have children. YOU may be happy this way, but you will do them a great disservice to bring them into the world when you don't have time for them.

And if you can't make time for your marriage, you can't make time for them.

Radical Honesty - Not one of my strong suits.
POJA - to a degree, but not "by the book."
Emotional Needs - As much as needed, no. But we are both being more aware of what the other needs and trying to make some efforts.
15 Hours- I recognize that we do not make that a priority. Yes we choose to have many other things going on that take up our time. Those things either make us happy or they are something that we are using to build our future.

Are we happy this way right now? I would say yes. Combined this is the happiest we have both been in a long while. I don't know how long that happiness will last, but right now, things are good.

As for the children - we both want to have kids. We both understand that when we do have children we will not have a choice when it comes to making time for them. Not making time for kids is not an option. We are looking forward to that step in our lives.

You are willing to have children with a woman who, only a few short months ago, you weren't sure if you were going to stay married to for the rest of your life?

You are open to the option that this woman isn't the person you will share the rest of your life with.

And yet you are willing to have children with her, consciously aware of the fact that you may be laying the groundwork for a future broken home?

Are you having children for your own selfish reasons (because it is something you want, will make you feel good and thus feel entitled to), or because you think you can provide new lives with a healthy, happy, safe environment in which they can grow?

Before you have children, please read the book "Between Two Worlds: the inner lives of children of divorce." So you know what it is you are setting them up for. Take the time to educate yourself on their possible future.

Would you be happy, would you feel good about yourself if your daughter or son, 20 years from now, settled for the marriage you have now. Would you be ok with your daughter spending her life with a man who is dishonest and distant and isn't sure he wants to spend the rest of his life with her? Would you be ok with your children having the marriage you have right now?

Because that is what they will learn. They will learn how to be married from you.

I find it very sad that the happiest time in your marriage is the time in which neither of you is actually together, being together, spending time with one another. Things are at their best when you're both so wrapped up in your individual lives you don't have time to be a couple.

Very sad.