Have Fun With Your Partner in the New Year
Most of us make the decision to become better than ourselves: we vow to quit sugar, train three days a week, dust off our resume, and really start our job search. In general, decisions tend to be very focused on me – willpower, weight loss, self-care.
But what if we decided to do good things for our relationship, such as going to dance more or even spending more time together on the couch? Research shows that getting your partner involved as you try to get healthy is a huge predictor of success, so why not make a deal that you’re also going to shape your love life as well? If you’re both looking to improve your relationship, you’ve just increased your chances of ending 2018 with a stronger bond than you did at the beginning.
At least that’s what the Family Research Fellows advise . IFS surveyed its academics and participants for the best advice on how to spend a year on the right foot in marriage. Tips include everything from “don’t listen to the phone” to “listen more” to “find an older married couple to hang out with,” but my favorite is definitely “double the positive time together.”
Scott Stanley, co-director of the University of Denver Marriage and Family Research Center, writes: “Explore your free time. As a couple, do you regularly do something in your free time that you both enjoy? “
Stanley notes in another IFS post that one would think that spending time with your partner would undoubtedly be beneficial for the relationship, but that the topic of relaxation and relationship satisfaction is actually a little more complex than that. It’s easy for couples with strong interests in common to hang out together – if you both love to ride the guitar or squeeze tomatoes at the farmers’ market, what to do Saturday night and Sunday morning is obvious. Couples who don’t have overlapping interests are more difficult.
He cites a 2002 study that, in fact, found that “a couple’s hobby is less closely related to marital happiness than most people think,” and that the determining factor is that both partners should enjoy the activity. This may sound like a great revelation – of course, both partners should enjoy their leisure time – but think how many couples you know, where one partner isn’t as keen on soccer, counter-dancing, wine tasting, or NASCAR, but agrees one way or another. Stanley writes: “For conjugal bliss, neither now nor in the future, this will not entail if the couple regularly engage in leisure activities that are mainly enjoyed by the husband.” In other words, you can not fake it until you do it.
This applies to all genders, all kinds of couples and relationships – no one has to pretend to care what the Braves do off-season or who sings the soprano at Tosca at the Met. So even if you’re really good you learn to pretend that you do not care, it’s time to take a new year’s resolution to overestimate your “positive pastime” together and make it, well, in general, more positive.
In his post on vacation, Stanley offers specific solutions for how to talk if you don’t actually enjoy what you are doing together and make a list of the things you actually enjoy doing together. Then, he suggests, agree to keep other relationship problems out of your fun. If you play minigolf, don’t talk about how angry your family budget is or how you want your MIL to be visited less often. Let your holiday be conflict-free.
Ultimately, decisions should make your life better. In 2018, decide to have more fun with your partner. At the very least, you’ll feel less guilty about snuggling up on your couch and watching Netflix with your loved one instead of going to the gym.