marraige dead as a dodo

[longton]

we have been married for 6yrs, 2 kids 2 and 3.
both professional incomes nice house etc.
trouble is..we have no us time, no family close by to help etc.dh let himself go a bit, no friends, never goes out, no hobbies, he admits hes bored but seems unable to move forward. i love him and i'm sure he loves me but we have nothing to talk about anymore. sex wise i cant be arsed. i try to go out a bit..but tbh..not many mates either, but i do have interests like cycling and reading groups. this has to change as i'm sure theres more to life than this. i know we should find a babysitter and go out but thb..i dont know what we'd talk about. the on ly time we really have fun is whenn we meet up with our uni friends every 3 mths or so.
is everyone else having a whale of atime going out or is this normal and what to do>?????

I think this is quite common. Could you do something like joining a gym together? If you could get a babysitting once a week you could go together. My parents do this and have made some great new friends who they play badminton with etc.

I went through this recently with my dh. We were together 17 years before ds came along and had a brill relationship, but it's amazing how kids can kill that if you let it. The important phrase being 'if you let it'. It is really, really, really hard to make yourself make the effort, but if you want to some magic back, that's what you gotta do. As you say get a babysitter and maybe start with something low pressure like a film and then a drink afterwards? That way you could talk about the film if nothing else, and it might just surprise you how easy you can fall back into old patterns when the opportunity is there and the 'kid' pressure is off.

We've also started cooking together, which is something we used to do years and years ago - really early days of our relationship. Again, this is something that gives you plenty to do and talk about that isn't 'so how was your day?' 'er...what did the kids do today?' kind of stuff. Try to think back to things that you liked doing together, and the reasons why you fell in love in the first place, even if they seem like dim distant memories, and focus on them. The way I looked at it, although this seems like really, really massive effort to begin with, splitting up, divorcing, sharing kids, and then embarking on another relationship would be so much more work. And, however tummy-flippingly romantic things are at the beginning with anyone, it can always get to the dead as a dodo stage without the effort.

I know what you mean. Someone told me the thing is to book a babysitter once a month or once a fortnight so it's all set up in advance. It makes you think of different things to do together. And also my dh and I are quite open about it and say .. we've got nothing to talk about.. we have to think of something.. we are going to talk for an hour and not mention the children etc. And we play stupid conversational games like trying to think of things he doesn't know about me, or I don't know about him. It is possible, even after 16 years! I think it is quite normal to feel this way. I used to think that all we ever talked about was the logistics of our lives, that was when we were so knackered from having 3 pre-schoolers. But I think it's quite normal.

aw thanks..it just feels like all we talk about is logistics..the other day i caught myself saying.."the binmen came today" i mean for f**ks sake!!!!!
the gym...no time to go and certainly not together he is aware that things are a bit pants at the moment so hopefully...we might try a salsa class..something new for us to learn together. b4 kids we were into hiking, cycling etc..but hes a bit unfit at the mo and i think scared to do that kind of stuff as it will show him how overweight/unfit hes become. bit of ostrich syndrome going on......