The Lost Art of Having Fun

I frequently ask my clients "What do you and your spouse do for fun?" The response is always amazing to me. I usually get a blank stare, followed by something like, "Fun...what is that?" For many people, fun is a luxury from a distant pass. Maybe we had fun before children, work and bills, but now we feel as if we don't have time to breathe let alone have fun.  It is something that consumed us as children, but not so much as adults. Many people have a difficult time identifying the last time they had fun. When I press my clients, many of them admit that when they were dating before they got married, they used to always have fun. It is almost as if we lose the art of having fun when we get married. One of the things that will transform your marriage is to recommit to having fun together. In this post I want to share a simple strategy to recapture the lost art of having fun. Follow this recipe, and see what happens to your connection.

1.      Make a commitment to increase the "fun" factor of your relationship by taking a 12 week challenge to have fun together at least once a week.

2.      Have an honest conversation about what "fun" means for each of you. Talk about what is present when you are having fun. Talk about what is not going to be present when you are having fun. If something is fun for one partner, but not the other, consider alternative activities. If you can't come up with alternative activities, talk about how you can tweak some of the things that you usually do alone to include your spouse. I had a couple that was having a hard time coming up with fun activities. He was an avid golfer, and she was an avid scrap booker. She had only gone golfing one time and it was a disaster. They set up a date where she went golfing with him, and she drove the cart and took pictures of his game. After the round they had a bottle of wine together, printed off the pictures and made a scrap book of their golfing adventure. They both had a blast!

3.      Make a list of 12 fun activities that you could do over the next 12 weeks. Put them on little pieces of paper and each week for the next 12 weeks draw out one idea and make a commitment to do that activity.

4.      After the activity, talk about it. What was great about it? What could have made it more fun? What can you learn from this activity to make the next fun activity even more fun?

5.      Challenge your married friends, to make the same 12 week fun challenge. What we teach to others becomes part of our relationship DNA.

 

As you start to have fun with each other, I guarantee that you are going to begin to fall more and more in love with each other. The key is to be patient with one another, but be intentional. Make having fun a relationship priority. Soon, you will be fun experts, and your relationship will be phenomenal.