Our lives are so busy that work and family responsibilities preclude very much quiet time with our mates. We are so weary when we finally fall into bed that we seldom take the time to really talk to each other or to nurture that specialness that is ours alone.
Look at your schedule and see where some quiet time together can be stolen from the world. If you needed to arrange an important meeting, you would make time. If you had a child in the hospital, you would most certainly make the time to spend hours there.
The time required doesn't have to be huge. The commitment to make that time, on a regular basis, does. This is the most important person in your life, not someone to be relegated to a list, somewhere below business demands and the PTA.
Snatch an hour here and an hour there just to be alone with your love, nurturing the uniqueness of the two of you. Take the kids to their grandparents or get a babysitter. Turn off your blackberry and your cell phone. Black out spaces in your daily planner for times when you will both break away from the world and its demands. If you keep a family activity calendar on the refrigerator door, mark down your together time and defend it rabidly against all intrusions.
An hour together, even only once or twice a week, is essential to keep the bonds of affection and your private communication channels alive. Remind yourselves of how important you are to each other and that you are actively engaged as life partners, not merely two people living together under the same roof.
We grow in different directions because we undergo different experiences. Sharing that growth and its effect on us can avoid the terrible (but common) realization at some future point that you and the love of your life have become strangers.
You can use your uninterrupted time to do anything you enjoy. Take a walk, or a drive, and talk about yourselves. Play word games or trivia on the Internet, laughing and communicating with each other as you did when you were dating so long ago. Listen to music that was popular when you met and reminisce about the good old days.
Talk about movies you've seen, books you've read, sports, politics, or national events. Talk about plans for the future and how you see your lives together in a year, five years, ten. Talk about your problems and what you can do together to resolve them.
Plan when your next time together will be and what you are going to do. And then do it.
Dr. Bola provides a complimentary copy of
"Seven Super Simple Tips: Keep Your Marriage Fresh" from which this article is taken. Steal it at: http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsMarriage.html
