There are many reasons why one-on-one time is important when it comes to marriage. It keeps your relationship alive, you both feel happy when you spend time with the person you love, it gives energy to cope with occasional stressful moments in family life, and you can listen to what’s been on your spouse’s mind lately. Keeping your marriage on the front burner, and finding time to be with your spouse may not always an easy thing to do, but imperative to a happy long lasting partnership.
The following 10 ideas can help you intentionally make time for our spouse:
- Cultivate a common interest. Your spouse should be your best friend, and friends enjoy spending time with one another. If you and your spouse have different hobbies, find something you both enjoy doing and do it together. Shared experiences enrich marriages and deepen friendship.
- Try new adventures together. Try doing something different to force yourself out of your typical normal day-to-day living. If you and your spouse would like to do something a little more adventurous, consider activities such as mountain climbing, skydiving, scuba diving ect.
- Have a regular date night. If you don’t have relatives nearby who would gladly watch your kids, then you can consider swapping babysitting with a friend on a regular basis.
- Go on overnight getaways—without the kids.
- Write love letters to one another and read them over a romantic dinner. You may want to redeem it by regularly expressing your love to your spouse in a letter. Then read it to your spouse over a romantic dinner.
- Set aside regular time to talk with one another, without any distractions. Make time to focus on one another and talk about the day’s events.
- Read a book together and discuss it. Take turns choosing the books. If a movie has been made out of the book, read and discuss it together and then watch the movie.
- Be accountable to one another. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 tells us, “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.”
- Pray together. When we regularly pray with our spouse, our souls and hearts are uniquely bound together. Sadly, we’ll forget many of the ways God answers our prayers unless we write them down.
- Tune-up your marriage at a Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway. Attending a Weekend to Remember will help you get away from the distractions of life and focus on one another.