It’s not infrequent that I see testimonies from married people who say they lost their spark in their marriage. I feel like happened to me, too, and twice. From the bulk of my time being taken up by chores and household management, to routines that were boring and repetitive, lack of new ideas, and eventual dimming of interesting conversations, exploration, and bedroom activity.
Do all marriages pull people towards complacency and laziness? Is it possible to have a marriage where you and your partner remain vibrant, curious about the world, and adventurous?
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Just the opposite. Got divorced after 32 years who a boat anchor who dragged me down. Then I remarried and wow did life change. My current husband encouraged me to change jobs, submit papers to conferences, to travel and get out of my comfort zone. He’s always encouraging but gently pushes me to do things I’m afraid to try. Once I try it then I love it. He convinced me to get on the high roller in Vegas, I thought I was going to have stroke. I literally got on the floor, hanging onto the seat and told him, Im not to make it. Then he started asking me, is that the Bellagio? Is that …? I started looking around and the view was spectacular. I got off the floor and enjoyed the rest of the ride. It’s always like that
For context both my dh and I were married before so we had/ have the perspective of what NOT to do and what we would and would not tolerate.
We have had a doozy of a time together for the past 14 years , if I even began writing out all the external stressors it would take all day.
However I think we do a damn good job of circling back to each other even if we are in the midst of chaos.
We try our best to take a walk together most nights of the week even if it’s just 10 minutes . Sometimes we blab the whole time , other times we walk in silence just holding hands.
We try to keep Sunday evening open and without outside commitment . It doesn’t always happen but it’s much easier now that the kids are all pretty much grown. We don’t do anything crazy , sometimes we take a hike or bike ride often we just lock our door, put in some music and spend a couple uninterrupted hours together.
We check in often through the day , a few quick texts keeps us connected when we are out in the world.
We also try to go see live music together as often as possible, usually a couple times a month with some summer festival weekends thrown in for good measure. It’s something we both enjoy and really keeps us connected.
I don’t think stagnation is inevitable but it definitely takes planning and effort. If you become complacent or continually put all the “stuff” ahead of your marriage it’s easy to do.
My husband is a genius. He is constantly learning new things, usually connected somehow to neurology, photography and AI. In a month or so he built us an AI launcher that includes all the LLMs with systematic benchmarks for each. He created an app related to AI and images. Then got creds so he could put it on the app store. then programmed a robot arm to draw images based on his app. and learned baysean stats and linear algebra so his calculations when programming could be more accurate. I love his brain and we have a lot of fun. I also find smart very sexy so all this fuels our sexytime… when the world is a shitshow, we stay happy in our bubble.
35 years in. There are a few elements for us. We give each other a pass on personality: I’m more extroverted, he’s more introverted, so he is cool with me having multiple friends that I go and do stuff with, and I don’t take his lack of interest in going out into public personally. We are both imaginative, and have always fed that by reading, gaming, movies, good TV, and we discuss all of it even when our tastes differ. We look for things we think the other person will like. We support each other’s hobbies, even if we don’t share them. We make time a couple times a week to do the hobbies we share together.
Mostly we each just try to build the other person up, rather than squash them down.
Marriage is just two people living together. Stagnant people have stagnant marriages.
People who are responsible and kind have good marriages. People who are responsible, kind, and fun have great marriages.