How Can I Spend More Quality Time With My Husband?
My husband and I still don’t spend enough time together, even in our retirement. How can I make him change?
Dear Julia,
How do I get my husband to stop working so much?
We both retired 5 years ago. I was hoping for more time together, a chance to travel and spend more time with friends and family. My husband had a busy career with his own construction company, and we certainly didn’t spend as much time together as I had wanted. He often worked evenings and weekends. I was often lonely and would express this to him, but it didn’t seem to matter. He always had a steady flow of clients whom he felt pressured to serve.
Now, we are 70 and 71 and nothing has changed. I keep asking him to spend more time with me, but he keeps finding other things to do. I’m at my wit’s end. How do I get my husband to spend more time with me?
Dear Reader,
I understand that your husband has always been busy at work, which he has always prioritized over you, leaving you feeling lonely and perhaps resentful. You want him to change but have been powerless in your ability to get him to do so.
The lack of time that he spends with you may also means that you do not feel that you’re getting enough of his attention, focus or care, which can be deeply hurtful in a marriage.
Of course, when we do not get our needs met in an intimate partnership, it’s a wound that often gets bigger over time.
I can imagine that by hoping that the two of you spend quality time together, by traveling and seeing loved ones, it would mean that you could share more of your life. If I’m right, this is a very normal condition to crave in your marriage.
Thus, what do we do about the fact that despite your constant pleas, your husband is not willing to do what you would like?
I’m wondering if this may be a case of mismatched Love Languages. Have you heard of the 5 Love Languages in Relationships? They were originally discovered by Gary Chapman.
The Five Love Languages are:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
In his book, The Five Love Languages, The Secret to Love that Lasts, Dr. Chapman explains that during his work as a couple’s therapist, he recognized that many relational conflicts occurred because the couple’s love languages were different.
As an example, this could look like one person needing physical touch to feel loved, while the other may value giving and receiving gifts.
Therefore, when the person who needs affection receives gifts, they may not recognize that the gift is their partner expressing their love, as it’s not their preferred method of receiving it.
Thus, the partner who prefers physical affection may interpret this as a lack of love in their relationship.
While it is important to receive love in the way that we want and need to (i.e. physical affection or acts of service) it can be very helpful to understand our partner’s love language so that we understand that they express and want love in a different way than we do.
In the above example, if one partner’s love language is physical affection, and the other is receiving gifts, we would want the partner who needs physical affection to be able to give and receive physical affection, but also give their partner gifts because that’s how their partner needs to be loved.
Make Sense?
You may benefit from the Love Languages Quiz https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language to find out what your love language is.
If your husband is willing to do the quiz too, this would be ideal. If he isn’t interested, then perhaps you could answer it for him to the best of your knowledge.
Back to your original question. You had asked me how you get your husband to spend more time with you.
It’s hard for me to answer it exactly since I don’t know what his love language is. However, I do have some jumping-off points for you.
Whether or not your husband’s love language is Words of Affirmation, you may want to note that verbal compliments are much more likely to influence a person to do what you would like than criticism or nagging.
If you were to start appreciating your husband for the things he does and stop asking him to spend more time with you, he naturally may be more inclined to spend more time with you.
It seems like Quality Time is likely your Love Language. Quality Time is about receiving the undivided attention of your spouse.
Could you be more specific when you ask him to spend more time with you? You mentioned wanting to spend time traveling and with family. If you were to ask him to come with you to a family barbeque in 2 weeks, would he be able to make time for that?
Could a at least a part of this solution be that he needs more specific asks that he can pencil into his calendar and make time for?
Whether or not that could help, here are some other ways for you to ask your husband to satisfy your need for quality time:
Make eye contact while he’s speaking to you
Listening to you when you have a problem rather than jumping into problem-solving mode
Pausing what he’s doing while you’re speaking so you can have his full attention
Schedule date nights at a frequency that he’s able to maintain
Choosing a few specific activities to do together. Perhaps you could make rituals out of cooking dinner a few nights a week or a morning coffee before he has to go off to see a client.
You may also want to consider how your husband could react if you start to give him love the way he needs based on his love language (assuming you haven’t been already).
I wonder if his love language could be acts of service since he’s been so intent on providing financially?
If his love language is acts of service, meaning that he feels loved when you do things that he would like you to do. Would he be more willing to spend more time with you if he feels more loved by you? If you think about what he asks you to do, does he have unmet requests?
I am curious to know the results of both of your love languages after you have taken the test and hopefully discussed the results. It would be a wonderful bonding experience for you two to explore each of your love languages and how you could show each other more love the way that you would like. Feel free to write back to let me know how it went.
I wish you the best as you discover more of each other.
Warmly,
Julia
P.S. Did you enjoy this blog? Would you like to have more Simple, Healthy Love in your life? I post new answers to reader questions every Saturday at noon EST AND have a list of all the books I recommend as a trauma therapist and relationship blogger HERE.
Please note that reader questions may be edited for length or clarity.