Wow. I'd be quite insulted in your wife's place. Marriage is not rent a womb.

Marriage is a relationship of extraordinary care. The interview and comparability tests are over and you now CREATE compatibility by doing, stopping, whatever it takes.

Of course your wife would not continue to date you if you found her unmarriageable.

You would find the article on submitting to reluctant agreement helpful. Dr H says that when men do this for their wives, their wives become unhappier, not happier.

You can't make a woman happy with submission.

I would love to hear your wife's side of this story. Do you think she would come here and post?

Why not invite your wife to join this program with you to start building a fulfilling and romantic marriage?

Oops. It was on Marriage Builders Radio on 8/15/14.

Tammy was the caller and there were 4 segments. Not sure how to link it.

Having a child adds more stress to a person's life not less. Given what you wrote about your career...I don't know why you would want a child now unless you think your wife should bear the burden of the providing the majority of the child rearing. She may view it that way plus you sound like you want her to sacrifice her job growth for yours.



I doesn't sound like either of you were honest about having children vs not having children but went ahead with the marriage anyway. If having a child is that important to you, i would cut my losses and get divorced. There are other problems here as well but you both lied to yourselves and one another about having children from the sounds of it.

Here it is.

Radio Clip about not agreeing about having children
Segment #2
Segment #3
Segment #4

Thanks BH!

You're welcome.

Same as last time I'll clarify and add more information, then reply to individual feedback.

I said it in my last post but I'll repeat it since some of the replies look like they missed this: I'm not trying to force my wife to have children. I've never tried to force my wife to have children. I also am not trying to have children immediately - between our relationship and my work issues I know the timing is not right.

We've discussed our opinions and fears for and against having children, but I've never demanded that she get pregnant or forced the issue. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand her viewpoint and concerns, and more recently, why she said she would have a child in the first place when she is not anywhere near ready. When we have these conversations I'm not trying to convince her of my opinion, I'm trying to understand hers.

I understand that I've put children before my marriage and wife. Our separation was not meant to punish either of us - we discussed it a lot leading up to it and both felt like it would be good to have some space and time to think. There was no "Have my children or I'm leaving" moment; the separation did not happen simply because she doesn't want to have kids. The last 2 years of our marriage haven't been as great as the first 2 and we both wanted to reflect on that. Between having to move out of our old place anyway and my work issues we felt that the timing was appropriate.

I better understand after being on this site that we haven't made enough of an effort to find mutually enjoyable recreational activities. We are both at fault here. For my part, I have a lot of side projects that I enjoy working on that are solo endeavors (art, music, work-related studying) and I love learning in general. If I spend a few hours on the weekend on these projects my wife feels like I'm neglecting her, even when I've worked on gifts for her that she was aware of at the time.

So the only solution that I've found is to not do those side projects and spend time doing less enjoyable activities together like watching TV. But doing that makes me anxious because I feel like I'm not getting anything done and that I'm being forced to sit there. At the same time I don't ask much of her or how she spends her time. If she wants to go shopping with her sister I'm totally fine with that and don't feel like she's neglecting me. I'll spend time with her friends but very rarely will she spend time with mine, so our time together is heavily weighted towards what she wants to do. I've brought it up many times but it hasn't changed.

The recreational activities that we both enjoy the most have been hard to do together. We both like traveling but that only happens for 1-2 weeks per year. We both enjoy soccer but there is no local team to go watch and televised games from England and Spain start too early in the morning for us to catch them. So we will need to find mutually enjoyable activities that are easier to do more frequently. We do have pleasant dates. We hardly fight. I often think everything is fine and then she'll make a comment about what I am doing or not doing that makes me realize she's not satisfied.

@MelodyLane - I agree that I'm in a cycle of sacrifice, capitulation, and compromise that is not good for compatibility. Trust me, we've discussed this a lot and I've done my best to explain why our situation feels like this to me, but my wife always disagrees. We lived together for 1 year before getting married.

@alis - A marriage where neither of us does anything without the other's enthusiastic support sounds good, but I do see how it could lead to the same situation I'm in now (I don't end up working on side projects that are important to me because my wife keeps saying no). I read an article on here about the spouse always saying no, I'll have to find it again. I know that we have to work towards that enthusiastic support, my experience so far has me doubtful that we can get there but I'll still try.

I never thought of having no children as the default, my thinking's been the exact opposite, that children are the default when you get married. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not what I grew up around or came to expect.

@DidntQuit and BrainHurts - Thanks I might have to subscribe to listen to that episode.

@Prisca - Those are good points and I agree. My main concern is spending more time on trying to resolve our differences and making no progress, just as we have in the past. Granted we weren't using any sort of program as a guideline, and since neither of us have been married before we're new to this. I feel like I don't have enough time for everything I want to do in life (yes I know kids would make this even harder, early mid-life crisis?) and the thought of losing 2 more years to trying to make our marriage work if it turns out that we're fundamentally incompatible is tough.

@indiegirl - We haven't done any part of the Marriage Builders program together yet, she doesn't even know that I'm on this site since I just discovered it. I created a little confusion here sorry. When I said we'd been through the first 3 solutions of "Should We Have Children?" I meant that in our own previous discussions we'd touched on them, completely outside of the program.

As far as other lifestyles and goals aside from having kids goes, having more disposable income and being able to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted is appealing. My main concern is getting older and regretting not having children when it's too late.

@markos and Prisca - I'll tell her about this site and ask her to join this thread. She may very well say no but I'll give it a shot.

@black_raven - I don't want kids right now, it would be later. I've offered to do most of the child rearing since I'm the one who wants it, I have no expectations that she should quit her job or take care of the kid for me. As far as careers go, if our current city is good for her and bad for me one of us is necessarily going to lose out. I'm not saying that my career takes precedence, what I am saying is that whether we stay here or move it is a lose/lose proposition.

I was open and honest with my wife about having kids while we were still dating, that's why I'm feeling burned now. What I communicated to my wife about my desire to have children hasn't changed over the years, but her communication has changed and that is a big concern for me.

I don't think you would force your wife to have a child, we just want to make you mindful of how you express yourself. it's common for newcomers to use a lot of disrespectful judgements. Yours are not many or strong - but even a subtle DJ is very offensive to your wife.

It takes practice to eliminate DJs.

It's common for the woman to need more UA time than the man and feel neglected! Dr H recommends 15 hours meeting the needs of conversation, recreation, affection and SF to meet the needs of both.





I think it's unrealistic to expect feelings to appear without circumstances changing. There is a high likelihood that either you or she would feel differently if you had an intergrated life and were loved up to the nines.


But even someone desperate for children can change their mind, so this makes no sense. I'd adore children, but probably wouldn't be so keen in an independent relationship as you describe. A woman is very sensitive to the feeling of partnership.


Sell her on this programme. It would only take a few months to turn around a situation like this. A few years? No way, that's how long it takes to recover after an affair!

BrainHurts gave you this episode for free. Just click the links below.
(It wouldn't hurt to subscribe. Best money we ever spent. )
Please listen and let us know your thoughts?

When Dr. Harley uses the phrase "default" it means "doing nothing" rather than "what is expected" or "what most everyone does." He means that in order to have a good marriage, you must get what you want by persuading your spouse to do it, such that they are enthusiastic about doing it. Otherwise, the default is to do nothing until you find something to do that you are both enthusiastic about.

Good example: say I'm a smoker and my wife can't stand me smoking. The default is not for me to quit smoking. The default is for me not to smoke a cigarette until she's enthusiastic about it.

There is no such thing as "fundamentally incompatible." Compatibility is created, but if you don't put the time and effort into creating it then you will be incompatible by default.

A focus on 'resolving differences' is also a cause for incompatability.

When relationships are new, both people try to make it fun and compatible. However it's only when they reach the 'OK you love me - I can stop trying' level that differences occur.

Some are definitely differences which need tackling - you can't remain polite and over giving forever. But the important thing is to refocus in creating love - not resolving differences.

People think 'resolve the difficulty and love is a magic formula that returns of its own accord'. No, it needs cultivating.

Very easy - like growing daisies. But the growing conditions have to be there.

@indiegirl - Yes our circumstances definitely need to get better if there's to be any chance of having children together. The more I think about our relationship the more I think we haven't given it our best shot, especially during these past 2 years. A few months is a reasonable time-frame to read the books and try the program. I'm going to talk to my wife about all of this tomorrow.

Changing the focus from resolving differences to cultivating love is an interesting point. In a situation like this I think the natural tendency is to try to resolve differences. Love definitely needs to be cultivated. For my part if I know we're taking a few months to try to improve our relationship I will want to resolve our differences as quickly as possible to make sure that they can be resolved. That will be a tough instinct to control and while we do want to address the differences I'll work on not focusing on them exclusively.

@DidntQuit - I listened to the episodes and there were some very good points made along with ideas on how to resolve issues like money and alone time. I've listened to them twice and picked up things I missed the first time so will listen again. Once I tell my wife about the program I'm going to ask her to listen to these episodes as a first step before reading the books.

Their situation is very similar to ours with the roles reversed. It was nice to hear some of my thoughts and concerns addressed. Thank you to everyone that helped to track down the episodes and share them!

I'll speak to my wife about the program tomorrow and ask that we read the books and go through them together. If she's open to it great. If not I'll ask if she has any other solutions/suggestions and if she doesn't then I'm going to be out of ideas.

I'm glad that you were able to listen to the radio segments. I listen every day and learn a lot. Thanks for your thoughts.

If she is in withdrawal, she may have no interest at all in doing the program.

And that's okay. As a man, you are in a unique position to be able to win her back by using the program yourself.

If she refuses to do it with you, my suggestion would be for you to set up a few sessions with Steve Harley. He can coach you through how to win her over to the program.

Agree with Prisca. You have inadvertently created incompatibility in your marriage by having very independent lifestyles. This program teaches you the skills and steps to create compatibility.

I am going to say that the desire to try to have kids is pretty fundamental to deciding to get married to a person. You were open about your feelings but she has changed her mind (or more likely was not honest about her feelings).
You have to decide if losing the marriage is more important than having children...and I am not saying there is a clear right answer. Only you can choose.