How to Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut

This will be a shorter show than normal, but is super important. If your marriage is in a rut or headed that way, you’ll enjoy this today. I am willing to do whatever it takes to avoid a rut in our marriage. My wife and I have committed to keeping the romance in our marriage alive and in turn, keeping our marriage alive. Today, I’m not going to talk about just the romance side and I’m not directly talking about if your sex life is in a rut. However, if your sex life is in a rut in your marriage, then all this other stuff is certainly a factor. For those of you who want to talk about your sex life and intimacy, well you are in luck. I am working on a series to address this area from all angles. As I’m putting this series together, I’m not holding back on what I’m going to talk about, so stay tuned for that coming around late Spring of 2021. I do have a chapter in my book, the 17 Laws of Marriage, dedicated to intimacy that will help your sex life in a big way. But the series coming will be much more in depth. I’m not going to leave any topic left for your imagination. Back to this show. Our kids have been growing up, getting married, moving out, and moving away. Brainstorming what Tracy and I could do for fun together; I came up with what I considered a scathingly brilliant idea. What I DIDN’T want to do is to grow into a habit of coming home, watching TV, and going to bed. We’ve never been a family of TV watchers, but I didn’t want to get into a rut with our marriage, so I was trying to be proactive. My idea was to buy a tandem bike. When I presented this idea to Tracy, she thought I was kidding and responded with a chuckle as you probably did. I reminded her how much fun we had when we rented tandem bikes on vacation at the beach. She figured out I was serious and seemed at least open to the idea so off we went to a local bicycle shop. What Tracy didn’t know is that I had actually given it a TON of thought and had gone overboard on research to find the perfect bike. Consistent with how my research usually pans out, absolutely none of it came in handy, but we still left the bike store as proud owners of a new tandem bike. My goal was to find something fun, something we could do together, and something that wasn’t typical. This has worked out well because I am happy to report that we have enjoyed quite a few miles on our new bike. If it’s nice outside, the idea of riding the bike comes into the conversation. We quickly learned that teamwork is required - the rider in the back exercises their trust for the driver in the front. Both riders have to pedal, but if one tires, it’s possible to pull more than your own weight for a while if you need to. I can assure you that if you are on a tandem bike, you are not in a rut. When we go out to eat, we are always chatting with each other. I hate it when I look around the restaurant and I see so many couples who are just sitting in silence or staring at phones. I want to go over there and say, HEY PUT DOWN YOUR PHONES……ENJOY each other! Sometimes when we are at a restaurant we’ll say, we can’t leave the restaurant until we see someone who looks like someone else. For example, hey, he looks like George Clooney, or hey, she looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. All this just to have fun.