Marriage isn’t all rainbows and butterflies: sometimes there’s compromise, and sometimes it’s just darn hard work. With jobs, kids and money getting in the way, it’s sometimes hard to keep the spark in your relationship. Many married couples settle for a dissatisfying relationship. The bed is no longer a place to play, it’s a place to sleep and briefly escape the stresses and strains of the world. And instead of weekends being the time to have fun, they’re spent trundling around Costco, looking for bulk discounts and trying to save the pennies.
Nobody wants to live like that, especially when the relationship with their partner used to be so exciting. Here’s how you can truly rebuild in a marriage
Keep The Thrills, Not The Courtship
One of the mistakes that married couples make when they’re trying to inject the thrills back into their relationship is to go back and do exactly what they did when the first met. They go out for expensive romantic dinners by candlelight, say romantic stuff to each other and listen to soft music. But this tactic rarely works because they weren’t what made courtship exciting. What made courtship exciting was the fact that everything was new and that the person you had met seemed to so exciting. Now that you’re used to them and how they operate, there’s less mystery and interest.
Bringing the thrills back doesn’t mean recreating the past. It means actually bringing the thrills back and doing exciting things together. The key is finding stuff to do that is actually exciting and arousing. That could mean going hiking somewhere new, rock climbing or going on a rollercoaster.
Challenge Each Other
Another reason marriages can seem stale is because your life has become stale. You do the same things every day, and you’ve gotten your routine down to a tee. And while this might be good news from an efficiency standpoint, it can be bad for a marriage.
The way to bust out of a rut and make marriage more exciting again is to challenge each other. According to researchers at the University of North Carolina, couples who overcame tough challenges together are those that are happiest in the long term. The researchers said that couples who overcame challenges experienced a rush of adrenaline that actually helped them forge closer bonds and get to know each other better. According to the researchers, the success of completing a challenge aroused the same pathways in the brain as sexual arousal, producing a similar euphoric experience.
Taking A Break
Taking a break from a marriage might sound like a bad idea. But there’s a lot of truth to the old adage that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You don’t, of course, have to officially announce that you’re on a break, even to your partner. You could just decide that you’re going to take off for a couple of weeks and go on holiday with your friends, leaving your partner to do whatever they want. Being in a happy relationship means that sometimes there have to be interruptions in that relationship.
