A couple questions with lucid dreaming

Hi everyone had had some success in the past with lucid dreaming but never did any of the formal stuff like RC's and never kept a dream journal (I'll get into that later). Anyway found this site and have been reading a couple threads and have some questions.

1. Many people say they have dreams that seem to last hours but typical REM sleep lasts ~30 mins. Is this the case when you are lucid? Is there a way to extend a dream?

2. Anyone out there married or have a long term significant other? It seems that many of the techniques are more difficult when sleeping with other people. One example is keeping a dream journal, I would not necessarily want the wifey to know what goes on in every single one of my dreams ;)