5 Tips to Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut
Do you sometimes feel like you and your spouse have drifted into that same-ole, humdrum routine where your day-to-day lifestyle starts making you feel disconnected and stuck in a rut? It’s time to get your marriage out of a rut. Are there more awkward silences in your conversations? Or are you starting to get bored with your marriage relationship? When things get that way you need to start looking for ways to recharge your connection. You can’t help but wonder if there’s any advice that rises above the customary clichés and triviality you’ve heard so many times before.
One can’t help but wonder if is there any practical advice that can help a couple jump-start their relationship and get their marriage out of this kind of rut. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, knew the value of having an enjoyable marriage relationship. In Ecclesiastes, he advised, “Enjoy life with your wife… It may sound simplistic, but similarly, that advice still stands for couples today. Maybe we need to make time and find ways to enjoy our partnership with each other again.
Five Tips to Get your Marriage Out of a Rut
Hopefully, these 5 tips can help you begin to enjoy each other more by discovering ways to add interest, excitement, and fun back into your relationship:
1. Get physical
Whether it is going on a bike ride, walking, or going on a day trip to a nearby town or city, getting physically active is a great way to change the routine and dynamics of your marriage relationship. Another way would get physical would be to light the candles and turn on some romantic music and … you know? That thing that newlywed couples do? Do that. (But really, I mean exercise on this one!) Hike a new trail together. Go bicycle riding together. Go jogging or work out together. Getting exercise reduces your level of stress, improves your mood, and alters serotonin levels.
2. Get Playful
It’s been aptly said, “couples who play together stay together.” Participating in, various kinds of fun and playful activities with your spouse is a great way to keep you engaged, connected, and interested in each other and your relationship. Maintaining your youthful spirit and childlike nature can keep things light in your relationship.
Fun activities might include: having occasional game nights when you play table games together; being humorous with one another. These activities allow you some diversion, have fun with each other, and in the process grow to do activities you would each like to try. Then create a list of places you would like to go (i.e. sporting activities to play, cities to visit, day trips to take, museums to tour, etc.). Check out a music concert, a car show, a county fair, a play, or a dance festival. Then randomly select an event or place each week and go do something new and fun together, rather than becoming bored and feeling disconnected from the one you love. Being spontaneous and random will get your marriage out of a rut.
3. Get Brainy
Take a class together and learn something new together, whether it’s dancing lessons, a cooking lesson, or going to a self-development workshop. Being mentally engaged with your spouse can add variety to your topics of conversation and it perhaps adds some mental vitality and interaction and interest to your marriage relationship.
4. Get Risky
Use your imagination and brainstorm together to find various activities that stretch you. Outdoors. Go camping or hiking. Try spelunking, which is exploring caves. Learn how to canoe. If you live near the beach, try surfing, snorkeling, or scuba diving. Or go extreme. Try a more extreme activity like rafting, skydiving, or rock climbing. Play a game of paintball or laser tag. Buy or rent a couple of ATVs and go off-roading. New adventures will start the process of getting the marriage out of a rut.
5. Get-together
Oftentimes, when there are children involved couples can become hyper-scheduled, stressed, and impatient with each other. Even couples who don’t have children, can at times find themselves bored and disinterested in their marriage relationship. Often couples can curtail these challenges by establishing a weekly date night to add some imaginative variety to the relationship. Hire a babysitter or ask friends and family to help with the kids. Go for a weekend night out and get back to your courting days. Finding a variety of different restaurants to dine at, to reconnect and rekindle that spark you once enjoyed in your marriage.
So now you have five tips. Now it’s time to put them to use and Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut!