I was in the supermarket last week after dropping my younger son off at elementary school (the older one is part of a middle-school carpool) and Valentine's Day decorations are everywhere - dangling from the ceiling, stuck to displays, filling the bakery aisle. So many reminders that Valentine's Day is right around the corner. And I feel a little bit guilty.

All of the hearts and flowers that start appearing in the stores this time of year remind me I'm not doing the best job I can as a wife. My husband gets ignored when I'm busy finishing up a blog post, working on a program, or getting the house ready for my next moms' group. I get tired taking care of business – the business of managing a household, the business of juggling the kids' day-to-day needs, and the business of running a business – and there isn't much room for him at the end of the day. My plate is full.

My husband gets only leftover me.

Relationship expert and psychologist John Gottman suggests that couples invest around five hours a week into tending their relationship, doing things like going on dates, spending one-on-one time together at home, checking in with each other (and paying attention to the answers), connecting before leaving for the day in the morning and reconnecting at the end. When I read this statistic while researching my book, The Well-Crafted Mom, my heart sank. Five hours? Where am I going to find five extra hours?

The thing is, it doesn't take five hours.

"Marriages aren't healed with big things; they're healed with small things done every day," writes clinical psychologist and blogger Dr. Kelly Flanagan. "They aren't healed by doing new things. They're healed by doing old things we used to do and quit doing somewhere along the way."

Want to find out how you can help your husband to feel like he's the main course (or at least a big helping of a tasty side dish) and give your relationship more than just the leftover you? Join me on my Friday Free Call on February 5th. I'll share lots of little ways you can reconnect, what happens at my house to make the guilt go away, and what you can do if you're feeling way too overwhelmed with everything else on your plate to know where to start. Sign up here.

My husband and I were in the middle of an argument that was so predictable we could have been reading from a script. I called it our Who Does More disagreement and it was happening more and more frequently.

"So, what do you do when you walk by the downstairs bathroom and it smells like pee?" I asked, frustrated that the equal division of labor that we had talked in the wrapped-in-fantasy pre-parenting days was nowhere even close to the 50 yard line.

He gave me a quizzical look. "The bathroom smells like pee?" At the time of this argument, our boys were a not-quite-potty-trained three year old and a five year old whose aim left much to be desired. The boys' bathroom/guest bathroom ALWAYS smelled like pee.

To me, his comment illuminated the biggest problem we had in our relationship: Our division of labor was far from fair because there were many responsibilities that I handled that he didn’t even see (or smell). In his head, his outside work plus helping out equaled my housework plus my not-quite-full-time career. He looked at the list of my responsibilities, tallied the time up in his head, and produced a balanced scorecard.

To be fair, he was doing a great job based on his formula. But his calculations didn't factor in the time suckers that kept it from feeling even. The pee sprayers, aka my children, meant that cleaning the bathroom was not a once a week chore that my husband thought it was, but a daily sanitation project. Grocery shopping didn't just take 45 minutes from home to store and back again because I had to calculate what he hadn’t added in:

• Five minutes to take inventory and stock up the backpack to make sure I had wipes and extra clothes for my son in case of an accident

• Eight minutes to track down the three-year-old and the battle of the wills that followed as we negotiated pants and shoes

• Seven minutes to get from the front door to fully locked and loaded in the car

• Five minutes to unload the boys from the car and get one of the three shopping carts with a car-shaped seating area in front (which involved stalking – I mean following – a mom to her car and waiting with my fidgety, we-don't-wait-well boys while she unloaded her groceries and children from the cart)

• Immeasurable minutes spent in negotiations for sugar-coated items they wanted me to buy

• Countless minutes distracting them from their ongoing argument over who got to steer the shopping cart car.

A "quick trip" to the store took hours.

Daily time suckers also included the constant interruptions by the boys who needed me to play with them, read to them, break up a fight, negotiate turns with a favorite toy that they regularly fought over even though they had two of them. (Somehow, one toy was more special than its identical twin.) Everything, from laundry to fixing dinner, took three times longer than it should. I had two living, breathing reasons why nothing ever felt finished.

The more I didn't get done meant the less time I had for me. Me time, which really only meant time for me to read a book without pictures in it, was wedged so far up against my bedtime that it didn't really count because I couldn't keep my eyes open for it.

My husband’s and my division of labor didn't feel fair. I had turned into a walking bundle of resentment but kept telling myself I shouldn't be. I should be happy that I have two great, healthy, happy kids. I should be happy that I could work at a job that fulfilled my soul more than it fulfilled our bank account so I could spend these important years with my kids. I should be happy that my husband helped so much with the kids and around the house.

But all of the “should be happys" felt like jeering cheerleaders on the sidelines of a game that I didn't want to play anymore. I was angry at my husband. I was disappointed that this life I’d always wanted had turned out to be so different than I expected. It felt like I’d registered for badminton and ended up on the football field. I’d shown up with my racket and birdie and was blindsided over and over by 300-pound responsibilities.

This wasn't what I’d signed up for.

My husband and I found our way out of the Who Does More game and into a marriage worth keeping. It took a big commitment, not only to build a better marriage but, quite honestly, to build a better husband (and become a better wife in the process).

I’m sharing my ideas and steps on How to Build a Better Husband in a free call on Friday, February 5th (sign up here). If you can’t wait until then, schedule a free one-on-one call with me where we’ll talk about what you can specifically do to build a better marriage – and husband – starting now.

It was fun introducing my sons to wishbones back when they were little. They held tightly to the wishbone with their little dimpled hands, hopeful thumbs pressed at the top. “Make a wish!” my husband and I said, guiding the boys’ hands up and apart.

Everybody loved the wishing game the first few times we did it. But then the boys got older and understood this game involved a winner and loser. Someone got their wish and the other didn’t. My husband and I stopped giving them wishbones to fight over because the bickering between the boys got to be too much. I still saved the bones but no one was wishing with them.

I think something similar happens to many moms, maybe even you. You stop making wishes. You don't want to create conflict, make a fuss, or be selfish. You're afraid things will get out of hand. You worry if you want something too hard or too much, you'll need to make room for it, and your life feels way too full already.

You save the bones, unbroken.

But everything worthwhile begins with a wish. Wishes nourish every plan. They're a quiet whisper in the dark, a confession you want another baby, want a different job, or want more creative time to dream and build and wish some more.

It’s time now to make your wish. And make another after that. And another and another, snapping through the bare bones to reach the marrow of what you love, waiting at the sweet, rich, juicy center of your life.

Big hugs,
Kathleen

Are you not sure anymore what to wish for? Or are your wishes so big that it seems like your life as it is can't contain them all? Schedule a free call with me and together we'll figure out how to nurture your wishes so that they (and you) can come true.

There was a time when this job meant everything to you. But now, you can’t remember any of those reasons as you’re dropping your daughter off at daycare.

You find yourself feeling resentful as you answer another call at dinnertime, stepping away from the table and your family to deal with work.

You’re starting to wonder what you’re doing when you’re pushing your son on the swings at the playground on a Saturday and simultaneously checking email so you don’t get behind.

You find yourself comparing work to some old – and not so great – relationships you’ve had in the past. Remembering how great it felt to let go of that friendship that became so one-sided that you spent all of your time supporting her while not being able to get a word in edgewise.

Your situation with work feels so much the same, like a BFF gone bad.

Is it time to break up with Work?

Here are a few clues:
• Work takes more than it gives; Work’s never satisfied. For Work, everything is always “me, me, me.” Work doesn’t ever ask you what you want anymore.

• Work crosses over all of your boundaries, interrupts your time with your family, doesn’t listen when you say no.

• Work isn’t fun anymore. Work constantly complains. There's always something wrong with Work.

• When you’re around Work, you feel resentful, burned out, and tired.

Do you want to find new Work but you don’t know how to figure out what comes next? Are you worried that leaving your current Work will just involve starting a relationship with a new job that will end up being just like the old one?

If you’re thinking about breaking up with Work, join me in a free call to learn when it's time to go and discover three steps to finding a new job that will be a better BFF for you. Sign up for my free call here.