I love my husband, but all passion and play have gone from our relationship. I've read the site and started trying to implement, but it is very hard. I just don't feel like it. I've scheduled time for this week, but will that really bring back passion? We do not fight. We get along well, but much more like friends. I honestly don't feel like I am in love with him anymore.

Hello momma, it sounds like you have fallen out of love. But that can be turned around with undivided attention time. It take 20-25 hours per week of UA time to fall in love again. Dr Harley recommends 4-4 hour dates meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. At first you won't feel like doing it, but after a few weeks you won't want to miss it because your feelings will be triggered.

What are the biggest problems in your marriage? How long married? Any children? Do you or your H ever travel without the other?

No nights apart. We have been married for nearly 30 years. 2 grown children and 1 at home. We go on weekly dates. We had a long weekend together in January and have another one planned for May. We take walks together several times a week. We rarely argue. He is very sweet. Our sex life is almost non-existent...Even on trips. I want to be looked at as more than a best friend. I want to be desired, swept off my feet. We have a day planned to go to the big city on Thursday. It is 2 hours away. I'm sure we will walk Tuesday and Wednesday. Do I need to plan something else. We have company until Tuesday .

It takes 20-25 hours of UA meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs to create romantic love.

Do you feel like you love him but are not in love? How long have you felt this way? YEARS?

Also, do you have close friends you can share this with? CAn you describe your friendships?

Have you read this?
The Critical Importance of Undivided Attention

I have felt this way for awhile. As far as friends, I don't have many. ... Certainly none I could talk to about this. I have two ladies I'm pretty good friends with, but we don't talk about our marriages. I have tons of acquaintances though. But MH husband is probably who I pour my heart out to most.

Wow. That is a meaty thread. It will take me awhile to read it all and listen to the clips since we have company. He does help me with dishes...Did tonight as a matter of fact. Sounds like our date Thursday will count except for the sex part. I'll try but he will probably be too tired.

I've made it through some of the clips.. There is so much stuff. Here is what I have so far along with our plan for UA time this week:

Summary of Undivided attention:

Meet the 4 needs on the date: Intimate conversation, affection, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment

1. Intimacy clip:
Dr. Harley says sex is one of the easiest problems to solve�. REALLY???????????? Not for us� We have no problem getting along. Sexual problems characteristics of men and those of women. I disagree,We don't fit this.

Read: How can a husband get the sex he wants..

2. Good show on UA
Clip 1:
Have to have attention on each other, alone, talking about favorite topics of conversation, something fun, love making
Was it Dr. Harley�s best part of the week because he was an extrovert?? He enjoys going out? What if your husband is more of an introvert and homebody? Dr. Harley NEEDED something at the end of the day to keep him going.. That sounds more like me than my husband. What if a husband just needs to relax because his job is stressful?

Clip 2
What about 2 hours 7 days a week? Hard to squeeze all 4 in 2 hours. You can mix and match throughout the week. It doesn�t have to be 4 4 hour blocks. So 4 or 5 hours on Saturday/Sunday and a couple of 2 hour blocks during the week would work..
Make sure you schedule. Make regular times. Make sure it is out of the house: too many things distract you.
Do the same things you did when you were dating: Ok, we spent a lot of time with his folks/family. We went out to eat. We took picnics at the lake. We went to sorority functions with a big group. We would go to the movies. We would go to state parks.
That is pretty much what we do on our date nights each week.
.
Clip 3
This caller doesn�t apply. My husband isn�t negative. Give feedback if the conversation is boring� MMM.. not interested in that topic. Isn�t that rude?? To me, that would seem to shut down the conversation. They talk about that a little bit. Neither of us like conflict, so we wouldn�t get verbally upset, we would just be quiet instead.
Be actively involved in the conversation. Be interested: We need to definitely work on this.. Dr. Harley says this should be easy� My favorite topic of conversation are my students at school. His favorite conversations are his gun collection. I don�t think neither of us are interested in the other person�s. I mean we are polite. I ask him questions and try to act interested, but I could really care less about guns. So we need to find different things to talk about I guess.

3. Harleys discuss what to do during the 15 hours
Don�t use this time to bring up problems. It is what you do together that meets the emotional needs. Just being together doesn�t count. Use the time to meet the emotional needs.

4. Radio Clip on UA
Clip 1: Seems like there is a difference between caring love and being in love. Yeah, I get that. We have a ton of caring love and no passion� ): Don�t make withdrawals. Make decisions together� We have no problem with that. Yeah we still are not in love. So it seems the piece we are missing is making the love bank deposits.

2: Obstacles: Dr. Harley reacts to common obstacles: not enough time. He tells about their experience and how they did it. Stress reducers for them was spending time together. Budget your time. 168 hours a week. You should be able to have 15 hours out of that.

3. Obstacles: Financial objections. That is not a problem here.

So my takeways:

This week:
Tuesday: Go to a local park and take a walk. Go to the yogurt place downtown. I would love to make love, but just depends on if he is up for it. ( 2 hours at least)

Wednesday: A walk on our place. We have 75 acres. ( 45 minutes)

Thursday: We will drive 2 � hours together to the big city. I�m sure we will go out to eat. Early in the afternoon, he has a doctor appointment. I�m not sure what we will do in the morning and/or afterwards.. Maybe we will go to a downtown museum. We both like that kind of stuff. Then we will drive 2 � hours home. Once again, I would love to make love, but he may not feel like it. ( This will be a lot of time.. 10 or more)

Friday:
I�m sure we will go see Beauty and the Beast, but I�m seeing that probably doesn�t count. Maybe we could go to coffee afterwards and discuss it???

Saturday
Take a walk on our place. ( 45 minutes)

How does this look??? I will continue to listen to the rest of the clips as I am able.

Nope, you misunderstood him. He said first fix the marriage problems and the sex problem fixes itself. Women have no desire to have sex with men they are not in love with. Fix that first.





Dates are the most relaxing thing to do. My H and I have very stressful jobs and he is an INTROVERT [not sure what that has to do with anything though] but our most relaxing times are our dates.


Make it in 3-4 hour blocks. 4 hour blocks are the most effective.

here



Eliminate any time that is spent with family and friends because it is not UA time.


Agree! So I would redo this and get longer dates in place. The goal should be FOUR HOURS. The LEAST should be three.

No you got a few things wrong. I ache to make love to him. He turns me down. I get tired of being the initiator.

The family and friends thing is when we were dating. We never do that now...Only us. Family is far away and we don't really have friends we go out with. Our time is just ours.

Does Thurs not count? I will move some of the others to 4 hour blocks, but what do you do?? Dinner or walking or whatever only takes so long... There is enough silence as it is. My trying to keep the conversation lively and happy sounds exhausting..

So. I will move some around to get 4 hour blocks. Thanks so much Melody. I really appreciate your help. Praying this works

I am an introvert, and my dates with my husband are the best part of my week. Being an introvert does not mean you cannot enjoy dating your spouse. We "escape together."

Whew.. company is finally gone.. It is just hard to watch my son with his new fiance...so in love, so gaga.....so clueless. They have no idea what is ahead of them. They are so hopeful.. Death of a child, cancer diagnosis, helping parents as they are dying, going through estates and belongings... Yes, it is so fun now, but life will overtake you!!! My husband and I still love each other/care for each other and we have a strong bond. But too many times life just plain isn't fun.

Anyway, hubby is going to do some work today. We will probably just do our walk today. However, no one answered my question.
If tomorrow for Wednesday, we go to a local park and hike for maybe an hour... we could go to the yogurt shop...20 minutes to town, eating yogurt-30 minutes-20 minutes back. See I'm still only coming up with a little over 2 hours.. What else could we do???? I have the 4 hour block reserved, but I don't have a clue what to do.

I will also try to listen to more of the clips. Thanks everybody.

What other activities do you and your Husband like to do together? Go out to dinner? A museum? Long drives together?

Maybe after a hike like a back rub or leg rub some physical touch would be good? Maybe somewhere to go to listen to music together?

This is something you can spend some time brainstorming with your husband. It all depends on your interests, what is available in your area, financial considerations, etc.

My husband and I go out for dinner a lot, and a lot of times will precede or follow that with shopping, hiking, shooting, or a host of other activities that we enjoy. We try to do something active since we started going out to eat so much

We are rural. So, you are supposed to go out to eat ( 45 minutes), hiking ( 45 minutes) then also something else? That seems crazy instead of relaxing. But let us just say we drive around and go explore a small town ( though most of them would be closed down by the time we got there...maybe not) or after dinner we got out the telescope and looked for stars?

You have to do this 4 times a week? All of those different activities all the time to make 4 hours?

We do a lot of stuff together. Today we went to the accountant, then discussed a ton of stuff about our kids and inheritance and redoing our will on the drive out to look at all terrain vehicles. We visited on our drive to the grocery store where we got some items. All together we were gone about 4 hours. Now obviously the 1 hour with the accountant wouldn't count. But if the rest of it doesn't count either, then we ALSO need to do ANOTHER 4 hours together going out to eat, hiking ( though we will go walking this afternoon anyway), etc. That sure seems like a lot of togetherness.

It's not about togetherness. It's about quality time together without others around meeting each other's most important emotional needs.

Ok, so that means it needs to be meeting affection, sex, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship.

I'm trying to figure out how the dates need to be different or exactly what all that means.

Affection: we tell each other we love each other all the time, several times a day. To be honest, it is more of a habit for me than actually meaning it. It is what we do. We hold hands on our walks or when we are out.

Recreational companionship: Ok, we do a ton of things together. We both enjoy them just fine. We like camping, hiking, visiting new places, going out to eat, frisbee golf, putt putt golf, fishing, etc. None of them are particularly exciting, but they are enjoyable. Otherwise, I wouldn't do them.

Intimate conversation: Ok, exactly what and how does this work. Would talking about the fears of our oldest? His mental health? This is probably our weakest area if you mean fun conversations. We talk about tons of things we do together: charity work, schedules, etc. But there is also a lot of silence and many times the conversation is boring ( at least for me) I'm not sure how to fix this.

Sex- Ok, this one is just pretty much non-existant. But if he is too tired or doesn't feel great, etc. ( He is dealing with a chronic health issue and is working half time on partial disability.), then I don't see how this area can be forced. Yes we are trying to address this. He is now seeing specialists as the regular docs have done all they can.

Have you reread the "conversation is boring " article lately? I'd love to hear what you think.