Just starting on the MB journey. We have three kids at home (5, 7 and 9). We probably need 20-30 hours of UA time per week given the state of our marriage but I don't even know how we would find 15 at this point because the kids are always around. We could get a max of 3 hours per week out of the house without them due to budget constraints (they would be with my mother-in-law). How are people with kids doing this?

We have about 1.5 hours/day after they go to bed, before we go to bed and to be honest, my husband is not at his best this time. He gets up early and is really tired by 9pm.

Also, WHAT do you do at home for UA time?

Do you have friends with children who need a babysitter? Maybe it is possible to trade babysitting.

When my sister's kids were young (she has 5!), when she wanted extra UA time with her husband, she asked me to come over (I traveled for 8 hours for her to have UA time, because I understand she needed it for her marriage). He had to travel for work, I sneaked into the house, so she could surprise him for good, extra UA time together.
My sister and her husband are happily married and applying MB principles. And they have 5 kids of all sorts, the eldest was 11 when the youngest was born.

On saturdays, my sis let the kids watch TV downstairs under supervision of the oldest, so she and her husband can snuggle together.

For you it seems urgent, would your MIL be willing to babysit for more days? If you can convince her you repairing your marriage is for the best of her grandchildren, she might be able to find more time to watch them.
Do you have nice, understanding sister?

UA time at home is almost impossible, because you will think of what your children are doing if you hear a sound.

Did you read the basic concepts? What lovebusters are the biggest problem?

I am not a regular poster, but my husband and I both work full-time and with busy young children and have worked hard to re-arrange our schedule to get in our 15 hours of UA time. Trust me, I understand that it isn't easy!

We don't count the time after they go to bed as UA time, but they do go to bed at 8pm and they are very solid sleepers, so we do get a couple of hours together in the evenings. Highly recommended even if it isn't UA time.

1. Babysitter's group. I have a group of 4 other moms that I've known since my first child was only a few weeks old (when I joined my first mom group). They are wonderful and we will set up rotating playdates on Saturdays or Sundays. The kids come over and one or two of us stay to watch the kids and then one of two of us can go out on a date. The kids have a blast (they usually play for a couple of hours, then we order pizza).

2. "Date night" through kids' activities. We are members of our Y since that's where we work out and our kids take various classes there. They have a "date night" for members once a month. You can drop off your kids for 2 hours, then go to dinner, shopping, whatever you want. The dance studio where our kids take dance and the conservatory where they take piano/cello lessons does the same thing. Our youngest (aged 2) goes to a playschool one morning per week and her school also has a date night option. I don't know if it's something unique to this area, but we almost always have a "date night" option through one of their activities.

3. Day date if you can work from home. This was a breakthrough for us because we kept brainstorming options to get our 15 hours in when we also wanted 15 hours of family time (which we do) AND our kids are in a lot of activities (they love them all, so we hate to reduce if we don't have to). I work near our home, but my husband works downtown wile a long commute, so we decided to have him work from home 1 day per week and we could schedule in a 2-hour lunch in the middle of the day. That took a little finagling, but now everybody knows I'm gone for those 2 hours and we have a "date lunch" spot that we love. And no need to find a sitter.

4. Family. We only have our in-laws, but we use them every Friday night. However, when my sisters all had kids around the same age, they would babysit for each other all the time. I wish I had that kind of network!

In terms of activities, you just have to find things you love. My husband and I started ballroom dancing lessons over a year ago and we still go every week--we love it. We do dinner together every Saturday night. About once a month we'll do a Sunday day date where we get brunch and go to a concert.

If you're creative, you will figure it out. It took us a bit of time to really work out a schedule that could consistently get all the time we needed in, but now we love it. Good luck!

(And if anything here isn't in line with MB principles, just call me out on it--I just wanted to share since we really worked on this and it really can be daunting)

I appreciate the responses! I just confirmed with a friend to babysit each other's kids every other week (so one date every other week for each of us).

Once our kids are in bed for the night, we typically don't hear from them at all so undivided attention at home is do-able for us. It's just not going to be in big chunks of time. Maybe one hour/night.

What are UA activities we could do at home? Is working out to a video together considered UA? I could commit to getting up early every day to do that together. We could play games in the evening? Read books out loud to each other? I don't know...other ideas?

Oh my! I just saw that Dr. H recommends four 4-hr dates per week. (Please excuse my ignorance as I just found this site on Sunday.) That is totally not do-able for us. It just isn't. There is not any way, at this point in our lives, that we could get out of the house that much. BUT I want to make this work. Please give me hope that we can have 20-30 hours of UA time per week without having four long dates each week.

Our current situation...
Hubby is a self-employed handyman/contractor. Started the business in March 2016 after being under-employed for over 4 years (thank you, economy). We are just now able to pay all of our monthly bills but have some serious debt. In the past five years we've cut our expenses to bare bones and sold everything of value that we could. I homeschool our kids and do not work so spending time alone together during the weekday is not possible. Our current free time to spend with each other daily AT HOME is after the kids go to bed (8:30) until we go to bed (10:00). He has insomnia and gets up way before I do but I'd be willing to get up an hour earlier to spend time alone each day. (Kids get up at 7 am.)

We could POSSIBLY figure out a way to afford to pay someone once/week for a date night. (Other issue is that my kids have never had a babysitter outside of family...unfortunately the only family option for us now is my mother-in-law.) Mother-in-law is available once/week but no more. We'll be switching off on date night every other week with a friend. Our kids go to Awana on Wed nights (they're away from us for about 1-3/4 hours). That gives us 3 dates/week if we pay a babysitter once a week and 4 dates/week on the other week when our friends help us out. The rest of the time is going to have to be at home when the kids are in bed or if we put them in front of a movie, with snacks, once a weekend. I'm also looking into starting a rotating afternoon/evening out through our church one weekend per month.

Help me get to 25 hours!

Also, given our financial situation, the things we do will have to be free, so I need ideas!

So...total time for UA...

Daily, at home...1 hr/morning and 1.5 hrs/evening...possibly 1.5 hours during the day on a weekend day while kids watch a movie.

Date nights... (weeks 1 & 3)
4 hrs x 2 nights per week = 8 hrs (paid babysitter + mother-in-law)
+
1-3/4 hrs x 1 night per week = 1-3/4 hrs (Awana)
Total out of the house UA time = 9-3/4
To get to 25 hours/week, I need to find another 15 hours of UA time at home on 4 other evenings or in the morning (2.5 hours/available per day).

Date nights... (weeks 2 & 4)
4 hrs x 3 nights per week = 12 hrs (paid babysitter + mother-in-law + friend)
+
1-3/4 hrs x 1 night per week = 1-3/4 hrs (Awana)
Total out of the house UA time = 13-3/4
To get to 25 hours/week, I need to find another 11 hours of UA time at home on 3 other evenings or in the morning (2.5 hours/available per day).

To be honest, you shouldn't count any at home UA time, because it is not quality UA time. This is supposed to be a romantic date together where you meet the top 4 intimate emotional needs of conversation, affection, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. it should be scheduled for a time of the day when you are both at your best and look your best. Take it from those of us who tried this many different ways, at home UA time is a waste of time and will only frustrate you for no return. Not even Dr Harley and Joyce count home time as UA time because it is lousy and ineffective.

You have done a good job of brainstorming ways to do this; I would encourage you to keep it up. Sit down with your husband and see if he has some ideas.

In order to be effective, it needs to be in blocks of time, no less than 2 hours. Harley recommends 4 - 4 hour dates. Going to movies does not count.

Homeschooling does not mean you have to school dour children at home all the time. Maybe you can join a group of homeschooling moms to have the kids do group outings once in a while, so you would have sole time alone during the day.

Some malls or department stores, IKEA offer free babysitting.

Maybe the children can join an activity like scouting, which does not cost much money.

Many high school seniors have to do community service, so they may want to babysit for free.
The children could go to a sundayschool or church childrens activities, that are usually for free.

Also, if the 5-year-old goes to bed at a decent time, the two others could babysit him whilewatching their favorite movies and you could phone them at halftime to ask if everything is ok. Depending of course on the nature of the children.

If the children have friends, they could do a play date or sleepover.

Hi Yoder! Welcome to Marriage Builders!

We can give you the framework for UA, and tell you how it should be done, but we can't find the 25 hours for you. We don't know your schedule. We don't know your kids. We don't know what your husband does for a living, what time he leaves for work (if he leaves) and what time he gets home. We don't know if you have friends, if you have a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or none-of-the-above. We don't know if you have family near by, or friends, or people you can trust to watch your kids.

So, we can't come up with a plan for you.

What we can do, though, is tell you that YOU can find the time. Everybody can, if they will put the marriage FIRST.

This is how you do it:
1. Set your marriage as a priority. You schedule your time together first, then fit everything else in around your scheduled time. Marriage first, THEN work, kids, church, school, friends, etc, etc, etc. Do this every Sunday, and plan out your week.

2. Make sure your time is in chunks of no less than 2 hours. Get out of the house 4 times a week, for 3-4 hours, to meet the Intimate Emotional needs. Yes, you can do this, if you plan.

3. Brainstorm ways to make it happen. This will take time. Your husband needs to be very involved in this process to make it work. The two of you will come up with solutions that best suit you and your family.

4. Schedule family time after you schedule UA time -- 15 hours a week that you and your husband spend with your kids.

Dr. Harley says: "You have 168 hours every week (24x7) to schedule for something. I highly recommend 8 hours of sleep a night, so that leaves 112 waking hours. Getting ready for the day, and going to bed at night may require, say, 12 hours, and work plus commute may take another 50 hours. That leaves 50 more hours to spend doing what you value most, and 15 of those hours should be dedicated to maintaining a passionate and fulfilling marriage." The Policy of Undivided Attention

You can certainly get 25 hours out of that 50 hours that is left, and still have 25 hours left over for your kids and other obligations.

How involved is your husband in making this work?

A post I made on another thread:

UA Schedule for couples with kids

Put off paying debt for 12 weeks while you and your husband fall in love. After 12 weeks have past, and you are in love, you can reduce the UA hours to 15 and start paying off debt.

Even Dave Ramsey says to work on your marriage first, before your debt.

Play around with your schedule. Our kids (ages 12, 11, 10 & 10, 8, 7, 3 and 1) are up at 5 for their schooling, and are in bed by 6:30. (We homeschool, too). This allows us more hours in the evening together. Since you homeschool, you have more freedom to adjust your kids schedules to make more hours for your UA.

If you prefer morning hours together, you can adjust the other way. Keep the kids up later (10:00 pm), and get them up later (9:00 AM) and start school later in the day.

Brainstorm.

I don't doubt that we have time to spend with each other. We just can't afford it (outside of our home). We're not paying extra on our debts right now. We're barely paying our bills. We've cut everything to bare bones and have sold things to keep our house, pay the electric and feed ourselves. We are trying to find a way to pay a babysitter once a week. My mother in law can watch the kids once a week (only family that is close) and a friend is going to babysit for us every other week (and we'll reciprocate for them). Our kids are in Awana once a week. There are no free homeschool co-ops around us where I could just drop off the kids. The paid one where I could do that is way out of our budget and you must join at the beginning of the school year.

Having the 9 and 7 year old stay home alone with their sister is absolutely not an option.

Trying to brainstorm more options...keep the ideas coming. Something has to work for us. And, yes, my husband is wanting to make this work for us too.

I feel defeated before we begin. I had anxiety last night over not being able to find four 4-hour time slots every week, plus an additional 9 hours to get us to 25. Are we just doomed to have an unhappy marriage? Would be it beneficial at all to start with what we can and then work towards adding more hours and dates as we can?

It might be beneficial and improve your situation a bit, but you would not be creating romantic love. And romantic love is what you need.

Try to find the time at moments you and him are at your best, you told us he is tired in the evening. So that moment is not the best moment for UA. Use that time for other things (e.g. preparing breakfast), so you do have the best version of your husband (morning) when you plan UA.

Can you write down a time table with fixed hour (sleep, commuting, work) and plan UA around that?
Then fill the remaining time with household and such.

Exercising together is good, if exercising makes you feel good. Activities that make you feel good should be shared with your spouse.

You are doing very well, don't be discouraged. Keep thinking and brainstorming.

Is your husband brainstorming with you, or are you doing most of the legwork yourself? What ideas does he have? How often do you sit down and brainstorm ideas together?

Do you go to church? Can you take your 9 and 7 yrs old to some activities in church and just look for some babysitting for the girl.

We have four kids, and the older two have evening activities 3x a week, we leave the other two with grandma. So we have 8 hours right there.

Gyms like the Y have cheap prices and babysitting. Can you work something like that?

I would also suggest you change your ideas. Your main concern right now is money, while we understand that, your marriage should come first. Even before money. If you two are in love, you can together face money problems in a better way. But if it is the other way around, even if you have the money issue solved, your marriage will eventually end and you will have more money issues and no marriage left.