How Do You Refresh a Stale Marriage?

Marriage, like bread and potato chips, can become stale over time. Ruts, routines, and indifference have a way of settling in and dulling what used to be a vibrant relationship.

What about your marriage? What are the signs that you’re living in a stale marriage?

Let’s start by defining the word “stale.” Dictionary.com defines “stale” as…

• Not fresh, flat, dry, hardened.
• Stagnant.
• Having lost novelty or interest.
• Having lost force or effectiveness through absence of action.

Be honest. Do any of these describe your marriage? If so, you may have a stale marriage that needs to be refreshed. But how do you refresh a stale marriage?

I started thinking about this few months ago, when I realized the look and feel of the Normal Marriage blog hadn’t changed in over two years. The blog wasn’t bad. It just felt stale and in need of a change.

So I began the process of refreshing the blog site. (This is part of the reason I haven’t posted for a while.) I didn’t do anything radical like tear it down, and start from scratch. I just did some small changes to breathe new life into an old blog.

As I refreshed the blog site, I began to think about all the stale marriages out there that needed some refreshing. It’s normal for marriages to get stale from time to time. Routines, demands, and fatigue can lead us into mundane and monotonous ruts before we know it.

But if your marriage feels stagnant and monotonous, it doesn’t mean your marriage is bad. It just means your marriage has become stale and needs to be refreshed.

You don’t need to do anything radical like tear the whole thing down and start from scratch. Small changes can go a long way to refreshing your stale marriage. The changes can be as small and simple as…

• Trying a new restaurant.
• Going to a movie neither of you would normally see.
• Shopping for clothes, where each of you gets to pick out the other’s outfit.
• Changing up sex with a different position, a different location, or a different time of the day.
• Going out to eat, but just having dessert.
• Leaving unexpected notes for your spouse to find.
• Going “parking” – in your own garage.
• Swapping cars for a day.
• Having a drive-in movie night where you drive to your favorite spot and watch your favorite movie from an iPad on the dashboard.

The possibilities are endless. The point is, small changes can go a long way to changing the status quo and breathing some fresh air into a stale marriage.

So don’t settle for a stale marriage…at least not for long. Make it your practice to look for small ways to refresh your marriage.

What are some things you can think of to freshen up a stale marriage? Share them by leaving a comment. Lets join together and build a list of things we can all draw from when things start to feel a little stale.

Copyright © 2016 Bret Legg