Does Your Marriage Feel Stuck?

Dating is fun. You first meet, things are exciting, and butterflies are brewing. You can't wait to get to know more and more about this person you're with. You laugh together, cry together, and enjoy one another. Then you get married, and you think you know all there is to know about who you’ve chosen to be with for your entire life. You have arrived. But then time goes by, life gets busy, kids come along, and before long, you feel like “roommates.”

Unfortunately, many couples fall into this cycle. Over time, they just drift apart, and the marriage begins to feel sort of dead.

So what do you do when you get to this point?

Well, let's backtrack. Take it all the way back to when you were dating. You were FRIENDS. You more than likely shared secrets with them. You had fun together. You could trust them with everything.

In a sense, married couples lose that friendship in the transition to marriage.

So maybe one of the best ways to do when you start to feel a drift is… becoming friends again.

Not just surface friends. Not just someone you say hi and bye to in passing. Not just someone you connect with occasionally but a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Someone who makes you feel safe, loved, seen, needed, and special. Becoming friends again can put a spark in your relationship and get you both back on track to fulfillment and deeper intimacy.

Here are a couple of ways you can get on the path to becoming friends again.

1. Have Fun and Laugh Together

One of our favorite things to do is LAUGH. Life is hard sometimes, and laughter is some of the best medicine. We like to watch funny movies or just “flirt” around with each other to make each other laugh. Find things that will get a giggle out of each other. Use inside jokes, research some funny dad jokes, or watch funny Reels together.

2. Workout Together

This really can be any type of activity you can do together that is FUN and betters your health. We love pickleball, well Armando may have a bit of an obsession HA! But it's something competitive and fun we do that burns calories in the process. We also enjoy going to the gym together. Walks have also been one of our favorite things to do for years. It's an opportunity for us to talk about whatever is on our minds and connect while getting our “steps” in for the day.

3. Use Any Excuse to Have Some Time Alone

We like to take any and every opportunity we can to just be alone. Our kids are older now, but we have two dogs, two cats plus school, drivers ed, tennis, work, etc., that can eat up a lot of time. So we like to take as much as we can for ourselves if we can’t fit in a 3-hour date night on a Friday. For us, this looks like riding together to get gas, going on a Costco trip together, dropping the kids off together, grabbing a coffee together, smelling candles at Bath and Body Works together, picking up the grocery order at HEB. Sometimes a car ride is all we have to ourselves, and we TAKE IT every time. Notice the key word here is TOGETHER.

4. Ask Them Interesting Questions

When you're getting to know someone, what do you do? You ask them questions about themselves. Me and Armando like to ask “would you rather” questions. Here are some other interesting questions to ask:

- Would you rather burn to death or freeze to death? (lol)

- Would you rather swim in a tank of sharks or a tank of eels?

- What did you want to be when you were a kid?

- What's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you?

- What is your dream vacation and why?

- Who's your favorite actor?

- What's your favorite movie of all time?

- If you had one food you could eat for the rest of your life and calories didn't count, what would you eat?

- What's your biggest dream/desire?

- What part of my body do you admire/like the most?

5. Be a Better Friend

It's interesting that friendship is so celebrated in society today, and we put so much intentionality behind friendship, but we neglect to put that much more intentionality into our marriages. What does a good friend look like to you? Be THAT for your spouse. TRUST, RESPECT, HONOR, SELFLESSNESS go a long way in a friendship.

Matthew 7:12 says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Prayer for today: “God bless the friendship that we have with one another, show us the areas in which we have drifted apart, and help us to have grace for one another. Let our relationship be filled with laughter and joy today and help us to grow in deeper friendship with one another. Amen.”

Go have fun,

Liz and Armando