How do you come to blame your wife for this spending? This does not sound like spontaneous purchases that she can make without consulting you. Aren't you equally responsible for this overspending? How do you get landscaping and home repairs done without some degree of planning?

She could come home and tell you she's purchased a new car or a hot tub, but surely medical bills are not frivolous, but necessary? Are you sure this isn't poor financial planning on both your parts?

Has your wife agreed to the plan to pay off your debts within 18 months, and is she sticking to your joint agreements on spending? Or, have you unilaterally decided that you need to take an extra job because your wife just will not work with you on cutting back?

Put that all aside for now and focus on creating an intimate marriage. You are focusing on the wrong thing. You don't have the basic framework in place all this is an exercise in futility. You need first focus on creating a romantic marriage. That is achieved by a) living together 24/7 and by focusing on the top 4 INTIMATE EMOTIONAL NEEDS for 15+ hours per week.


Of course she did. Anyone who is having an affair will deny it. So asking her straight out was a waste of time. You should not ASK, you should quietly investigate.


Can you also look for ways to spend within your means? If not, your marriage will always be in trouble.


That is where I would begin. As long as her little job comes before your marriage, your marriage will always struggle. Nothing we tell you to do will help your marriage if you are not spending the nights together. You can't possibly create an intimate marriage with your lifestyle.

I'm less interested in the question of how to rank your emotional needs, and more interested in the urgent issue that your marriage is unfulfilling, and this is because you spend so much time apart. Even if your wife is not having an affair (and I think she is), you cannot have a fulfilling marriage when you have periods when you do not see each other.

The solution to getting your needs met for affection, sexual fulfilment and recreational companionship is for your wife to be home every night, for you both to work fewer hours, and for you to spend at least 15 hours every week out of the house on dates (just you two; no friends, and no daughter). Those dates should be designed to allow you to focus on each other through conversation and affection, to do a recreational activity that you both enjoy, and to create the conditions in which sexual fulfilment takes place more often, easily, because you are spending enjoyable time together and falling back in love.

I would stop focusing on the precise ranking of your needs, and focus instead on how to get our wife to change her working conditions so that she does not travel and is home every evening, spending time with you. Focus on getting the core needs met, of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfilment.

It is not hard to work out ways to get, and keep, the house clean, but a clean and tidy house is not going to make you fall in love with your wife, or her with you. What will make you fall in love with each other is affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfilment - and not having someone else meet those needs, as I suspect your wife is doing.

You need to focus entirely on 2 things:

1. your wife getting a job that COMPLEMENTS your marriage instead of harms it

2. falling back in love again by following the policy of undivided attention. That means you devote 15+ hours per week meeting the intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. <----those are the heavy hitters. Other, non intimate emotional needs will not create love in your marriage.

We wrote the same thing!

Having a clean house won't make you fall in love with your wife.

Paying down your debts will make you feel a great deal less anxious and more secure, and it is the sensible thing for anyone to do - but it won't make you fall in love with your wife. It will stop you becoming homeless - which is important! - and it will mean you can afford medical care and other important life needs, but it won't make you fall in love with your wife.

Affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfilment WILL make you fall in love with your wife.

All four things. combined, will do that. The more of them, the better. Do not neglect any one of those four things in favour of any other emotional needs.

The beauty of the Marriage Builders programme!

Thank you all so much for all your amazing time and input, I really mean that. Of her top emotional needs, recreational companionship is probably the one I need to work on the most so I will start there.

as for her meeting mine, we will talk.

Thank you all

Max, FIRST start planning dates. Because if you do a little need meetin here and a little need meeting here, it will avail you nothing. If you want to have a romantic marriage you must spend 15 hours per week out on dates. Anything else is a waste of time. And your wife won't have any desire for you sexually unless you do that. She can 't possibly be emotionally attached enough to you to do so.

You will motivate her to want to meet your needs if you take her out on dates. People who are in love are motivated to meet the others needs.

So, don't waste your time on anything unless it is a) spending every night together and b) going out on 4 - 4 hour dates every week, meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. Anytnkng else is a waste of time.

Check out these articles:

The Policy of Undivided Attention

The question of the ages: How can a...riage?
By Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D.

Wow, you're in great hands with SC and ML.

I noticed that you didn't say anything in response to their advice to snoop?? Which makes me wonder why.....

Do you have access to her phone records and email? (Again, this doesnt mean asking her to see her phone or computer - I mean having the passwords so you can look on your own without her knowing)

Before going to bed last night I spend about an hour just thinking about my marriage and then when I woke up, I re-read every word of every comment that was spoken here and in doing so, I realized something is still very wrong here. Again on the scale of -3 being Extremely dissatisfied a 3 being extremely satisfied, Below how we prioritize our emotional needs, how the other meets them, and comments

1) When you do the questionnaire you choose your need for each emotional need. My wife chose 6 (I have a great need for YYY) for all 10 needs. Is this a red flag I have a high maintenance wife and unless I meet all her needs at the highest level mine will not be met?

2) I agree getting her to change her job so she does not travel is a must to save the marriage as it gives us time and eliminates the possibility of an affair. I just don't think its possible.

3) As you can see from below, I may not be meeting all 5 of her top 5 needs perfectly but according to her I'm doing a pretty good job. On the flip side of that coin she is doing a lousy job of meeting mine yet as I read the many amazing comments here, it feels like the effort of changing things so my emotional needs are met rests on meme, except for her changing jobs.

My whole reason for having us read this book is because through intimate conversations I have tried to tell her I am not happy and I would like things to change and since that has not worked, I was hoping if we did this exercise, she would initiate change.

I am very very close to either suggesting couples counseling or flat out asking for a divorce. I am interviewing both counselors and lawyers now. It took my wife 4-months to listen to the book his needs her needs and do the questionnaire and then when we finally got around to discussing it, I realized she half [censored]'d it, did not give it a lot of thought, and it was just another intimate conversation that turned into an argument and as far as I can tell, nothing good came out of the exercise.

Lastly when she listed to Willard talk about the number of hours a week we should spend together she just laughed and said there was no way.

WIFE
1) Affection 3
2) Admiration 2
3) Domestic Support 2
4) Recreational Companionship 2
5) Physical Attractiveness 2
6) Financial Support 2
7) Intimate Conversation 0 (I need to listen better)
8) Sexual Fulfillment 1 (she wants more but is too tired)
9) Honesty & Openness 2
10 Family Commitment 3

HUSBAND
1) Sexual Fulfillment -3 (actual sex is great, frequency sucks)
2) Admiration -1 ( More criticism than admiration getting better)
3) Affection -1 (she is more affectionate to the dog than me)
4) Domestic Support -2 (I would love more help as I do 60%)
5) Physical Attractiveness 3 (She is beautiful)
6) Recreational Companionship -1 (we do mostly what she wants)
7) Honesty & Openness 2
8) Financial Support -2 (Getting better)
9) Intimate Conversation -3 (many end in an argument)
10) Family Commitment - 2

I am not going to address any of the other stuff because it is a distraction. I will address the above points. It is very possible for her to find a non traveling job that complements your marriage. As long as she places her job before your marriage, you won't have a marriage. So I would stay THERE until that is resolved. As you can see, your marriage is crumbling because of neglect. That won't get better with time, it will get worse. You have a chance right now to turn this around if we can get you to focus on the right things.

Your top priorities now are: 1. getting her find a job that complements your marriage and 2. scheduling 15 hours per week of UA time meeting the TOP 4 INTIMATE EMOTIONAL NEEDS.

Marriage counseling is so destructive to marriages so I would strongly advise you don't take that risk. Marriage counselors have no earthly idea how to save marriages and actually have a higher divorce rate than the general population. They are little more than divorce facilitators. We have been cleaning up their messes for years on this board.

Marriage Builders is completely different in that they have a step by step program that really does work.

PUT THE QUESTIONNAIRE ASIDE!!

Before going to bed last night I spent a great deal of time writing about your marriage, and the things you should focus on.

It seems to me that, today, you came back and disregarded almost everything I said.

If the effort of changing things rests on you, that is no a bad thing.

You need to download the MB radio show app and listen to the show every day. When you have done this for a while, you will learn that Dr Harley puts a lot of onus on the husband to lead the marriage out of the trough and win his wife so that the needs of both are equally met.

If you want to divorce you can go ahead and do so - you don't need to post on a website to get advice on that. If you are done with the marriage, you are done. You do not have children together, and the marriage is relatively short, so getting out could be done cleanly and swiftly. You could write off the breakdown to experience and start again.

However, if you feel that you had something special with this woman that you waited until your forties to find, who had qualities that none of your other girlfriends had, and if you think she can be won around and the marriage is worth investing in, then you need to use Marriage Builders to change your lifestyle and create a close, loving, romantic marriage. You could try this for a year or so to see if you can turn things around. It does not matter that you would be leading the marriage at first; if, as you insist on saying, your wife is happy with things the way they are, it is not surprising that she does not see the need to change anything.

Rather than suggesting couples counselling - which probably encourage you to let your wife live her life as she wishes, nights away included, and would probably encourage you to learn to be independent and less needy, which would be disastrous for your marriage - you should suggest that you write to Dr Harley at the radio show, and get him to address your problems on the air. Try and persuade your wife to appear on the show with you, but if she won't do that, try and get her at least to contribute to the email, giving her perspective.