No, I wouldn't. I don't like babies.. I'm sorry. I like teenagers. I was overwhelmed with one baby at a time. The thought of trying to balance 2...oh my goodness. Our youth minister has a 4 year old and 2 twins that are now finally a year old. She is pregnant again! I would love to help them out, but I could take the 4yo but not the twins. I don't see how she does it or how she is going to do it.

ok, back to OP. One thing that saved my sanity when I was in the midst of little ones was Mother's Day Out. Is there a program like that at a church near you? There are 4 different programs like this in our tiny, rural town. They normally run 2 days a week from 9-2. This absolutely saved my sanity. I could count on a time when I could get shopping done or get my haircut or go out with my husband if he was free. Now I'm not sure what the work schedules are here, but I thought that I would throw this out. Many of these programs are ministries not money makers so the cost is affordable. I paid 7 dollars each day that I brought them. All three of my children did this and it was wonderful!!!

**edit** Maybe it is that admiration is my top goal, but like I finally told my husband you need to tell me 4 or 5 things I'm doing right and THEN give me 1 thing to work on. If you only tell me how I've missed the mark, I will just quit trying. I have no motivation. And I promise, I wasn't saying he shouldn't. All of you just make it sound so incredibly easy. You've never had a baby that had seizures that I couldn't leave with someone. We had just moved here when he was one and he had to be hospitalized for a week when we tried to get him off his medication. (It took 4 or 5 days to get him to quit having seizures.) I was not going to leave him with just anyone and/or until we got his seizures under control.

I just need to get off the board. It is ridiculous that I am crying over this... I just wanted to help.

What about moving?

We don't have twins, but we had one infant with serious health issues who required 24/7 holding and care. We had NO family support where we lived. So, we put in for H's job transfer (or would have quit if that was impossible, I gave up my career for this), we packed our bags and moved 5000km to be near his family who was more available to help us assist. Yes, it meant the demise of my career (for the time being) and a massive adjustment (I don't speak the local language) but really, in the grand picture, making such a massive move has really helped with our UA time (which was always our biggest problem).

The OP is not dealing with a decent marriage struggling with UA time. The OP is dealing with a marriage which has been destroyed by an affair and is not improving. Serious life-altering decisions MUST be made. Tiredwife, I understand you want to sympathize with him, but I would like to remind you that we have also said to you - numerous times - in your own thread that you and your husband keep putting everything else before UA time as well, so your sympathy here also comes from not wanting to make major life or career sacrifices for the UA time.

Twins in a crippled marriage are hard. But this OP is looking at a future of twins in two separate homes or with another man raising them during all but every other weekend. It truly is that critical.

Ok, that makes sense alis. Thanks

My idea of compassion is helping people do everything to save their marriages, not to tell them what they want to hear when they are in a crisis situation and reluctant to do hard things. I suspect we have very different ideas about what constitutes compassion. But that is ok.

I'm not reluctant to do hard things. I wouldn't be here, i wouldn't be doing all this for the past 6+ months, I wouldn't have gone through the decade of schooling I just completed. I would just quit. But there IS a difference between and excuse and a reality. The reality is my twins. I mean I could put them up for adoption, but that seems counterproductive to the whole purpose of doing this. I'm simply in a season of my life where I am LITERALLY doing ALL that I can. I don't think people that haven't had to do twins 24/7 simply just don't get it. It's the hardest thing I've ever done minus my wife's affair. It seems impossible some days.

I understand you are trying. I hope you can find a way to make it work. It would be tragic for you to go through all these efforts and get nothing in return, don't you agree?

yes and things are as good as they've been since d-day. I'm just not satisfied with where that currently is.

tw, one thing that you will find if you stay around here a long time, is that most people in trouble have trouble seeing solutions to their problems. They want to talk about how hard or impossible it is, and they put themselves in a mindset that makes problem solving impossible.

The things we say can help people break out of that mindset, or can help reinforce that mindset.

Your statement "Melody, I just don't see how you expect them to do it with family so far away" helps prevent the problem solving mindset. It's not that ML expects them to do it; it's that if they want to use the program that will solve their problems and help them to recover from this affair, then there is no other way and they will have to do it, somehow. It's not just ML's personal opinion.

We have seen many people say "I don't see how you can expect me to do this," and the implication is "There must be some way to make it work without this, because it is impossible for us. So we have to skip that part. Can we hear only from people who have skipped that part and made it work?" And then they hang out here for years with problems that never get resolved. It's like leaving the eggs out of a cake and then wondering why it's flat.

Instead of talking about how high the expectations are (which is demotivating), it's important for this couple to put this problem on the front burner and find a solution.

My productive suggestion is to find babysitters who are willing to handle twins. My wife and I used a website to find babysitters awhile back, and there was a checkmark on babysitter profiles for "willing to handle multiples" or "experience with multiples." If they can get a babysitter who is willing to take twins, they won't have to pay extra to book multiple babysitters.

Our six rowdy rambunctious children can all be cared for by one person for 3-4 hours; there is no need for multiple people to do the job. I will add that for the first several years we were parents, the job seemed a lot harder and more stressful than it does in later years, and it's really obvious to me now when I see good babysitters with our children that we were much more stressed than we needed to be, which made the job even harder. Yes, it can sometimes be rough with that many kids, but it's easier for a babysitter who knows they are going home in a bit, and who is getting paid to do the job.

I will also add that they will get easier, but not to wait for that! You don't see public school teachers fretting that they have more than one child of the same age in class; it's part of the job.

My take is that you are doing everything you have thought of, but there is more that you can do, that you haven't thought of, yet.

Be very careful not to decide you are done thinking about the problem. You are not in a season of life where a romantic relationship is impossible.

So consider spending more on babysitters and POJA ideas for free dates. Picnics. Walks. Even shopping for groceries together is UA time.

I'm not seeing potential solutions here, only walls. You're probably too tired to brainstorm. Luckily we're all pretty good at it, so hang in there with us.

ML is q right. You will end up divorced unless you meet this target for UA time.

That's an important point. It can make a difference in getting help if people know there was an affair and know that spending time alone together is considered essential to their recovery by the marriage therapist they are using (Dr. Willard Harley) and that they are in desperate need of help.

It is helpful to speak up about that! This is another reason for exposure of affairs.

I for one would have a really hard time telling a couple "no" if they came to me with exactly this story and asked if Prisca and I could babysit their twins. We might have to make some serious adjustments to help, but I think we would both want to help!

That'd be nine kids running around, which would be kind of cool...

Moving closer to family and changing jobs - I think this is where you are headed. But I'm assuming these are drastic life changes that your wife wont sign up to while still not an MBer?

In that case I'd focus your energy on more babysitters and free dates. But dress up the idea for her while you are still Plan Aing her into a total recovery mode. If a man packed me a cold chicken picnic lunch with a bottle of wine and took me to watch a sunset, I'd swoon.

Here's the thing. We do a lot of those things as it is already. We've had our house on the market for 4 months with not a single bite. I'm severely underemployed right now(found a job earlier this week) and will be severely underemployed for the next year or so(this can't be changed with anything other than time. We simply can't afford babysitting more than once a week and it's a stretch even then, we've made that priority #1.

We have support from our church, but like I said, almost all the people ABLE to help already have kids of their own and most have already had an infant of their own the past year. In fact, my wife's confidant through all this(who went through her husband's affair quite a few years ago) knows our situation and helps a lot, but she has 3 kids of her own, and she's watched our kids for us on various occasions. It's not walls, it's realities. we can't force anyone to help us, we can't afford more than we already do. I'm in a sucky situation. I'm underemployed, I have 3 kids under the age of 5 with 8 month old twins being 2 of the 3 and my wife just had a 9 month affair that started almost a year ago.

I really don't understand what can realistically be done that I'm not already doing.

When I was pregnant with the twins, I got in touch with some local (and by local unfortunately yes some were 45 minutes away) twins & multiples associations which offered trade off sitting, did you guys explore that?

Don't stop thinking. You have got to find something.

Carry a pad and paper with you. Write down this problem on the top sheet. Whenever you think of even a partial idea, write it down.

You will be surprised how much creativity you can bring to bear on the problem.

You've got to do this.

I think 15-20 hours could be a realistic target. I just don't see how 25 is even conceivable(RIGHT NOW). I think part of my problem is we need to have higher QUALITY at a lower quantity(which translates 15-20 hours to me meeting ALL 4 of the most important emotional needs regularly) instead of the higher quantity time of 20-25 hours while only meeting 2.5 of the most important emotional needs. I need help in my wife both giving and RECEIVING the other 1.5 emotional needs. When she flippantly disregards it as necessary, I don't see any hope there.

Did you listen to the radio clip that I posted to you yesterday?

That is not Dr Harleys experience. You cant trade quantity for quality. We understand you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, but when Dr H was in private practice he wouldnt even accept couples who couldnt sign up to the right amount of UA time.

We're willing to do it, but I'm saying a good week could be 20 hours, a not-so-good week could be 12-15 hours. If we're getting 12-20 hours a week regularly meeting ALL 4 needs that should be able to do it.

Dr. Harley is also a stickler on meeting the 4 intimate emotional needs. I don't see how only have RC for 20-25 hours a week is going to get the job done(which is more what my wife was alluding to when she said she wanted to 'date' again. I understand courtship should never end in marriage, but that's not what she was saying. The way she explained it to me was that she wanted to 'downgrade' the relationship and regress to a 'dating' couple, not a married couple. We need to be engaged in activities that allow for conversation as well, but we also need AFFECTION, physical touch and sexual touch as well. These are all essential ingredients to creating and maintaining a healthy marriage and relationship. It's the rules of Honesty, Time, Protection and CARE(not partial care) is more my point.