“Honey, we don’t spend enough time together.”
“Yes we do, we spent all weekend together.”
“But we were never alone. We were with the kids at all their activities and with our other couple friends at night.”
“Well, I would say we are together all the time.”
This conversation typifies a common problem facing many couples today- creating the time for their relationship. In today’s busy world, trying to take care of all our relationships, such as children, our job, family and friends is a major task. The one relationship we tend to neglect is our relationship with our spouse. Our culture’s belief that marriage is “until death we part” tends to set us up for taking the relationship for granted and creating an atmosphere of complacency.
Some people have the attitude that they got married so they wouldn’t have to date anymore. I can understand not wanting to got through the hassle of meeting new people, but I wouldn’t want to stop putting out the effort of making dates with my lover once the commitment to the relationship occurs.
Couples must dedicate a specific time and place on their calendar to be alone with their spouse. Some people believe that a couple’s time together should just happen spontaneously, without any planning. The possibility of spontaneously getting together with your spouse might be a reality if you’re on vacation, but with the demands of the workweek and kids’ activities on the weekends, this spontaneity is not likely.
Couples must set up time to be alone in advance so they can be intimate- whether it be an evening dinner or a weekend away without children. It needs to be put on the couple’s family calendar along with the soccer matches and all the other events.
Too often couples wait until the very existence of their relationship is threatened to create the time and space to be together. It’s only then that their relationship moves up to number one on their priority list. It’s sad that the fear of losing the relationship is what motivates them. I would rather have their joy and pleasure of being together be the motivation to create a date of intimacy and romance.
A song lyric that I always keep in my mind that helps me to avoid this relationship trap of complacency is “you don’t miss your water until your well runs dry.”
