Reddit mentions of His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage

> I'm concerned that I'm teaching him to be miserable instead of how to enjoy the long ride. How do you all handle this?

44, 4 kids, 2 grown. They're all turning out OK. My advice?

• Keep food in the house, model healthy attitudes toward it, and do not begrudge the teenage food budget feeding their friends. Make your home a haven for your kids and the other kids they drag home: judgment-free, supportive, honest (embarrassingly so!), and with an apparently unlimited supply of food.
  
• Don't drink heavily or use illegal drugs. The time for that was before you had kids and after they are no longer in your home.
  
• Don't physically, emotionally, or mentally abuse them or your spouse.
  
• Don't sexually abuse them.
  
• Be involved in their online & real-life lives. Memorize the names & faces of their friends. Ask questions about the relationships among friends and show an interest in brainstorming ways that might help resolve problems. Your child will often be willing to talk about others' struggles long before their own, and will often understand how to solve other kids' problems before their own.
  
• Don't have sex with people other than your spouse while you have kids in the home. It's destructive to their emotional well-being to be around someone modeling the inherent dishonesty and addictive behavior associated with extramarital affairs.
  
• Be radically honest with them about yourself, your relationships, your finances, and emotions, PARTICULARLY the positive experiences. The chances are really good they are a lot like you, and if they understand your struggles they'll normalize and deal better with their own, and an experience of "look what I did right and how I did it!" is much more useful for a kid to model than "look at how I screwed up again, I'm not sure what I did wrong."
  
  If you simply avoid beating, drugging, lying to, ignoring, and hiding fuck-buddies from your kids you're doing better than most of the population. They'll be OK. If the worst thing you do is model excessive frugality and an outcome-oriented mindset toward finances, you're doing great.
  
  Good luck. It's a fun ride with its share of tears, anxiety, joy, and love, and it doesn't stop once the kids are out of the house. It just becomes less immediate.

Yes there's a whole book about it

My viewpoint is.. you can control how someone feels about you.

If you're nice to someone and do all the things they like, of course they like you.

If you continue annoying habits and don't do anything they like, which happens when you get married and begin living together, they stop liking you *mind blown*

People come here asking for the "one" answer, the "one" thing to do to make their partner fall back in lust with them. "Hey, just do this, they'll be back on your lap with enthusiastic passion tomorrow" and it's not that simple. How far out of love are you, how far into contempt and despisement are you. It takes.. maybe a year to fix a dead bedroom.

Do the "fall back in love with you" things, and also read "Come As You Are" for the libido brakes and accelerators for sex specifically, toss in the purely physically and behaviourally attractive things (maybe lose weight, update wardrobe, hygiene, be pleasant and not clingy or whiny, get hobbies, go out with friends more OR do enjoyable activities together to bond and feel like a good team), go to a real doctor, get proper therapy or counselling etc etc

I've been very careful and aware of all these things with my new boyfriend. We've discussed and listened to each other regarding love languages, emotional needs, libido brakes and accelerators, been open and honest about what we find physically attractive and so on. We're working hard on preventing a dead relationship and a sexless (future) marriage.

How long have you guys been married for?


I can only help from personal experience. And I could be right/close or I might not be right at all regarding your wife.


I've been married 5 years and still think about my exes at times. I loved them but I knew they weren't people I wanted to marry and spend my life with. I think I struggle with /r/limerence and perhaps your wife does too. Thoughts, dreams at night still include exes even though I don't want them to!


The fact that your wife is looking into exes (this deeply, to the point of separation,) etc... and dragging you around for this ride of hers is totally unfair and mean!


I am hoping that this is something she can get out of her system ASAP. She needs to learn about "love" versus "emotions" possibly. It's a lesson I have been learning over the last 1-2 years for myself. It takes time, but I am trying to be happy/content with the wonderful life I have. "Grass is greener where you water it" type deal.



Your wife possibly hasn't closed the book on her past, but PERHAPS you'd be willing to walk this journey WITH her. You seem to truly love her and seem committed to your marriage. (I am in awe of that, as your love and commitment is inspiring.) Your wife could possibly just have baggage. Baggage that she wants to naturally hide from you, because her baggage has to do with.. exes... and "what ifs" regarding them. What if you provide an environment for her that she doesn't have to hide from you and work through her thoughts alone and she can open up to you?


We have to get her to see that:

1. No man or relationship can make her happy. Not you, not those other guys. She has to find contentedness on her own.
   
2. You and her, together, can work on your Love Languages, fulfilling each others needs to the best of your abilities, filling each others "Love Banks" and perhaps you both can find a reignited love and happiness together. (I'll post some resources below that have helped me.)
   
   
   I suggest, like the other 2 posters, that you continue counseling (so you both can learn and grow together during this season.) She should get whatever is going on with her OUT on the TABLE, dig deep, get nitty-gritty! Even though it hurts! And it could hurt you too, a lot. Try not to let it, try not to take it personally. It's a war within her mind and heart. You seem to be a great guy. She just has to get over this hump, educate herself, and TRY with you. Put in some effort on her end!
   
   
   
   If she is willing to TRY with you, I suggest you stay. Give it a year? with no.. "side-guy behavior" if that is what you want from her.
   
   
   
   My husband and I got this baggage of mine out on the table about 3 years ago. I even fell for a new dude (who I'm still limerent with, but we stopped talking and I know he'd be horrible for me... I just struggle with limerence...) But my husband and I had to TALK about it. I had to tell my husband "what I was getting from the other guy that I wasn't at home, etc." Those topics were hard for my husband to hear, but he listened and he still listens when I have a tough day now, 3 years later. Limerence STAYS with a person.. it's terrible and I don't wish it on anyone, especially people who are married.
   
   
   
   Anyway, He's been my friend THROUGH this. I love him even that much more for it, and we've been doing so great in the last 1-2 years!
   
   
   Resources for Couples:
   
   

• Boundaries in Marriage
  
• His Needs Her Needs: How to Affair Proof Your Marriage (The book my husband and I bought the second I realized I was having an emotional affair.)
  
• The 5 Love Languages Quiz
  
• Love Bank Verbage
  
• #staymarried Podcast: How to Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut
  
• #staymarried Podcast: The Simple Romance in Staying Connected
  
• A Sermon YESTERDAY(ironically) I attended that discusses: LOVE versus EMOTIONS (Sermon starts at 1:19, feel free to skip to 9:50-marriage without bible back ground.)

I cannot recommend the book, "His Needs, Her Needs" by Willard Harley enough... Incredible.. as I started reading it I was like WOW.. this is so accurate! Amazing.. .Its a book about the fundamental needs of men and women.. and its written with specifics and a frankness I have not seen elsewhere.. give it a try.. seriously.

https://www.amazon.com/His-Needs-Her-Building-Affair-Proof/dp/0800744233

I am sort of in your situation.. I've been married almost 20 years.. two kids, 17 and 15.... many people would consider me to be the "perfect husband" in that I provide for the family, i'm more or less a "super dad".. i'm fit, funny, intelligent.. treat my wife well..

over the years, though our marriage went to crap. It basically sounded like your's.. My wife became my 'business partner', really only initiating conversation to give me commands or to complain about something.. She had no desire for sex and told me so, directly.. she gained a ton of weight.

I wasn't perfect either.. I started a friendship with a girl half my age who used to be in my youth group that I lead.. she came back to our area after going away to college and asked me for some advice, etc.. we started texting and one thing lead to another and we had a mini affair.. I'll call it "mini" because we never slept together but we did kiss a few times, but mostly it was just conversation all day, every day via texting.. we just loved chatting with each other.. the very thing that my wife and I didn't share..That's the only "affair" I've ever had

anyway, my wife eventually found out about it.. things blew up.. We started going to a marriage counselor and I found that book by Harley... i wish I had found it 10 years ago... its truly an amazing book and could have saved us a TON of problems... It may be too late now for us.. .we'll see... but I would definitely recommend that book...

Even better than this one (since this suggestion came from our pre-marital counseling) is the fact that she bought me and herself a copy of a book when we first got engaged, "His Needs, Her Needs": http://www.amazon.com/His-Needs-Her-Building-Affair-Proof/dp/0800744233

Of course I read it right then and several more times since. She hadn't even read a chapter of it over 5 years later despite me begging her to do so. I think she's read a couple chapters now, though nowhere near finished it.