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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Gary & Barbara Rosberg 
 
 
Question: 
 
After a full day of work and dealing with the kids, I don’t have much 
time or energy left for my spouse. What can I do to keep him happy, 
without depleting myself?   
 
Answer: 
 
DR. GARY ROSBERG: Have one of us have 24 hours per day to invest. 
And, after we take care of ourselves and we go to work, and we try to 
take care of the kids, we need to conserve energy in our 
relationships—especially our marriage relationship. 
 
BARBARA ROSBERG: Boy, we sure do. 
 
GARY: You know, Barb, I remember years ago when I was working on 
my doctorate degree. Coming home very late from the library one 
night I found a newspaper article on my pillow. And you were asleep. 
And your back was to me. As I recall it was about Senator Paul 
Tsongas; a Massachusetts senator who was running for president. He 
contracted cancer, went to the treatment, called a press conference, 
and everyone thought he was going to jump back into the race.  
Instead, he withdrew. And a reporter asked him, “Why are you 
withdrawing from the race for the presidency?”  And he said, “I don’t 
know one man who has ever laid on his deathbed and said he wished 
he’d spent more time at the office”. 
 
You know what, Barb? That is important. As important as our work is, 
as important as parenting is, we need to conserve energy for a 
husband and a wife. 
 
 
BARBARA: You know, both men and women long for a connection, and 
it could be that at the end of the day, when a husband comes home, 
he’s tired, he’s weary, he doesn’t want to go through it all again with 
his wife—and she wants to talk to connect. It could be, at the end of 
the day, he is so looking forward to the time of physical connection, 
sexual connection, in a marriage, and she is so weary and tired that 
she doesn’t want to connect. So, Gary, let’s pull back and talk about 
how a couple can really get to that point of connection, if they just 
give 20 minutes a day to their marriage. 
 
GARY: You know, we have a couple of chairs in our kitchen, and we 
used to have a couple of chairs in our living room—and we’ve done 
this for over 30 years. At the end of the day, we sit down and we take 
20 minutes and just talk about us. The kids aren’t invited in there. We 
know it’s one point during the day when we are going to connect. And 
I know, as a husband, if I don’t connect with Barb during that 20 
minutes, I’ll pay for it all night long, because she’s got stuff she wants 
to talk about. 
 
BARBARA: It makes sense. I know that in our early years, when we 
first started doing this, we told our kids that unless they were 
bleeding, broken, or bruised, they could not enter into this discussion, 
because their time was at the family dinner table. We eat dinner 
together to hear all about their day, their friends, their teachers. 
 
GARY: You know, life is short, guys. So, I want to coach you to 
conserve some energy during the day for your wife. I’m not saying, 
don’t do a great job at work, because you’ll do that, but conserve 
some energy. I was coaching a bunch of bankers one time in 
Washington, DC. There was a bunch of stress going on, because they 
were shutting down all of these generation farms, and yet they weren’t 
communicating very effectively. And one guy from South Dakota said, 
“Dr. Rosberg, do you know how I found the balance on this thing?” 
And I said, “Tell me about it.”  He said, “I watched for a telephone 
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poll, about ten miles between my house and my bank. And at the end 
of the day, when I would leave my bank for the first five miles, I would 
think about my bank, but then when I got to that telephone poll, I’d 
start preparing to connect to my family.” He said, “I’d start to think 
about them, and what I was going to say to them. And then, at the 
end of the day, when I was sitting with my family, I’d conserved 
energy just for them.” 
 
You know what, guys? I found a telephone poll after that. I learned 
that a little trick like that really prepared me to connect with the 
people who are most important to me. And, at the end of the day, it’s 
your wife. 
 
 
 
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