It's 2:00am and W just woke me up and asked me to leave the house. last night I stayed at the house and was exhausted by 10:30 so we both went to bed at the same time. I fell asleep right away. She did not. This is a consistent pattern with us where I am the early riser and ready for bed at 10 while she sleeps in the morning longer and stays up later. I know I shouldn't fall asleep so fast but physically it is almost impossible for me not to. But when I do fall asleep, she feels like I am not connecting with her when she wants to connect. I have tried to negotiate it many times before, but I never seem to get anywhere.

At 1:30, I felt her moving around and it woke me up so I asked her what was going on. She responded that her health is being affected by me not doing anything. That she expects me to "move heaven and earth" and I'm not. I'm giving a "third grade effort", not working marriage builders and I still haven't made any changes. I completely disagree and don't understand why she thinks I am doing nothing. I honestly don't know and when I asked her how my efforts over the last month are "not doing anything", she responded again with the not moving heaven and earth comment. What does that mean??

I calmly and respectfully left just now because she asked me to leave since she feels like she is getting a migraine. I'm frustrated because when I ask her for feedback and thoughts on what I should do, she give me no real information. "Go to MB" and "move heaven and earth" mean nothing but she won't clarify her expectations. I want to meet her expectations and will do anything but I don't know what to do. .

I am sitting here thinking about last evening and why she is not able to sleep and kicked me out. I talked to her about the passport SD and apologized for it. We also decided to go together tomorrow since it works for her schedule. I don't think that is the issue.

We also talked about my job and how I have not told my boss about our marriage struggles and the separation. I honestly didn't thinkbit was something I should share with him but W thinks it is self preservation and a way for me to keep her out of the work room. I'm think I need to tell my boss tomorrow. Is that a good decision? I struggle with bringing my personal life into work so I would appreciate your advice.

Would that be "moving heaven and earth"? It feels like a sacrifice for me to bring it into work, but I will do it to save my marriage. I'm scared about the ramifications, especially since I am the bread winner and W is a SAHM.

One last thought: I know she has a major issue with me falling asleep. Do you have any advice on how I can navigate the bed time / wake time issue?

SHUT UP.

Really, it works.

Keep your mouth shut, and you can't argue!

This was a HUGE lovebuster. As long as you lovebust your wife like this, you are not going to get anywhere as far as conversation. Your dates will be meaningless.

Markos drinks caffeine in order to stay awake until I fall asleep.

Sleep can be a major issue in health.
I've pulled a lot of 2:00 am nights working on projects and when the weekend came, I literally slept for 12 hours Fri and Sat nights. I was seriously underslept.
Caffeine can help. My friend is a cop and like many nurses and others that work 12 hours shifts he lives off of coffee but it's not necessarily good for your health, as it affects heart rate and your sleeping patterns if consumed within 6 hours of sleep.
The exception to the POJA is health or safety. If she wants you up past 10:30 every night, will you get 7-8 hours of sleep? That is what you need to be healthy. Without sleep you will have other health problems (such as obesity, blood pressure, fatigue, etc)

What are the ramifications of telling your boss? The majority of the population has relationship problems and we watch sitcoms making fun of them because we can relate to them.
Personally, I have found that if I am honest and reach out to others it helps. For example, I told my business landlord about my former wife's affair and he prayed with me. It was nice to have support.

Obviously, there is a line between being honest and asking for support and burdening someone with your problems non stop. Nobody likes a constant complainer.

But I think it's good to reach out to good, godly men for support and advice.

For my marriage in crisis, I as a husband prioritized recovering the marriage even over my health to some extent.

Falling asleep last night was a poor choice on my part and it is a good reminder from markos that I need to prioritize my marriage even over my health to some extent.

I also think I need to prioritize my marriage over my work. Not telling my boss has gotten me nowhere and in fact, it feels like I am living a lie on a daily basis. I'm not going to burden him but he should know. It's an important step for me to take because I am always seeking for others to view me as perfect, even though I know I'm not and the people who are really close to me (my wife) know I'm not. It's what I've done on this board at times as well - make myself look good, even in the face of causing others to suffer - namely my wife.

My point is that you can stay up late to some extent on a temporary basis but otherwise sleep is subject to the POJA. One spouse doesnt dictate sleeping hours. It's really not healthy to be staying up all night.

If you don't prioritize your marriage over your job, you don't have a marriage.
Your lifestyle, including career, should be made to compliment your marriage.

Prisca or Markos, how would you have approached this situation? Can you give me guidance on how to POJA something like this?

This is an excellent point. I have not done this; in fact quite the opposite where I have almost allowed my career to conflict with my marriage rather than complement and enable it.

First off, how does she even feel about the cruise? If she is not enthusiastic about it, I would cancel it.

Assuming Prisca and I had booked the cruise together, I would ask her if she knew that (such and such authority) had recommended we get passports. Then I would ask her how she felt about getting passports. Assuming she was enthusiastic, I'd propose details like when, where, etc. Whichever date and time and details she is enthusiastic about, that is what we would go with. Personally I would probably be enthusiastic about just about any time.

If I was worried the passports aren't going to be ready in time, I would tell her the details: "this website says that if a passport isn't submitted X weeks in advance it might not arrive in time. How would you feel about getting this done by Sunday even though we weren't going to do it until Wednesday?" Then it is up to her to decide how she feels. Maybe she still doesn't feel it is important enough to rush.

Read all about Respectful Persuasion in Love Busters. This is the procedure you need to follow. If your wife still isn't enthusiastic about something you propose, and you can't think of an alternative, then drop it until you can think of an alternative she might be enthusiastic about. If you miss the cruise or miss the passports, that will be much less of a disaster than hurting your wife through demands or independent behavior!

She is very enthusiastic about the cruise. We discussed it a lot before I booked it and I made sure not to book it until we had enthusiastic agreement about the vacation plans, dates, etc.

I definitely get a little "pushy" with persuasion, rather than respectful. It is my demanding/controlling side coming through and is evidenced in the passport example. Rather than using POJA with getting the passports, I demanded that we do it on my terms since I was worried about them not getting done on time. I did not look at it from the perspective that we can still go on the cruise even if we don't have the passports - it is recommended but not required.

I will read about Respectful Persuasion in Love Busters as you suggested. thanks.

I feel like I am making progress on understanding and removing love busters, but as confirmed by my W, I am still not meeting her intimate needs well. In particular, our conversations tend to be boring and not intimate. What resources are available to me to start working on my intimate conversation skills? Keyword being intimate. I'm actually quite extroverted and like to talk to people, but I'm struggling with meeting her need for intimate conversation. "Business" conversations about kids, schedules, etc are fine (not great, but fine) but my skills are terrible when it comes to bringing forth and discussing intimate topics. I might even go as far to say that I don't even understand what it's like to have an intimate conversation.

I learned a lot when I was a little girl and came across a Readers Digest version of "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

It's a great read on how to talk to people so at the end of the conversation, THEY feel the conversation was great.

The two golden rules I remember were that if you ask someone about themselves and they do the majority of the talking, that person will remember themselves as having a great time in the conversation.

The second one is you can make more friends in two hours by being interested in them, than you can over two years of trying to get them interested in you.

Is it possible that she doesn't feel your interest in her, and doesn't feel she gets as much of the floor (and attention on her feelings, anticipations, hopes, etc.) during your conversations as you do?

In short: Ask her things about herself!....And take an interest in what she tells you, with follow up questions and commiserations or accolades as the case may be.

A friend and mentor of mine, who was a bank President, community leader and State Senator recently told me that Teddy's words have guided him throughout his career: "Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

And you will not make much progress on being able to meet her emotional needs until your lovebusters are eliminated. Your lovebusters drain the lovebank faster than you can fill it.

I read the section in Love Busters about Respectful Persuasion and I see it's correlation and place with POJA. Instead of using that tactic, I have been very guilty of demands or just doing whatever I want (independant behavior) without taking W's feelings or opinions into account. I agree, Prisca, I need to completely eliminate LBs.

One thing I realized yesterday too is that my job/career is actually a Love Buster for my W! Due to Jedi's comments about a career complementing a marriage, I read the section in LB about How to Resolve Conflict about Career and Time Management. After reading it, I realize that I lose love units every day that I come to work because we did not POJA my current job. It was a selfish demand and an independant decision that I forced on us due to my big ego and wanting an high power, executive level title. I talked to W about it this morning, and discussed her feelings about my job and the fact that we need to POJA a job/career change. I never realized that just the simple activity of me going to work is actually draining the love bank.