The 100 Most Asked Questions About Love, Sex and Relationships. Barbara Angelis De

Love and Intimacy

       1 How do you convince a workaholic partner to put more time and energy into a marriage?

       I feel like I’m always competing with my husband’s job. He’s an attorney and works sixty to seventy hours a week, not to mention most weekends, which doesn’t leave much time for me and our two boys. When I complain, he argues that he’s doing this for us, and points to our lifestyle, which I have to admit, is very luxurious—we have a beautiful home, a boat, a vacation cabin (which we hardly use), and all the money we need. The only thing missing is him! He blows up when I call him a workaholic, and tells me I’m being ungrateful. Is he right? How can I convince him to pay attention to us?

      

You’re not ungrateful … you’re just lonely, and with good cause. You can’t snuggle up to a checkbook, or hold hands with a share of stock, and neither can your kids. I have a saying: Marriage is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not something you have, like a house or a car. It is not a piece of paper that proves you are husband and wife. Marriage is a behavior. It is a choice you make over and over again, reflected in the way you treat your partner every day.

      Men tend to define themselves by what they are doing, rather than what they are feeling, so it’s no surprise that your husband has gotten caught up in the “doing more must mean I’m successful” mentality. That’s the way society, and perhaps his family background, has trained him. He may feel like he’s on a treadmill, running as fast as he can, and he doesn’t know how to stop. Along with this, he may have other unconscious emotional reasons for working so hard. Some workaholics actually use their business to avoid intimacy and to maintain a sense of control over their lives. After all, it’s probably easier for your husband to feel in control when he’s doing business than it is when he’s interacting with you and your children, and dealing in emotions, needs, and all that amorphous stuff.

      Here are a few of my favorite methods to wake up workaholic partners. Whether or not these approaches are effective will depend on how addicted your mate is to the illusion of power and control that work gives him.

      

      1. Give him some perspective. Have him close his eyes and imagine that he’s at the end of his life, on his deathbed. As he looks back on his life, ask him to share what moments will have made his life truly meaningful. What, in the end, will really matter to him? You can bet he won’t say “I can die happily because I closed ten big deals in 1997,” or “I feel content with my life because I owned a five-thousandsquare-foot house,” or even “I feel at peace because I left my children a lot of money.” No, the moments that really matter, the moments that will have filled his life with meaning will be moments of love, connection, and sharing. I call these “real moments,” and he probably isn’t having enough of them because he’s too busy doing the things he has decided are more important. Tell him you want to share more meaningful time with him.

      2. Use fear to scare him into slowing down. Sometimes this is the only thing that works to snap a guy out of his workaholic stupor. Ask him how he would spend his time if he knew he had only one month left to live. (Trust me, he won’t say “I’d work like a dog for twelve hours a day.”) Then remind him of some men he knows of who have died at his age, either accidentally or of natural causes. The truth is, we never know if a day, or a month, or a year will be our last. We live as if we have all the time in the world, and we don’t. Share this anonymous quote with him:

      First I was dying to finish high school and start college.

      And then I was dying to finish college and start working.

      And then I was dying to marry and have children.

      And then I was dying for my kids to grow up.

      And then I was dying to retire.

      And now, I am dying, and suddenly I realize,

      I forgot to live …

      

      3. Use guilt as a last resort. Ask him to imagine what his children will say about him when they are grown. Does he really think they will look back on their childhood as happy because of their big house and expensive toys, and not care that they hardly saw their father? Does he really think that they don’t care that he is hardly ever around? All children really want is to feel they matter, that they are important to us. The toys and treats may buy the children’s silence now, but when they grow up, they won’t even remember what he bought them—they’ll only say “I hardly knew my dad.” And they will wish he hadn’t sacrificed “for their sakes,” because whatever he leaves them will never be as valuable as the cherished memory of a good-night story, a game of catch, or the sight of Mommy and Daddy snuggled close together on the couch.

       2 Is it natural for the passion to disappear after years of marriage?

       My husband and I have been married for eighteen years and are more like best friends than lovers. We have sex very infrequently and have settled into what I would call a “comfortable” relationship. There’s a part of me that longs for that passionate emotional connection we used to have, but many of my friends tell me I’m being unrealistic, and that all couples feel this way after years of marriage. Am I expecting too much?

      

Don’t buy into the popular but misinformed attitude that losing romantic attraction to your partner is an inevitable part of marriage. That’s like saying becoming unhealthy and having a heart attack is an inevitable part of growing older. Are heart attacks common? Yes—but now we know they are preventable IF you take good care of your body. In the same way, just because it’s common for many couples to lose the passion in their relationship over time doesn’t mean it is natural. It all depends on how you take care of your relationship.

      Relationships don’t just lose their chemistry overnight. It takes years of neglect, not making the marriage a number-one priority, not talking about your needs, not resolving and healing hidden resentments, and not actively learning how to make love work. All these unhealthy emotional habits are what takes a couple from feeling “in love” to feeling like roommates.

      I strongly believe that you do deserve to have a marriage that grows in love, passion, and connection year after year. Is this realistic, even in an eighteen-year relationship? Yes … IF both partners decide to do what it takes to rekindle the passion and learn some of the skills you were never taught about successful loving. Start by sitting down with your partner, taking his hands, and telling him how much you miss the physical and emotional closeness you used to share. (Believe me, he misses it too!) Without blaming him, tell him you want to work toward transforming your “comfortable” relationship into one that is intimate and exciting. Tell him he deserves more than he’s getting, as you do. When you both recommit to learning how to love, and use some of the skills I teach in my books and programs, you’ll find renewed levels of communication, closeness, and excitement.