#15hoursaweek

I listened to this amazing podcast sent to me by my beautiful friend, Carla.  It talked about the power of sharing your story... it talked about the importance of having mentors... it talked about making an impact.  I listened to it twice grabbing all kinds of inspiration each time.  Carla knew it was perfect for me in this journey, just another thing I love about her!

One of the take-aways for me had to do with baby steps.  I think about it in the context of fitness and nutrition all the time. It's kind of a no-brainer, but I hadn't really thought about it in terms of relationships and marriage.

This really got my mind turning. What were our baby steps in rebuilding our marriage?

This journey of rebuilding started from a place where I was living in the basement, had given up emotionally and was pretty much checked out of our marriage entirely. I was tired of caring, tired of trying, tired of losing, tired of all of it really.  I didn't feel optimistic anymore.  I didn't even wish or hope or pray about a healthier marriage anymore.  When I look back on that time, I still get a stomach ache and my eyes fill with tears.  I was so broken.

For whatever reason, the moment I hit the wall was the moment Roger got the strength and courage to carry me.  And that was a heavy weight.  Dead weight.

When we reflect back on that time in our lives, neither of us can really explain how that switch happened or why he finally heard and saw how done I was.  With great regret, we wish it would have happened earlier... our work would have been far less difficult had we figured it out before it got so far gone... but it didn't.  We had so many challenges ahead of us.

We had Mt. Everest to climb and I wasn't walking.

At the time, Roger did something that was instinctual and not really planned, but was our first baby step.  Insane amounts of time together.

This was not fun and romantic time together like much of our shared time is now.  This was terrible time.  I wanted to be left alone and Roger was RELENTLESS.  He just kept me talking, yelling, sharing at any opportunity that I would open up.  And when I wouldn't, he was still there.  I remember falling asleep talking (me in the guest bed and him in the doorway sitting on the floor).  I would wake to him bringing me coffee before Emma woke up and engaging in more conversation.  I kept sharing every hard memory, emotion, and feeling until they were all out of me.  Roger listened for the most part.  He shared too, but did a lot of listening.  He kept apologizing and owning his part of every situation I brought up.

He knew I had to somehow empty my tank of all of the hurt before we could refill it with anything else.

Other than incredible strength from God and his insane ability to continue on through pain (it's the athlete in him I think), there's no other explanation for how he endured almost 3 months of that torture.  Because it took that long for me to even begin to look at my part in our mess and start to own up to my own behaviors that contributed to our loss of intimacy, love and trust.  It took almost 3 months for me to apologize for much of anything.  That's a long time to carry dead weight.

During those 3 months when we were in the depths of the dungeon, we spent nearly every waking minute together except when we were at work (although we often spent lunch time together).  We hardly communicated with friends or family during that time and just focused inward. The minute our daughter went to bed, the conversations started again.  We woke up early and were talking until she woke up.  Our family was together all. the. time.

Again, we were in survival mode, so this "strategy" wasn't really planned or suggested by our counselor, but it just sort of happened.   Later as we learned more and read more about emotional needs and staying in love, we learned that undivided time together is the FOUNDATION for a marriage.  Without knowing it at an intellectual level, we were taking our first baby step, time together.

Since then, we have learned a lot from author, Dr. Willard Harley.  In his book, His Needs, Her Needs, he talks about how couples need to spend 15 hours a week together to stay "in love" and that couples in crisis need to spend more than that.  He said he prescribes couples in crisis to spend up to 30 hours a week together.  The rules of this time are very well spelled out.  No kids, no screens, no friends or family present, and no phones.  You can share recreation together as long as you can still share conversation.  You can have sex.  You can talk. You can be present together.  That's it.  So... watching a movie together doesn't count.  Neither does having family dinner with your kids or going out to dinner with another couple. It's pretty black and white.

When we were in crisis, we were probably doing exactly what he was suggesting (spending 30 hours a week together) without knowing that was any kind of strategy or prescription from a book or counselor.  The difference in our situation is that we spent time together...tough time...rather than what we used to do which was pull away.

At the time we actually read the book and the suggestion to spend this kind of quality time together as a couple, we were in a much better space and much further along in our journey (and our miracle, Owen, had entered the picture).  We calculated up our time spent together and realized we were at about 8-9 hours per week.  We wondered if there would really be a difference between that amount (which we were pretty proud of) and 15 which seemed like a tall order.  So, we did our own experiment to find out.  It took us almost a month to hit the 15 hour mark and, without a doubt, we can say that there was/is a BIG difference for us.  HUGE.

I will also say that the intimacy in all aspects of marriage at 15 hours of time and undivided attention a week is like driving a Porsche for the first time.  It corners like it's on rails!  But if/when you slip back (we have done that many times too), you won't be satisfied driving your Toyota anymore, even though it does the job just fine.

So there are lots of reasons and excuses why scheduling 15 hours a week is hard to do. (Note I said "scheduling" - it won't just happen by chance - we tried that :).  It takes more than a little effort.  The payoff, however, comes back ten fold.  It's sort of like sleep.  Sleep takes more time out of your day, but it makes your waking hours more productive, you have more energy and you make better choices when you're awake.

We choose not to live in a world of reasons why we can't do it.  We choose US and realize that EVERYTHING in our lives is better when our marriage is thriving.

The first time we hit 15 hours a week!

We started to use the #15hoursaweek hashtag on our pictures and posts to share our goal of spending more couples time together.  This was our babystep in our journey to follow God's calling to encourage other couples.

So... here's to baby steps! No matter how fast or far you're moving, just keep moving forward.