We are on a downward spiral

[Bagheera]

The thing I believe she would say she misses most is the multiple hour conversations we used to have on the phone. We lived an hour apart when we were dating. How can anybody do that with everything else going on? But, her two love languages are gifts and quality time.

This makes sense, and gives you a place to start. To steal a line from the Rosbergs: while men and women both cite intimacy as a top love need, women generally spell intimacy T-A-L-K, while men generally spell intimacy S-E-X. The challenge that you're facing then, is how to increase the amount of quality, heart-to-heart conversation time you get, while still tending to everything else in your lives. While multiple hour conversations may not be feasible much of the time, are there some smaller, more doable steps you can take to increase the level of intimate conversation with her?

Here are some habits that we've picked up over the last few months of our 'recovery,' just to throw some suggestions out there:

(1) The daily phone call: once a day, generally around lunch time, I'll call my wife and find out how her day is going, and just let her know that I'm thinking about her while I'm at work.

(2) The daily de-brief: every day when I get home from work, I seek out my wife and we share our day with each other for about 10-30 minutes, often while she's cooking dinner or whatever. This regular, daily ritual has made a huge difference in how well we stay in tune (connected) with each other.

(3) Week-day evenings: perhaps once a week, after the last kid has gone to bed, we find something to do together, such as a board, dice, or card game. It needs to be something that makes you communicate throughout, so watching a TV show together doesn't count.

Those are the inexpensive steps, and relatively easy to turn into habit. As expenses allow you can layer in:

(4) Regular dates: particularly to places you can talk, such as over dinner. My wife and I try to go out at least twice a month (coinciding with pay-days), and would go more if we had the funds and available baby-sitters.

(5) Regular get-aways: Several of the books I've read have also mentioned taking a day or weekend away from the kids, about once a month or so, even if it's just down the road to a hotel. This is the one step we haven't been able to layer in, primarily because we have no one to farm the kids out to for that long of a time.

Again, I'm just brain-storming here and tossing out what's worked for us so far. Your thoughts, Near?

Bagheera