rising above?

For several years now, my wife and I have been struggling with several rather significant issues on a personal, social, relationship and spiritual level. According to her, these many issues distract and discourage her from being more close to me. Some things just prevent relaxing, others are more serious and represent a poorer reflection of me.

We've tried all the common sense approaches to resolving them such as trying my way or hers, ignoring it, and trying to combine our individual approaches into something productive. Nothing's worked and we continue to carry these unresolved issues like annoying ailments that one acquires with old age. time passes and you're immobile, discouraged, and have essentially compromised yourself into a tiny corner, living in a sheltered and stifling place.

Another complication, logistically speaking, is the birth of our second daughter, which has kept us chained to a very limited schedule. (She's so wonderful and we love her very very much, so talking about her in this way is totally slanted and not representative of my complete feelings, of course. ) Anyway, given our experience as parents, we're ready to lift our heads from the day-to-day (or should I say minute-to-minute) existence and look a the bigger picture.

We had a very nice and impromptu conversation yesterday and identified the following major issues in our relationship:

1. Finances - easy budget and filing, reporting
2. Home organizing (closets, laundry, cleanliness/sloppiness)
3. Clothing storage ( seasons and kids)
4. Dressing for body type and style
5. Physical health /fitness;vegan love.
6. Laziness
7. intimacy in all its forms (at one point in time, or continuing)
8. Social "management" of events, friends, etc.
9. Home decoration

We agreed to tackle each of these, one by one, to identify the resources we need (e.g. books, videos, consultants, workshops, etc).

How cool would it be for us to just nail these?? How close would we become? How much more respect would we have for one another?