If you want to win your wife back, you need to listen and understand the mistake you are making and correct it, rather than trying to prove you are not making a mistake.

Yes, me too, and I couldn't get that. I am telling you what I did that worked - my wife is here posting to you today about Marriage Builders. You have to be open to learning how to motivate her and listen to what we are saying. If we identify a mistake you are making it is crucial that you understand and eliminate it.

What are her complaints about your marriage? Or about you?

Sorry for not keeping up folks - I had some work I had to deal with!

Thanks for your inputs. I'm sure they're well informed and well meant and I don't mean to sound unappreciative but have just been trying to be brief.

For me, it's early days of trying to get to grips with the totality of this approach this and when I said that the principles make sense, that includes the ones that I've been breaching without acknowledging it.
I guess the reason I'm so keen to engage my wife in this is that we can work on it together if we can agree to give it a try. So many relevant issues are covered in these materials that, if nothing else, they provide a template for discussions which can be most productive if both parties have had a chance to think about the points raised.

I would guess that if she has looked at any of this and been put off by what she's seen, then it would be because she'd see it as a loss of freedom rather than the gain of a stronger relationship. I suspect, though, that she simply hasn't seen it as a priority to get around to looking at it seriously. The greatest challenge I have is that she doesn't think she's doing anything she shouldn't so, of course, is in no hurry to change anything.

I probably wasn't clear on the approach to a weekend. I normally have ideas to suggest and ask her which she'd like rather than just asking her to propose something, although if she were to come up with something I'd be happy to go along with that too. It can get a bit wearing, though, to plan something in any detail only to find she has already made some other arrangement that she could have told me about weeks before.
Before I came across the MB site, I had proposed that we should spend much more time together. I guess MB has articulated the reason for that better than I had.

I can only agree with your 4 steps markos, and I've been working on them, but no 3 simply can't be the case, given what we both do for a living,though I would hope we can agree on the principle except for work requirements. Unfortunately, at present, my wife has the opinion that married couples taking trips apart is a perfectly normal thing to do and. if anything, I'm the odd one for not wanting to do it too(!)

Then MB will not work in your marriage.

I have to travel occasionally for work and I have always kept that to the absolute minimum. She has to travel more regularly (pretty much every week). I suspect she could reduce that over time, if she were motivated to do so. She has, however, worked very hard for the position she now has, with my active support, and it it implausible that she could be persuaded to drop her career when it's at a peak.
Agreeing a policy of 'no unnecessary overnights' would be a huge move forward from where we are now.
Although I accept that the full-on MB approach is the most likely to succeed, I can't believe it's impossible to gain some benefits without ticking every last box.

Well I'd beg to differ on this. MB isn't an approach that can work if you do it piecemeal. I have firsthand experience with this having been here for over a decade working to incorporate the whole plan. Until we implemented every ticked box it wasn't working.

You have independent lifestyles that have created a separation in your M. This is one of the biggest issues for you today. It is a big reason you two aren't in love with each other. To argue you think you can skip ticking this box will be the downfall in your attempt to create a romantic partnership.

I understand the uphill you have to create that type of a M. You will need her support in creating a lifestyle that is a partnership and eliminate all of this independent behavior.

It is not a disrespectful judgement to request that your spouse read MB material. It is not a disrespectful judgement to ask them to consider doing the programme.

Asking them to read materials, or asking them to consider doing the online or home study course, is not forcing them.

A selfish demand is a love buster. A selfish demand is one in which you coerce your spouse to agree, or punish them if they disagree.

Spouses should always make thoughtful requests - but requests in themselves are not "educating your spouse".

The reason you don't believe it is because you don't understand how great marriages are created. You won't ever have a romantic, emotionally attached marriage if you spend the nights apart. Anything that comes before your marriage will come between you.

If you want to change your marriage, you need to change your entire lifestyle to one that puts your marriage first instead of last. If you don't do that, you are just wasting your time.

You might reap some minor benefits but you won't ever have a great marriage if you spend the nights apart. Nothing you do will ever overcome the damage caused by your lifestyles.

The first step is to create an environment that supports your marriage. You don't have that. Start there.

The solution would be to persuade her to find a job that complements your marriage instead of harms it. "cutting back" on travel would be about as effective as "cutting back" on smoking cigarettes. Cutting back still means the health of your marriage is impaired.

The box you are leaving unticked (you must be British, by the way) is a huge box, and so yes, it means that it will be impossible to gain any benefits without ticking it.

The programme's purpose is to create a tightly integrated marriage in which your lives are wholly intertwined. This interdependency (along with other actions) helps create romantic love, but one of its other significant benefits is that it does not allow the space where a secret second life can evolve.

You have come here rightly complaining about your wife's life that is so independent of yours that she has a separate social life from yours, and she takes holidays without you You describe a marriage in which there is little or no connection between the spouses. The readers here know that this is the perfect environment in which an affair can start and take hold. You don't think this is happening already, but you are going to find out, the hard way, that it is.

As long as your overnights continue, there is no chance for you to build an integrated marriage in which you spend all your recreational time together, for at least 15 hours a week outside the home. There is no chance for you to know each other as well as you know yourselves, and there is ample opportunity for either one of you to have an affair.

This is not an unticked box - a minor detail. This is something that rules out an MB marriage, full stop.

It is like making a decision to improve your health when you eat junk food and smoke cigarettes. If you just cut out the junk food and continue to smoke, you will get very little benefit. Your marriage won't improve unless you make radical changes, therefore, cherry picking the program will avail you nothing.

Your lifestyle has wrecked your marriage. The first step is to change your lifestyle.