Your marriage may have become routine like some of the people we have worked with over the years in our Life Together Forever Weekends or our Marriage Saving Intensives.

“The is no passion in our relationship.”

“Our marriage is boring and dead.”

“I’m bored.  It’s the same thing every evening, every weekend.”

The Challenge Of A Lifelong Relationship

When you first fell in love, everything was new. Your new love interest was a virtual adventure land, a mystery to curiously be discovered.

You decided to commit to your spouse forever and in the coming years, new adventures took precedence. Learning how to live under the same roof, working out joint finances, discovering unseen preferences for food, entertainment and routine took the early year’s place.

Now you find yourself in a routine that gets it done. You have a pattern of interacting around chores, parenting, in-laws, sex, work, food, logistics, transportation, etc. And you are happy that you are actually getting it all done, but there is something missing.

Your love takes a back seat to getting the things of life done. As you get bored and tired your relationship becomes dull, blasé, and fatigued.

Energize Your Love With Spontaneity

Creating room in your life for spontaneity will refresh your love. Your excitement will return as you are open to the spontaneous actions of your spouse. If you really want your love to be exhilarating, enthusiastic and rekindled, jump into something new or different with your spouse.

Some of the things that we do spontaneously include:

• Grab an unmonitored microphone at a restaurant or grocery store and announce your love of your spouse to everyone.
• Stand up in front of a crowd of people and yell out how much your love your spouse.
• When you arrive at the restaurant earlier than your spouse, tell the hostess that you are waiting on the most attractive person in the world and that they will know your spouse when they come in and have them send them over to you.
• Bring your spouse breakfast in bed, or set up a picnic in the back yard.
• Give your spouse a (non-sexual) massage.
• Pick up your spouse and carry them around.
• If there is music playing in the restaurant, grocery store, lobby or meeting area, start dancing with your spouse.
• While they are not looking, fill your spouse’s car up with gas, or wash and detail it.
• Give your spouse a day off without any chores by doing their chores for them.
• Dedicate a song on the radio to them.
• Put love notes in their luggage so they will find them on the trip.

Here are some things you might want to try in a spontaneous moment.

• Tickle Storm – Attack your spouse with a tickle storm. Don’t stop until your spouse is about to pee in their pants.
• Forever Kiss – Grab your partner and give them a kiss and then another and then another. Try kissing for a full minute. Give them kisses on their mouth and face and head and …
• Adventure Drive/Trip – Call the sitter over and get your spouse in the car with an adventurous drive to where ever you end up. Stop at places you’ve always wondered about but never enough to stop. No agenda, just go. Perhaps to nature, areas you have never visited, roads you’ve never taken.
• Open Houses – Grab the Open Houses list and go drop in to see houses way outside your price range. Look as if you are buying and enjoy warm cookies and dreaming together again.
• Events – Crash an event in the area and see how others do theirs. Anything publicly advertised is up for grabs.
• Be A Foodie – Taste something that you have never tasted before. The restaurant that you have driven by making fun of or that you said you’d never go to is the one you need to go check out.
• Take A Class – Learn a language, enjoy dancing, discover how to cook, take a Bible class or learn to flip houses. Anything together!
• Relive Old Times – Get out your photo albums and scrap books and relive the early days. Retell the stories and each of your memories of what was happening in those old pictures.
• Surprise Chore – Surprise your spouse by doing the chore that they usually do. Don’t tell them you are going to do it, instead just do it and let them discover it.
• Gift Surprise – Buy them something meaningful. It can be as cheap as their favorite candy bar or as expensive as the thing that they have been drooling over for years.

What do you have to say?

We love to hear from readers. Does your marriage need more spontaneity?  How have you been spontaneous with your spouse?  What would you add to the list of ideas?  Do you know someone you need to forward this article to?

This article was written by Roy and Devra Wooten, authors of “The Secret to a Lifetime Love”. Learn more at www.LifeTogetherForever.com © Roy and Devra Wooten 2016. All Rights Reserved. You may replicate this article as long as it is provided free to recipients and includes appropriate attribution. Written permission for other use may be obtained at [email protected].