One of the best parts of being married is having someone to do something with. Seriously! Your partner does or should have a lot of common interests and that means when one of you wants to go and do something wild and crazy, you don’t have to look far to find your partner-in-crime.
Now, this isn’t about Fun with Dick and Jane and it’s really not about Mr. And Mrs. Smith. It’s about having a good time and having it together. It’s about taking risks, exploring options and seeing the world through two sets of eyes. It’s about putting the fun back into marriage and remembering all the things you used to do together. It’s about not letting the day-to-day needs of life drown out all the reasons you got married in the first place.
So how do you brainstorm? How do you plan that adventure together? Well – you start by talking about what you both want to do. Does one of you want to go back to school? Have you always dreamed of painting? Would just love to go to London and see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum?
These are just some ideas, but instead of saying, “I always wanted to …” or “I thought that someday we might …” or worse “I gave up on the idea of ever … “ talk about your adventure and do it together.
If one of you wants to go back to school, it’s going to take both of you to make the adventure happen. Not only because school is hard, but also the commitment of time and financial resources. One partner is getting their dream, but the other partner is keeping the home fires going.
What if both of you want to go back to school? Can you swing it? With the availability of online courses, you might. Talk about your options. Make a game plan and address the reality of time spent in class, in study and at work versus time with the family.
Maybe travel is your thing and you’ve always wanted to get a stamp in your passport. Plan that adventure together. Choose an exotic location that you’ve always wanted to go. Put five dollars into a savings account and discuss how you can make your dream a reality. Don’t make it a source of stress or bone of contention, but make it an adventure to get to the goal.
Sometimes, the journey is almost as much fun as the arrival will be.
What if you don’t really have any big dreams of adventure, but you do want to do something fun together. Take a ballroom dancing class, take karate, study art or cooking – but go together. About three years ago, friends who had been married for ten years started talking about the distance they felt from each other. Their lives paralleled and rarely intersected. They didn’t really enjoy the same things anymore and while they weren’t fighting, they weren’t having fun together.
They challenged themselves to find the magic again. They wrote down some outrageous activities onto small sheets of paper and stuck them all in a fishbowl. One weekend a month was designated ‘couple’ only weekend. They’d reach into the fish bowl, pull out a slip of paper and whatever was on it is what they did for that weekend.
In four months, they’d repainted their house, learned to dance Salsa, bowled in a weekend league and journeyed out of town to a film festival. They were having the time of their life and while their lives still ran parallel during the week, they talked more about the things they’d done and the things they might do the next month.
They discovered they still knew how to enjoy each other.
So start brainstorming and plan an adventure with your partner today.