Anonymous wrote:Great to hear you are taking the initiative on your marriage. With marriage and kids, it is just normal for this to happen but there is the danger that two people start to take each other for granted. When that happens, one or both begin to feel ignored and dissatisfied. The "emotional connection" is important to maintain the intimacy and the reason of maintaining the love between you and your spouse. People might disagree but the couple relationship needs to be placed first before the kids. If there is a problem between the couple, that can lead to separation or worst, divorce.

Talk to your DW and see if she is opened to marital counseling. And yes, take care out for the weekend and leave the kids.

F marital counseling. You don't need it and it's just one more thing on your plate.

Remember some of the best times you had or some of the dreams you had about places you'd go when you had the money? Now is that time. Honeymooned in the islands? Time to go back. Used to spend time on the slopes and then warm each other up at night, Aspen, Vail, Tahoe are all gorgeous and romantic. Go! Whatever it is, plan it and do it. This is not a weekend trip, this is at least a week. Pick a week where the kids might be easy. Maybe only one of them has an after school activity. Make sure they are in school, so whoever is watching them, just has to wake them, feed them and get them out the door and then feed them and ask them about their homework being done when they get home. Hopefully have a limited activity weekend and maybe arrange rides with a close friend's parents for each child promising to return the favor.

Hopefully you or she has a parent or parents still around that might be retired and looking for the opportunity to spend time with their grandchildren. If not, maybe another relative you trust. If that's still a no, then you can always find a trustworthy babysitter. Maybe someone who is in college but still living at home. There are options out there. Incentivize your kids behavior while you are gone. Have they been asking for a pet? This is the perfect test: You have a week to prove how responsible you are without me here. If you can do your homework and chores while I'm gone then we will be more confident you can handle the responsibilities of a pet. Encourage them to work together and to help.

The first trip might not be perfect but when you return and it's discovered that the world didn't end and that your kids survived. The next one will allow her and you to relax more. Do this annually. 2x a year if you can afford it.

Marriage is a marathon and there are uphill and downhill portions. Right now, you are battling a hill but the good news is you trained well and you will survive it. You just need to push through.

Pretty soon, your bladder will be waking you in the middle of the night and you will discover "wake up sex". When you return to bed you snuggle up and say you got cold and she's so warm --- sorry I woke you. Oh, will you look who else woke up....

In the words of the late great Warren Zevon: I'll sleep when I'm dead.

You need to figure out what you mean by "emotional connection" and what she means by "emotional connection." The phrase is essentially meaningless and can add to confusion when the couple misunderstands what the other means by the phrase.

We went through the two career, three children phase years ago and we did fine on the emotional connection front as we always had a hug and a kiss when we got home and we almost always went to bed at the same time. This gave us some quiet time to talk - even just for a few minutes - or we'd have sex a couple of times a week. I don't think there was ever a time when we didn't feel pretty connected. Even now as retired empty nesters we have kept up the same schedule of frequent hugging and weekly sex - twice this past weekend which was very nice.

Not sure how old your kids are but I’ve found our morning Saturday time invaluable. The kids get their own breakfast/snacks and watch tv. We wake up by 8 and stay in our room unril 9am. I can’t explain it other than feeling like we are sometimes ship passing in the night with all the running around during the week and the weekend mornings it’s just the two of us for a little while. The other thing that has been nice is having a show that we watch together that’s our time. As the kids activities have made it harder to carve out time to watch a show together, we try to on Friday night if we can’t find time earlier in the week.

When the kids were younger we would normally go away for a weekend on our anniversary. We also have date nights or date afternoons on the weeken or will take off the same day to spend with other but we talk about doing that way more often than we actually do. But if we have gone thru an even busier than usual time where we don’t really get to talk, we will make more of an effort to go out just the two of us. Oh and we text each other on the weekends when something funny happens and we are out running errands solo and we like to catch up with each other if one has been out all day with one of the kids.