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Before you were married, you and your spouse probably spent the majority of your leisure time together. And the time you spent together was probably the most enjoyable part of every day. Spending time alone with each other was your highest priority, and you may even have canceled other plans when you had an opportunity to be together. You probably tried to talk to each other every day. If you couldn't physically be together, you talked on the telephone, sometimes for hours. And when you were together, you gave each other your undivided attention.

But after marriage, like so many other couples, you probably find that you can be in the same room together and yet ignore each other emotionally. What's even worse, you may find that you are not even in the same room very often, particularly after your children arrived.

One of the more difficult aspects of marriage counseling is scheduling time for it. Counselors must often work evenings and weekends because most couples will not give up work for their appointments. Then they must schedule around a host of evening and weekend activities that take a husband and wife in opposite directions.

But finding time for an appointment is easy compared to arranging time for the couple to be together to carry out their first assignment. Many couples think that a counselor will solve their problem with weekly conversations in his office. It doesn't occur to them that it's what they do after they leave the office that saves the marriage. To improve marriage, couples must schedule time together — time to give each other their undivided attention.

It's incredible how many couples have tried to talk me out of their spending more time together. They begin by trying to convince me that it's impossible. Then they go on to the argument that it's impractical. But in the end, they usually agree with me that without time for undivided attention, they cannot re-create the love they once had for each other.

And that's the point. Unless you and your spouse schedule time each week for undivided attention, it will be almost impossible to meet each other's most important emotional needs. That's because other less important objectives will crowd out the time that it takes to meet those needs.

You and your spouse have identified your most important emotional needs and you have agreed to meet them for each other. Now you must take a step that will make it all possible — you must clear space in your schedule for each other. You must make time to be together.

For most men romance is sex and recreation; for most women it's affection and conversation. When all four come together, men and women alike call it romance and they deposit the most love units possible in each other's Love Bank. That makes these categories somewhat inseparable whenever you spend time together. My advice is to try to combine them all.

To help you achieve the essential but difficult objective of spending enough time together to meet each other's needs, I encourage you to follow the Policy of Undivided Attention.

The Policy of Undivided Attention Give your spouse your undivided attention a minimum of fifteen hours each week, using the time to meet his or her need for affection, sexual fulfillment, conversation, and recreational companionship.

This policy will help you avoid one of the most common mistakes in marriage — neglecting each other's most important emotional needs. I will try to clarify this policy for you by offering three corollaries: privacy, objectives, and amount of time.

Corollary 1: Privacy The time you plan to be together should not include children (who are awake), relatives, or friends. Establish privacy so that you are better able to give each other your undivided attention.

It is essential for you as a couple to spend time alone. When you have time alone, you have a much greater opportunity to meet each other's emotional needs and make Love Bank deposits. Without privacy, undivided attention is almost impossible, and without undivided attention, you are unable to meet the emotional needs of affection, conversation, and sexual fulfillment.

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