Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut

‘The honeymoon period ‘ – it’s a well used phrase to describe the early days of a marriage or of any relationship for that matter when you’ve not long fallen in love and where your thoughts are continually consumed with your partner. It’s the time when you constantly feel butterflies in your stomach and you’re perpetually going around as if you’re floating on a fluffy white cloud.

However, it’s inevitable that these feelings cannot last forever and that, in time, a good marriage settles down into a deeper, far more meaningful relationship without quite as much of the euphoria that you’ll no doubt have experienced at the beginning.

Don't Get Stuck in the Same Old Routine

In any marriage, you’ll inevitably have to settle into some kind of routine simply to function more efficiently. Things like the shared household chores, work commitments and responsibilities towards children will all combine to create routines and habits that can often take the shine off a relationship.

Without nurturing the marriage and growing together within it, a rut can start to develop. If you allow that to develop, it can start to put tremendous pressure on a marriage where one or both spouses start to feel that life has become dull and tedious.

How to Get Out of a Rut

There are many things you can try to get your marriage out of a rut. Not all of the suggestions here will work for everyone but the first important thing to do is to sit down with your spouse and tell them how you are feeling.

Staying silent and a lack of communication is the obvious way in which one or both spouses unhappiness with an aspect of the relationship can fester away and can lead to resentment unless you talk honestly and openly about your feelings. Be accepting in the part you’ve played also in allowing a rut to develop and try to identify things that you might do differently.

Holidays and Weekend Breaks

You might find that your annual 2 holidays at the same time in the same location do not thrill you as they used to. Discuss going to different places and at different times of the year, if that’s possible. Perhaps, the gap between holidays is too great so why not think about whisking your better half off on an occasional weekend break?

Social Lives

Perhaps the problem is that your social time always seems to be spent in the same place or with the same people – the same pub is a good example. Why not both decide to meet up with different friends occasionally in different places or go out and socialise just together to somewhere new? – a nice dinner for two in a fancy restaurant now and again can break up the routine of the pub.

You may have separate hobbies which is perfectly fine unless they take up so much of your time that you hardly get to see each other. Therefore, you might consider taking up a new hobby which you can do together.

Be Spontaneous and Surprise Your Spouse

You don’t need to wait for special occasions like birthdays to give a nice surprise to your spouse. Booking a night at the theatre, buying a surprise bouquet of flowers and even your sex life can all be spontaneous surprises as opposed to being those kinds of things that are simply reserved for set days and times and the odd special occasion.

The important thing to remember is not to simply let your marriage wilt. Think of it as a garden that always needs tending and when one or both of you feel that it has become stale, making it interesting again always begins with communicating with each other and trying to come up with ways you can spice it up again.