We have His Needs/Her Needs, 5 Steps to Romantic Love, Love Busters. I have Buyers, Lenders and Freeloaders and Surviving an Affair to give to a friend of mine, but haven't read those two. I also have the counseling book somewhere around here. He cannot reschedule his call schedule. It is in stone until the end of August. His call days cannot be changed.

Actually I have 3 extra copies each of HNHN, Love Busters and 5 steps. I give them out as wedding presents now.

Prisca said no buts, and it is really not helpful for us to hear that mess of details. His excuses (those details) are irrelevant. I would give him a letter TOMORROW telling him you expect him to cancel some events and clear 15 hours a week in his schedule for just you alone and tell him you are not willing to stay in a marriage where you are neglected.

Sure it can. He can quit, he can tell them he won't do it, he could be hospitalized, he could get amnesia and go missing. Any number of those events could cause it to change. The police are not going to throw him in jail if he changes his schedule.

YOU need to quit putting up with this, tiredwife! Quit blogging and follow the Marriage Builders program: put him on notice that this needs to change immediately, not in August.

Tell him!

I left work today because Prisca was feeling awful. I had training I could not miss. I decided they could lump it, because Prisca needed me.

Men, let the dead bury their own dead - meanwhile, take care of your wife!

Let him know that he had better find a way to change this crap. Quit accepting excuses.

Dr. Harley says he has NEVER seen a man fired for insisting that he has to make time to be with his wife.

While you're at it, tell him to quit taking individual trips with every child. That is ridiculous. I have six children. I do not take annual trips with every individual child and leave the rest of the family home. That would destroy my family. We spend time together as a family, and Prisca and I spend time together as a couple.

I wouldn't offer my son as a sacrifice on Moloch's altar, and I wouldn't sacrifice my wife to worship my children, either.

He sure would reschedule it pretty quick if he was going to lose his wife over this! If he came home and you handed him a letter asking him to move out if he wasn't going to start making time for you every week, he would reschedule something in a hurry!!! (You could let him pick what he wanted to reschedule.)

Tell him you did not get married to be alone.

I wouldn't have that discussion with him. That is way too complicated and borderline comes off as you educating him. Besides, he will just simply disagree with you.

Instead, let him know that if he wants to keep you, he will need to start arranging to spend 15 hours alone with you every week. Tell him you did not get married to be alone.

Let him decide for himself, BY HIMSELF, if God wants him to rearrange his priorities in order to keep his wife or not. I GUARANTEE you this will put it into stark spiritual relief for him. He can have some private conversations with God about it, if he wants, but I don't think he needs to discuss it with you. He would just argue and try to tell you to be a good little wife and follow his version of the Bible, which allows him to rob from you the care and time he owes you and claim it's a gift for God. You will never win that theological debate. Let him wrestle with God about it knowing that his marriage hangs in the balance, rather than debating you.

TW, I appreciate that you are busy people. The people on this site are busy people, too. Your head would spin if you saw the week we just finished at my house. And my H and I have STILL gotten in our UA time.

I suspect you are balking at initiating UA time because it is going to change the dynamics of your family and marriage. Change is sometimes scary, and some people prefer to live with the inferior 'known' life instead of venturing into the unknown, even with the assurance of a better life. I think you're also afraid that your husband is going to refuse to commit to UA time with you, and you are fearful of that response. This is where you're just going to have to leap and trust the net to appear.

The posters here who have saved their marriages get their UA time in by MAKING IT HAPPEN. It is their PRIORITY. I suspect the two of you are not making it a priority because you cannot visualize the benefits. Just DO IT. Then you'll see why we stress the importance of UA time.

You know what happens in a child-centered home, with two parents who put their children before their marriage? The kids grow up and move on. The parents are left alone with each other, and they don't even know the person they're living with.

I appreciate the time you put into that list of reasons for why you're too busy for UA time in the upcoming week, but I would much prefer to see your list of your UA time. In other words, don't tell us why you can't do it. Tell us how you made it happen.

Same here; you would not believe what we have been through this week!

TW, I have family in the medical field. I know what you mean when you say his on call is set in stone. I would have him immediately call the other doctors and look at exchanging on call shifts that would allow for y'all to have UA time. And for the future to have both of you agree on an on call schedule that will be condusive to UA time.

Is it possible for him to find another hospital that would have less on call time? My wife was able to find a hospital that only required 1 on call shift a month.

If you live in America they can be changed! And what is the point of having all those books if you never use them??

As others said, work can be changed. Jobs can be changed. We haven't spent a night apart in 3 years and he's a cop and I'm a 911 operator. I think sometimes people in emergency services can really take advantage of the financial opportunity that on call/nights present, and leave their marriages/families to tank in the aftermath. I see it ALL THE TIME. Why do you think doctors and nurses and cops are always in the SAA section? Because they don't put their marriage first and YES, it is possible, they just don't make career sacrifices to do it. And they convince their spouses it can't be done We could be making $150k+ year if we both gave in to this but we live off less than half of that and we're HAPPY.

Are you happy, tiredwife?

Also, I see family/kid/non-immediate family being scheduled before UA. This is a bad habit, perhaps because you admit you are a people pleaser before pleasing your own marriage, I don't know. We just had a 2 hour date out of the house and I left my 7 month old never-had-a-bottle-in-his-life with his 70 year old papa, sure enough, he survived, along with his brother.

It's really quite easy once you make it a habit.

Tiredwife,

You do realize you've been here almost a year? Are you interested in actually changing your marriage or is this a blog about how it's not great but you guys don't want to actually do anything about it?

Yes and what maritalbliss said:

But...you haven't used them...

Hi TW,

Update??