Married and Bored?

With every passing year, more of the people around me seem to be married. I don't feel like the odd one out, and I'm genuinely content with where I am. What I do notice is that plenty of married folks seem less than thrilled about their situation. A tense face tells you things words won't, and so, sometimes, does hair that went gray earlier than it should have.

Marriage can be one of the richest parts of a person's life. It can also turn flat and dull, and the reason is usually the same: people stop giving themselves room to be alone with their own thoughts, and they stop protecting time to be alone together as a couple. You're going to fight. There will be stretches where you don't even want to speak to each other. The real gap between married couples and unmarried couples who are committed is paperwork. The unmarried can walk out the door; the married have signed on to keep facing each other and working things through, good days and bad.

A quick caveat. If your spouse storms off and actually leaves every time you argue, then boredom isn't your main issue. Set that aside. The question I want to sit with is simpler: why has the marriage gone dull, and what can be done about it?

Getting married reshapes how both people live. Two lives fold into one. Households merge, so do the bills, the credit, the money, and out of that comes a whole set of shared habits and routines. A young couple has to build something from scratch together, which means pooling the entertainment, the restaurants, the adventures. You end up spending enormous amounts of time with the same person, morning to night, and that constant closeness can quietly chip away at attraction.

So go back and dig up the things you loved before you were a pair. Your own interests. The pursuits that were yours alone. Carve out time away from your spouse to chase them. When you come back together, you'll be carrying something you refilled on your own, and that gives you a steadier footing in who you are. Doing what you love recharges your sense of self, and you return to your partner feeling full rather than drained. Don't bury your own needs and passions under the idea that a couple should be glued together every waking hour. Step apart, reconnect with yourself, then come back and connect more deeply. In practice that might be an afternoon of golf or tennis, or a weekend away with your friends.

Raising your kids to become decent, capable adults comes first; nobody argues with that. It doesn't follow that the marriage has to be starved to do it. Keep in mind that children watch how you and your partner treat each other, and that running tally becomes the template for how they'll handle their own relationships later. Getting so buried in the logistics of parenting that you forget to actually enjoy being married is a trap. Your kids don't need to tag along on every trip. Summer camp exists partly so you can have a little time to yourselves.

Not everything has to revolve around the children. Sometimes they can stay at a grandparent's place or with a sitter. See a movie, just the two of you. Plan real dates. Keep some heat in the marriage by building pockets of time that are free of kids.

There's a reason you see couples split up once the children are grown and gone. The parents poured nearly the entire marriage into raising those kids, and they reach the empty house with no idea how to be a couple without them. Marriage moves in phases. At the start there are no children, or a blended family. The kids grow, they move out, and suddenly the house is yours again. If you never spent real time alone with your partner while the children were growing up, you won't know how to enjoy each other once they're gone. You'll slide into simply sharing an address. The conversation dries up, and the only thing holding you together is the habit of being together.

A marriage becomes whatever you put into it, and that takes effort and staying power. Yes, the early adjustments are real. That's no reason to live like a worn-out couple while you're still young. Do the work: build a future, take care of your family. Just don't let enjoying the marriage fall off the list. Make space for yourself, and make space for each other. That's how you keep a relationship from going flat and hollow. Find your own passions, remember to refill your own tank, and you'll have something left to keep the whole thing happy and worth staying in.

- Heather Browning, MBA, BA