When a marriage gets into a rut, there’s rarely intimacy inside or outside of the bedroom. A bad habit that can form is when sex is used as “leverage”. This means it’s given as a “reward”or withheld as a “punishment”, and this can slowly sabotage the trust and intimacy in your marriage.
Like a plant or tree, your relationship needs food and water to grow or it will wither and die. Don’t let boredom creep into your marriage so that you start to drift apart. Then you end up just looking at this stranger sitting across the breakfast table wondering how you got there!
However, ruts don’t happen overnight, and there will be warning signs.
Ask yourself:
Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of your friends or would you like to make new friends?
Would you like to:
- Get more involved with the local community and help out with the local fun days?
- Do some charity work together for the local animal welfare trust?
- Learn French together in time for your summer holiday to Paris?
- Play tennis together and find out who the next Wimbledon champion is going to be!?
These types of activities can bring in richness and growth into your marriage. You will end up having new interests to talk about and share, and new acquaintances who you might like to invite to your home for dinner one evening.
Quick Tips:
- Book a weekend away with no TV and, dare I say, it no mobile phone!
- Have a weekly date with each other so that you talk and connect with each other.
- Write little notes to each other. An ‘I LOVE YOU’ Post It note put inside your spouse’s sandwich box will hopefully make them smile when they open it.
- Do something new together. Go cycling, get tickets for a concert, visit the garden centre or join a singing group.
- Plan a surprise trip away that really captures the imagination.
- Make time for a fun, exciting sexual encounter with no children around!
Guest post by Carole Spiers, Love and Relationship Expert
Image from Flickr by elena-lu (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 License)