Priorities: children or wife?

Do you sometimes feel that you spend so much of your energies on your children that you neglect your wife? Have been feeling this way for some time. Maybe it is a Chinese upbringing thing - when children come, the couple shifts the attnetion away from one another towards their children.

But wouldn't that create a potential serious problem: we can feel less and less like intimate friends but more and more like project partners (the name of the project is called "raising children")? Well, some may say,"what's the problem with that?" if project partners don't keep up their close friendship, their relationship can become a mere cold partners-in-work kind, not unlike project partners at work - where we have not much other personal things to speak about except about work related to the project. Tis kind of project partner relatinship can degenerate into one where there is hardly any feelings for one another - we have to be there together only because the project is on. When it comes to that, then I wonder what will happen when the "project" ends. And, the project WILL end. One day, maybe 15 years later, the children will leave the home. What do we then do with our "project partner"? In all likelihood, I will have to be under the same roof with her for another 20 years?

This train of thought awakens me to this reality: my wife is my real long term commitment; the children are just medium term commitment.if that is so, then my current priorities (as judged by the time I spend with my wife and my children) are grossly imbalanced. I spend a lot of my time after work talking with and helping my children. But I hardly spend time with my wife to build up our long term relationship and affections.

In case some may ask what the signs of a project partner relationship are. For me, I started feeling that way when I realize that my conversation with my wife centres almost exclusively about the children (the project). We hardly share about ourselves to one another and show affection (the way we did when we were dating). To me, that signals some alarm bells ringing ...

I now resolve to date my wife once a week. Thhs is my first step at moving away from project partner relationship