You do realize that proper UA often fixes all the things you guys argue about in your main post, right?

Now you can argue till you are blue in the face without even trying, and stay out of love as you say you are, or you can TRY it.

You have one normal kid, no? Prisca has 7, I only have 2 but one with severe autism. Single income, no millionaires here. We make it work BECAUSE we care about our children. So they have an intact family with parents in love.

Nope.

As long as you put your daughter before your marriage, you will never be in love.

I do this FOR my children. My marriage is the foundation of their entire world, so I invest the time in it that it needs FOR them.

Dr. Harley himself is the one who has said that UA time at home is not as effective. It doesn't work in most cases.

Why would you expect it to work if you are throwing out the foundation of the entire program?

Again, what has your thinking gotten you so far in your marriage? Are you in love?

We live paycheck to paycheck. We have 7 children to feed, clothe and care for. We're not rich by anybody's standards.

And our dates are the highlight of my week. I long for them.

Most people say that at first. Including me.


I actually care about spending time with my children, too. In addition to the 15 hours I spend with my husband, we plan 15 hours a week for family commitment time. This is Dr. Harley's suggestion.

Thank you Alada. Finally some reasonable and supportive suggestions.

That is a good idea to go out after she is in bed. I will propose that.

Babysitting still costs money, so do concerts and bowling. We are willing to spend some money of course, but we need to figure out just how much.

Our current budget for eating out is $40 per week.

Can you explain how an at home date couldn't work if we really took the time and effort NOT to get distracted. And blocked off the time and said, "this is our time." I don't see how some of our favorite activities to do together we CAN'T do based on the recommendations of this thread because they are in our home. We actually CAN be 100% paying attention to each other at home. It certainly is more tough than on a date, but it is possible. Some of the best dates of our history have been at home dates. Romantic dinners, etc.

Despite what you all believe it IS possible.

And again, I'm not lobbying for 100% of the time to be at home. Just some of it.

sacredwife, we do not spend close to $800 a month on our dates. If you asked me to estimate, maybe we spent about $50 last week, but I think its a little high.

We do not eat every UA date.

You do not eat every four hours, so 4 hour dates do not need to be spent eating.

There are a lot of options for UA time, not every single one requires you to pay.

Perhaps this thread will help:

UA Schedule for couples with kids

You are being defensive and not creative here.

Lets remember what UA stands for. Being at home does not allow for UNDIVIDED ATTENTION time. Washer beeps...won't take but a minute to throw the load in the dryer, dog barks so you look outside to see what he is barking at, Schwans guy comes to the door with a delivery, oops baby just woke up from he doorbell! This is not Undivided Attention. That is why the focus is on out of the house dates.

No you do NOT have to spend $800 a month on dates. We love to hike, so we have a favorite hiking area close to home. We can hike for hours, pack a picnic lunch in the summer. We also like to canoe, $20 for a rental. You can get memberships to things, or take classes, things that are a one time fee and then you can use them without paying for a year or whatever. There are lots, and lots, and lots of options other than going out for dinner.

Starting this schedule now, when your child is young, is easier. We started working in UA time when our kids were used to mom and dad not spending time together. It took some adjustment for them to get used to us wanting to spend time together. My daughter would say 'you just had a date night LAST week.' Kids are not accustomed to moms and dads having a romantic relationship, which is sad don't you think? It is far easier for you to accustom your young daughter to it now. And what a beautiful thing for her to grow up to, seeing her dad romance her mom, her parents dress up and go on dates all the time, her parents being best friends.

Dr. Harley does have a breakdown of work time, UA time, and family time somewhere. I will look for it.

Another suggestion, I have a 13 almost 14 yr old daughter who has been through babysitting class. She and her little friends LOVE kids and love to babysit. She honestly would do it for free, although I have the luxury of paying her to babysit while we do UA time. I do not like to go far away, so we will use her usually during the day hours and/or if we are close to home. So think about younger girls if you are comfortable, even in twos. They will totally dote on your youngster and for a very reasonable rate. It is a nice Saturday afternoon option, IMO.

I had this EXACT argument with Melody when I first came here, because I didn't even want to try as I thought it was "impossible". The truth was, I was getting most of my needs from my child and didn't want to put in the effort of romantic love - yet wanted the same results.

So you can ignore me, and my suggestions about trading sitting or taking in a daycare child or two while your spouse is working anyways... Or you can look and see that this is going to take more effort/creativity you are used to. Remember, you are the one who insulted us by saying you "actually care" about your child.

What WE are saying is that this can be a misguided notion about what care for children can look like. Nobody complains their parents went on too many romantic dates, but they sure do say they wish their parents had put more effort into keeping a marriage together.

Have you seen this?
The Critical Importance of Undivided Attention

Also this, Cutting Corners and the Marriage Builders Program

Again, please stop with the accusations. I never said I put my daughter before my marriage. And I am in complete agreement that putting your marriage first IS best for our kids. Complete agreement there. But the accusations need to stop. You're being really disrespectful. Especially since you know so little about us and our life and our marriage.


Can you show me where he said that? I haven't read it anywhere. And I am not lobbying for ANYTHING BUT complete and undivided attention and for at least 15 hours a week. I am totally on board with that. I haven't read anything FROM HIM that says it HAS to be outside of the home.



I'm not throwing out the foundation of the entire program. Your accusations are really rude and ridiculous. See my comment above. I am in complete agreement with every word I have read of Dr. Harley's. 15 hours minimum spending QUALITY and UNDIVIDED time with my husband meeting those 4 needs. Not throwing that out. I'm very frustrated by your language. It's not supportive.



Why do you insist on shaming us? "your thinking" You are so rude. Our thinking is actually much like Dr. Harley's. Nothing has taken convincing for us at all. Never has. We have known about this program since we were first married and even now we actually are in love. We have our share of problems that we are turning to this program to help us to fix. But we are RIDICULOUSLY proactive and have a healthier relationship at our age than anyone else I know. We are PREVENTING further issues here and trying to nip in the bud the ones we have seen arise. We are in love. We DO SEE how our daughter has made it more difficult to get quality time together and that has caused some tension in general. But that is why we are here. To fix that. To DEDICATE that 15 hours a week. Before she was born it wasn't an issue. We got that time without even planning it. But now we see that it's more difficult and THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE.

SO STOP ACCUSING AND BEING RUDE AND DEFENSIVE AND SAY SOME UPLIFTING AND ENCOURAGING WORDS.



I think that's awesome. Something we will obviously be on board with committing to.

Scaredwife, it is not rude or shaming for Prisca to point out the obvious - you said (not us), that there was no love in your marriage, and you are unwilling to do the "full effort" basic UA prescription, but you still want the full effort results. That's not rude. That's just what it is here.

Please remember, sometimes support is about facing a reality you are choosing for yourself - one that might not work.

A lot of people want results without full effort, they call that the diet industry. It isn't much different, really.

You don't need "uplifting words", you need to start falling in love again.

Thank you so much for your encouragement and advice. You are right that I am being defensive. And it's because I thought I was being creative by coming up with really fun things for my husband and I to do at home, which would really be great for us (if only for half of our UA time).



I understand your concerns about the attention being divided. But what I'm talking about is absolutely dropping EVERYTHING, including laundry, etc. And doing NOTHING except spending time together. I know it sounds impossible but I don't think it is. At the very least I think it is worth a try. Especially since a few of our favorite activities on the list are ones that we can do at home.



Thanks for these suggestions. I WISH we could hike. We live in the plains where there is no elevation change and the outdoors activities available are quite dull. However, we do enjoy biking so as soon as the weather is decent we plan on doing that. Again, thanks for your suggestions, most of those are on our list.



I agree. Wholeheartedly. Hence why we are here



That would be really awesome and very helpful. Hopefully you can find it. I really appreciate it.

Thanks again for your words of encouragement. I do agree that getting UA time at home is going to be more difficult than out of the house, but worth a try at least. We are very analytical people so we can have an evaluation process where we talk about any hiccups that we experience and change our plan accordingly.

Your words, not mine. Your way hasn't been working for you.

Thanks for that Prisca. That gives me a starting off point.

I will say I have a hard time believing that they workout for 4 hours in a night. Seems like a long workout to me. If working out together counts, why couldn't P90X count? (Something we have considered - we started it once before but my husband's masters degree got in the way and we had to stop. But we really enjoyed the time together - no interruptions.)

Listen to the clips at the end of this thread so you can hear Dr. Harley's advice on this. Tell us what you think.

You are the one that said 20 hours a week away from your child is unreasonable, not me. That's putting her before your marriage.

Dr. Harley talks about this frequently on his radio show. I suggest you start listening.


The foundation of the entire program is UA time, which needs to be done outside the home. If you are unwilling to do that, then you are, indeed, throwing out the foundation of the program. The program will not work.

And yet you say you are basically out of love.

Well, we did.

BTW, not even Dr. Harley himself has UA time at home. He takes his wife out on dates.

Prisca please stop replying to this thread. I am getting the help I need from other posters. I'm not interested in arguing with you or hearing your "advice" and criticism. You are not helping me at all, so please stop. I did not come here for this. Please leave me alone.

For everyone else reading along: I posted my original post after a big fight my husband and I had. Every time we have a fight, I turn to Marriage Builders (not the forum, but the books and the online articles from Dr. Harley). So I was fairly emotional when I posted originally. I would not say that we are out of love, but I do see a need for more and better quality UA time. We are finding ways to make that happen, and I appreciate the *positive* suggestions I have received so far.

I have been stuck on going out to eat, because that is currently what my husband and I do on dates. Obviously that doesn't have to happen every time, and we will adjust our thinking on that.

I am in no way against spending 20 hours a week UA time with my husband. (Or spending 20 hours away from my daughter). Very much for it. And we have even scheduled it. Some of it is time we will spend at home, but I was not aware until being attacked on this page that that wasn't "allowed." Based on your suggestions, we will take special caution with the amount of time spent at home vs. the amount spent out of the house.

We are making this decision because while we aren't against spending 20 hours away from our daughter, we are against paying a babysitter 20 hours a week. We appreciate alternatives many of you have suggested here.

We will be very observant of our UA time and discuss what we like and dislike about our chosen activities (both in the home and outside). After all, we both have to be enthusiastic, right? Just like Dr. Harley says, most things are worth trying and after you can decide if it is something you can both get excited about (I read that on his article about POJA and how the only time he is okay with suspending it is while you are exploring possible recreational companionship activities.)

We will observe any distractions and if it isn't working, we will adjust. But we ARE NOT watering down the program. We are figuring out how to make the 20 hours work for us, and for our budget.

Please be respectful and encouraging. We came here for clarification and help, and coming at us like we don't care for our relationship isn't going to get us anywhere. We do care. AND we have cared. We (overall) have a very healthy relationship. We are just starting to see the effects of having a child on our relationship, so we are being proactive and fixing that. Please be respectful of that and please don't treat us like we have been doing things all wrong and now we will finally be enlightened by you all. You aren't gods. Don't look down your nose at us, please.