I have read much of Dr Harley's web site. Very helpful info. How can POJA work? Example...If I love to garden and my H hates veggies and doesn't want me to plant a garden, then he wins? Yet if his biggest need is sex and I give him all he needs then he wins again. Some one give me some direction, please.

Garden: You love to garden, H hates veggies. POJA: You garden and he does not have to eat any. You have a 'smaller' garden so you are not unindated with too many veggies that you cannot use. You garden flowers instead of veggies. You garden veggies and sell at the farmer's market and contribute to the family income.

I'm not really that good at this whole POJAing yet, but I do see many options that he might be more enthusiastic about other than just not having a garden.

I'm going to steer clear of POJAing the SF need because I have my own 'work in progress' there, still don't have it figured out.

Hopefully Indie will respond she is really good at POJA.

Unwritten has given you some GREAT ideas!!!


No way! No POJA solution would see one spouse benefit while the other loses out!

POJA is about a spouse NEVER doing something unless they are enthusiastic.

About NEVER twisting your spouses arm to do something unenthusiastically.

And when you and your spouse disagree, you caringly sit down and brainstorm as many options as humanly possible.

You don't stop until you find a solution you BOTH like. Win-win. NEVER win-lose.



You should never have sex if you are not completely enthusiastic.

But you can sit down and discuss the romantic/affectionate circumstances in which you are most likely to want sex.

Whether help with children/chores would free up energy for sex

You can seek medical/MB relationship advice which might boost your sex drive.

If he would be happier with 'fewer' sessions of better quality sex

And so on...

You should address your spouse's complaint realistically, and with a long term solution in mind.

You should never 'give in' and agree to 'lose'

Or ask him to give in.

That is a short term solution that will backfire when the 'loser' gets fed up.

Actually, it is permissible to agree to be the loser for a short term period - but only on a trial basis.

Say your H wants you to give up gardening entirely because he thinks it would be better for the two of you to golf together at the weekend...

You're hardly enthusiastic. You love gardening and have never tried golf. Still he's sure you'll love it and how do you know you won't love it?

You could agree to try it for a month with a rule in place that you can quit immediately if you decide you hate it.

Here's a good show of Dr. Harley helping a couple with POJA.
Radio clip on trouble with POJA
Segment #2
Segment #3

And here's their follow up show.
Radio clip show on trouble with POJA
Segment #2
Segment #3

If you want a thorough understanding, I would get the book His Needs, Her Needs.

Thanks. I have not yet listened to the radio clips but will do that soon. I guess to sum up the answers...we need to comunicate/negotiate to come to an agreement concerning hobbies. I guess i still don't understand how every desision can be "enthusiastically" agreed upon.

Will post another issue/question later. Have to get to work!

You have a very strange way of presenting this here.

Let me elaborate;

You say you love to garden, but your husband hates vegetables. Oooooook... that part isn't that relevant, but your H not being enthusiastic about you planting a garden is.

You say "If I don't, then he wins." Right. And if you DO he loses. What POJA is about, is finding win/win situations.


You then compare this to SF; "I give him all he needs and he wins again..."


But, SF should be a win/win experience. It is one of the four Intimate Emotional needs - one of the needs you should be spending 15 hours a week meeting.


Now, we could draw a corollary between SF and gardening; because you enjoy gardening, you may view it as a Recreational Activity. But, again, the best way to approach Recreation is through Recreational Companionship with your husband. This is another of the 4 intimate emotional needs to be met during UA time.

So, if you enjoy gardening but your husband does not, then you need to brainstorm and find a mutually enjoyable activity to do together.

A parallel that I have seen pop up often here is wives who are driven nuts by the time and money their husbands spend playing golf. The solution is to negotiate an acceptable level of golf play, or for the husband to give up golf altogether.


The truth is, while you think you are "sacrificing" a favorite activity for your spouse, when you and your spouse create an integrated and mutually enjoyable lifestyle, the loss is miniscule. The rewards for both of you are better than the perceived sacrifice.

Read the book and listen to the radio clips and learn the necessary skills. We can help you apply the principles but you have do the footwork yourself.

Just to clarify HHHs phrasing, you spend 15 hours meeting all intimate four ENs, not spend the whole 15 hours having SF . If you misread this, you'd be too frazzled to garden!



Tell us your problem. Maybe we have some ideas. I think there is also an RC list which gives great ideas on alternative hobbies you could both try out.

Here.
Recreational Enjoyment Inventory

Once you fully embrace the Policy of Joint Agreement, win/lose scenarios like you describe above cease to exist. Here's one example of how your conversation might go regarding gardening, and I assume that your husband has NO FREAKING IDEA how to negotiate fairly. You can still negotiate!

You: "Sweetheart, I'd like to plant a garden."

Him: "You know I really hate gardening."

You: "I understand. How would you feel if I planted a garden?"

Him: "If that's really the way it would be, that'd be fine, but every time we've had a garden before, I'd have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. It sucks and I just hate it."

You: "So if I understand you correctly, your main concern with having a garden is that even though you don't like to garden, you often feel forced to do the work I can't do?"

Him: "Yeah, that's it. And it takes so much time, you know?"

You: "I think I understand. You don't want us to have a garden because it involves work you would rather not do, and takes time away from our time together."

Him: "Precisely!"

You: "I think we can come to a solution that makes both of us happy. Now, I'm brainstorming here, but I think there might be a way for me to have the garden I want without involving any strenuous work on your part. So my idea is: what if I kept a very small garden, one in which I could do all the work and you'd never have to run the tiller or weed?"

Him: "You're missing the point. I don't want a garden."

You: "Let me know if I misunderstood you; I heard that your two objections to me gardening are the amount of time it takes away from our time together, and the amount of work you have to do. I'm trying to solve that second problem. So let's keep brainstorming. My first idea was to have a very small garden that I could keep on my own. Maybe square-foot gardening or something like that. Can you think of ways we could keep down the amount of time required for a garden so it doesn't detract from my time with you?"

Him: "I feel like you are ignoring me when you garden."

You: "I totally understand. So let's continue to brainstorm. What about if there's some way we can combine time together and gardening, without you having to garden with me? For example, what if I brought you a cold beer every time I wanted to garden, and invited you to sit outside with me?"

Him, perking up: "Say what? You're going to bribe me with a cold one?"

You: "We're brainstorming, honey. I'm suggesting ideas. We ignore the ideas we don't like, and focus on the ones we do. It sounds like having a cold beer and chatting together while I work might be interesting to you."

Him: "As long as it's a Guinness or a Murphy's or something. I hate that recycled urine stuff."

You: "So it sounds like we have the start of an idea that we can both be enthusiastic about. What if we combine the ideas? I could do some simple square-foot gardening, and rather than take time away from one another we could make a little celebration of it: set up the umbrella over where I'm working, pull out a couple of chairs, pour a cold beer for you and a cold lemonade for me, then chat while I work. How do you feel about that idea?"

Him: "This sounds totally weird. When would we do this? I don't like the idea of sitting in the sun very long. That's part of why I hate gardening."

You: "It is totally weird, but it's fun to brainstorm, isn't it! So maybe we could call this Brewskies at Sunset, and plan for me to spend an hour or less outside with you while we chat in the evening and you enjoy a cold one?"

Him: "This is sounding a lot like a date."

You: "It is, isn't it!"

There you go. You've gone from this win/lose situation to a win/win situation. The two of you plan to spend a few evenings a week at sunset with chairs out in the garden. He gets to relax and drink a beer while you work. Now, that might sound a little unfair too, but the general idea here is you're working out an arrangement BOTH OF YOU ARE HAPPY ABOUT.

DNM that was a GREAT mock conversation about POJAing this. And it also made me laugh.

Since I am a POJA work in progress, threads like this are very helpful. The book tells you what POJA is but putting that into practice can def be more difficult than it sounds. So I personally like examples like this.

19kl83, since you titled this thread 'so many questions' that would indicate POJA is not your only recovery hurdle, feel free to keep posting with your other ones.

indiegirl: You should never have sex if you are not completely enthusiastic. I read on MB that EN are one thing that SHOULD be met even when not enthusiastic.

Dr H says this is to be done for a short time and on a trial basis, while you are working out other ways to enthusiastically be interested in meeting that need.

If you meet a need without being enthusiastic about it for an extended period of time, it will result in you building up resentment and avoiding meeting that need, the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to do.

For instance, if you meet the SF need, but do not really want to engage in SF, it will make you resentful and make you associate SF negatively making you less likely to want to do it the next time.

One basic thing to keep in mind from the very start is that POJA only works when both spouses are on board with it. There has to be at least a fundamental agreement to proceed with it on both sides...even if it's considered a "trial" for one to see how it works.

If your H shuts down every idea or compromise that you provide and has no input of his own but 'no', then you're not going to get anywhere with it and you will be losing every time.

That is not a Marriage Builders principle, you must have misunderstood. Dr Harley does not believe in the concept of sacrifice.

Thanks unwritten. I do have other questions and I will get to them. An earlier poster suggested I read the books and I took it to mean "get more info" before using the forum. I have purchased both HNHN and LB. Can't wait till I get them.

Last night my H and I were talking about POJA and my H said "I don't think we have EVER done anything enthusiasticaly." I had to completely agree and it was a VERY sad feeling. It almost made me cry.

I have listened to the complete radio segment that was recomended. I understand we need to practice POJA starting with the little things.

But...it is so hard to not dwell on the big things. Which is what I want to address now.
H has given up many things he used to enjoy (photography, fishing, hunting). I think it will be very helpful to state what he gave these things up for...work.

H has been a volunteer EMT for over 20 years. He has now been volunteer director for about 6 years. This takes him away from me for at least 2 afternoon/evenings per month. (More for training time.) I wish I wasn't so resentful of this. Last night I asked him what he could do/say (trying to get him to come up w/ his own "gardining scenario") to persuade me to become enthusiasticly agreed to him being an EMT. Well, his response was like me running into a brick wall. Complete shutdown. He says he has no ideas. I guess I dont either. This has been one big area where we agree to disagree.