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In this episode, Amberly talks about having more fun in your marriage and playing together as a couple. She touches on daily, everyday, spontaneous fun as well as intentionally setting aside time to do fun things together and create fun in your marriage, such as date night. Creating fun in your marriage is not only going to strengthen and connect the two of you, it will help you get through hard times, it will build the friendship and romantic relationship that you have with each other.
Welcome to episode two of the Prioritize Your Marriage podcast. Today we’re going to talk about having fun in your marriage. We’re going to talk about the daily, everyday fun that you have together as a couple, as well as intentionally setting aside time to do fun things together and create fun in your marriage.
“Have more fun” is one of the pillars of A Prioritized Marriage. Romantic relationships are most often built on your ability to have fun together. I don’t know a single couple who says they chose to get married because they’re great at being bored together. But if the reason you chose to marry your spouse is because they were really boring, please let me know and correct me that there are some people who choose to get married because they’re boring together. I do want you to be able to enjoy being bored together but that again plays into the having fun together.
Laughter, shared hobbies and entertainment, and a general ability to have fun together prompts most long term relationships. From that fun, you get to know each other on a deeper level and create the connection that leads you to marriage. I’ve heard people say that sex is the fun that adults have.
While intimacy is a pillar of A Prioritized Marriage and one we’re gonna discuss in this first handful of podcast episodes. If that’s the only fun in your marriage anymore, you need to find the fun again. And I’m going to give you some ideas of how to do that.
We had the opportunity back in 2019 to attend a date night event with John and Julie Gottman. It was a dream come true for me. And a true bucket list experience. But one of the things that I remember, in addition to all the awesome things that the Gottman’s shared, was that there was a conversation had by Dr. Laura Heck. She’s a Gottman Certified Therapist and the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Marriage Therapy Radio. She did her presentation on having more fun in your marriage and taking time to play with your spouse. And during that presentation, she asked a question that I really loved. She asked, “who is the center of your joy?” And I want you to think about the same.
So here are a couple of follow-up questions. Does the majority of the joy in your life come from your spouse? Is the joy that you get from your spouse centered around just the two of you together? Or does most of that fun come when you’re watching your spouse interact with your children and other family members or friends? I was listening to an episode of Laura’s podcast a couple of years ago and she was again talking about fun in marriage. I’m going to try to find that episode and link it in the show notes so you can listen to it as well. But in that episode, Laura emphasized the importance of playing with your spouse, not just alongside them as you’re both playing and having fun with other people. This really got me thinking about times when I felt like my husband and I are having fun in the things we are doing and the way we are interacting together.
My personal goal when it comes to playing and having fun in my own marriage is lots of smiles and laughter when we’re together, just the two of us, as well as when we’re with other people. Fun and laughter are the core of our relationship. We love shows that are funny and that we can quote in our everyday lives. One of my most quoted lines is, “I don’t trust you, Phyllis”. And that’s something I say to my husband on a regular basis, in joking and fun. Many of our date nights include comedy in some form and lots of laughter when we’re eating together or participating in another activity.
I remember specifically one date night when I knew my husband was having a lot of fun and happy to be having fun with me. We were at Topgolf. My husband is a decent golfer and used to be on a golf team in high school, but I’m not even somewhat good at golfing. I fail majorly just at like putt putt mini golf. But I remember turning around and it was probably after I’d hit the ball and it had just rolled off into the net or barely flown very far at all or gone somewhere random and my husband had this huge smile on his face and he was laughing kind of at me, but with me because I was laughing at myself. That moment is forever etched in my memory.
Let’s talk about daily fun, but also, let’s talk for a minute about date nights, because it’s a key piece of the have more fun pillar. I’m going to have a lot of future episodes about date night, it’s something that I feel really passionately about, but I thought it was important to include in these first episodes as well, and just touch on a little bit. Date night provides the perfect setting to have fun together, to make memories, and to connect. Date night isn’t about the extravagance of the activity, the money spent, or the time away from your kids. It should be a time when you reconnect as a married couple and a time when you can fall in love all over again. Date night can take both of you back to the carefree days of your relationship. Before you had bills to pay, kids to worry about, A house that keeps breaking, that’s our current situation, or other life responsibilities that bring added stress.
I always tell couples to make date night a habit, but don’t make a habit out of date night. What I mean by that is that you need to change things up. If you’re doing the same thing for date night every week, it’s not really a special time for your marriage, and date night can start to become just like every other night of the week and just very routine. As routine as brushing your teeth in the morning. Research suggests that one of the best things a couple can do to keep their relationship strong and vibrant for years is to reinvent date night and try something new and different that they haven’t before.
One study says that new experiences “activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepephrine”(?) I can’t say that, but you can go read it in the show transcript so you know what I’m talking about. “These are the same brain circuits that are ignited in early romantic love, a time of exhilaration and obsessive thoughts about a new partner.” So when you’re sitting there thinking, ‘I remember back when his text used to make me so giddy’ or ‘seeing her name on my phone as calling me would just light me up inside’. All those things, when you remember those butterflies from the early days of your dating relationships, doing new things together, experiencing new things together, and doing that intentionally, like on date night, is important.
Honestly, I’m really good at making date night fun. It’s the everyday moments where I’m looking to create more fun in our current season of life. We often let the business side of our relationship take over and I forget to laugh or create fun moments on a daily basis. My husband is currently a student. I just graduated. We have never-ending house projects, kids who need our attention. We have a dog who needs our attention. If you follow on social media, you know, he is his own trouble. And so sometimes it can just be a lot and it can be stress and it can be serious, but I want to have more of that fun and let more of that fun into my relationship. So whether you’re looking for new things to add more fun to your date nights or just fun in your everyday lives, I thought I’d share a few ideas today to help you out. And you can find links for some of these things in the show notes. I’m just going to share a couple of them.
One of my first ones to share is The Adventure Challenge. The Adventure Challenge has so many different options They have The Couple’s Edition and just released The Couple’s Edition Volume II. These are perfect for date night whether you’re going out or staying in, on a budget or trying to look for something free. They also have the Mini Dates and this is perfect for creating fun in your relationship after the kids go to bed or maybe one day when you have time off together or on the weekend when you are taking a break from projects and your to do list. They are 30 minute or less activities that get you having fun laughing and connecting with each other. They also have Adventure Challenges for families, for kids to do on their own, for you to do with friends, that you can do just by yourself to connect with yourself. And they have the In Bed edition as well as their new Quickies edition, which is like mini dates, but for in bed. You’ll love them! You can use code APM10 to get 10 percent off your purchase of The Adventure Challenge, anything on their site.
Another idea is to surprise your spouse with fun. Something that I think of when I think of this, I picture those pictures that go around social media where there’s a Nerf dart gun or a water gun and a note from the other spouse or the other partner saying, I’m hidden somewhere in the house or the yard with the other one. This is yours, the game is on, and they start a war. This could look something like this. It could be, we just hid almost 200 ducks in my parent’s house while they were on vacation. You could do something similar to your spouse’s car, to their office in the house, to their office at their office, if that’s applicable or appropriate for their situation. Anything fun like that. If you guys like to be in prank wars, whatever that looks like, just engaging them in something fun and surprising them with that.
You can also do things that you would do for fun with your kids or that you would do for fun as a kid. This could look like going to the playground and playing together. Maybe later at night when there’s not as many kids around, so it’s not weird that two grown adults are playing on the playground, not with their own kids. We have a fun swing park in our area that I would love to go to for date night because sitting on the swings and talking and swinging was a part of our early relationship and so I think it would be fun to go here to this park but also to take our kids. What are some things that you would do with your kids? We go on a Christmas lights drive with our kids, but then we do it again as date night with ourselves. So something that you would do as a fun family activity, maybe it’s a fall festival, maybe it is going to Disneyland. So many couples are going to Disneyland. by themselves without their kids or when they’re in Disneyland they have other family members with them so they’re able to take some time and go play together without the kids. It’s a whole new experience and both things are valuable for your marriage. So setting yourself up doing things that you would do to have fun as a kid or with your kids.
Simple things that you can do every day, things like have a dance party. I mentioned this presentation from Dr. Laura Heck and during that date night event, she talked about how one of her favorite things to do to add fun to her family’s day was to start a dance party. And it’s something that’s a ritual and a tradition. She would go downstairs in the morning to make breakfast and they have a favorite soundtrack that they listen to for their dance parties. You could create your own playlist, maybe you have one you do with your kids, one you do with your spouse, and set aside all your other responsibilities and just dance together. This could be code for, it’s time to have fun. You turn on the playlist and you do something fun.
And the other, something you can do that’s like a daily thing, I think we all scroll social media and find those funny reels or those funny memes. I joke that memes are my husband’s other love language.
He loves memes. He has whole entire texting conversations with people in his life and all they do is send memes back and forth to each other. That’s all they do. They don’t talk about anything else and it’s just funny. So sending something like that.
Enjoying each other’s jokes. When I first came up with this idea or first thought of this idea, I almost put laugh at each other’s jokes, but I think you can laugh at someone’s joke or you can truly take time to enjoy it no matter how cheesy or dumb it is like dad jokes. I laugh at my husband’s dad jokes more than my kids laugh at my husband’s dad jokes and I think it secretly brings him joy. So if your spouse shares a joke with you whether it’s fairly funny or cheesy or you just think it’s dumb stop and truly enjoy it. Think about it and really try to enjoy it. It’s going to be funnier if you soak it in, embrace its silliness. And then they’re going to be more likely to continue those silly and fun moments. They’re going to be more likely to share the memes with you, to share the videos with you. If you’ve already seen a video that they’ve shown you, I’m so guilty of this. I’ll be like, Oh yeah, I saw that one last week. Same with memes. But be like, Oh yeah, I watched that one last week, it was so funny! Let’s watch it together. And I thought of this because the other night I saved some videos to share with my husband and I also shared some with my family. And I said, “Did you watch those that I shared in my family’s group?” And then I was like, “Turn the screen so I can see it too.” So even though I knew what was happening I could laugh right along with him. So truly enjoy and have fun together.
I have two other things. The first one is to do something that you did while you were dating. This is super simple. Those things that you did for fun, what were those things? How can you start doing those things together again on a regular basis? Or something similar that brings that same fun, playful side of your relationship out.
And then this is one that I thought of recently. I have a mentor, a professor, a friend. He lost his wife this summer, and as he’s been processing his grief about losing her, he shares a lot on social media, and obviously, there’s a lot that he keeps private, but his sharing reminds me to not take my relationship for granted. And it’s also been good learning for me and things that he’s shared. And so one of the posts that really stuck out to me as he was sharing these things he said, “there was nothing quite as rewarding to me as watching [my wife] enjoy her hobbies. I smiled so many times as she took on things that only interested me because it involved her [and I tried to do the same]. I did it because that look in her eyes brought me so much happiness. Please enjoy your partner’s joy.”
And so he’s saying he enjoyed when she joined him and the things that brought him joy, but he also enjoyed watching her do the things that brought her joy. I talked about when my husband was at Topgolf and it’s something that he loves to do, or if I send him a meme, or if he sends me a meme and I laugh at it and react to it. Those are the times when he is enjoying himself the most. He’s enjoying me the most. He’s enjoying our relationship a lot. Find something your spouse enjoys and join them in that activity. It doesn’t have to be as often as they’re doing it but don’t moan and groan through it, embrace it and truly try to have fun with them doing what they love. Or at the very least, enjoy sitting with them, being with them while they do what they love. And then plan a time when they can join you in something that you enjoy as well, and make that part of the fun that you have in your marriage.
Something I wanted to share with this, when we were in the NICU with our youngest, we were there for three weeks, and I remember laughing together every single day. We were experiencing one of the hardest trials of our life. We were under constant stress. We were trying to balance life at home with a 16-month-old and life in the hospital with our premature baby. But we still found ways to have fun together every day and I can honestly say that those moments when we laughed together and the fun that we had made that trial more bearable and helped me to see the blessings through the pain.
Creating fun in your marriage is not only going to strengthen and connect you, it’s going to help you get through hard times. It’s going to build that friendship and relationship that you have with each other and I feel like it is such an important part of prioritizing your marriage which is why it is one of three pillars that I have here at A Prioritized Marriage and here for the Prioritize Your Marriage podcast. Try one or two of the things I shared in this episode and then get ready for even more because I am going to share fun in every season of life. No matter where you’re at in your life, you deserve to have fun. So make time for your marriage and watch your connection and intimacy deepen.