30 Ways to Bring Back Fun Into Marriage

Steal and Borrow Ideas
While every relationship is different, it wouldn’t hurt to have love role models—couples you admire and are inspired by. Identifying relationships like these can help you ride through storms and plot out strategies for your own relationship.
Talk
to your husband about a relationship you admire (or even envy). Tell
him what you like about the relationship. Use their love formula as a
possible pattern for your own.

Find out what makes your partner’s heart sing.
Even if you’ve been together for several years, you must not assume
that you know everything about each other. Investigate. Ask friends if
your partner has ever revealed some secret wist to them. Sometimes,
partners keep their wishes from each other because they’re afraid the
other will not like them, or worse, will laugh at them.
If
she loves the opera and it puts you to sleep, get two tickets, drink a
lot of coffee and discover the magic she finds in each production. If
he loves camping, organize a trip and don’t complain about anything.
Let him teach you about the beauty of the outdoors.

Pick the brains of your friends and have a “romantic ideas” exchange.
Invite two or three married couples to your home for an after-dinner
get-together. Bring out your scented candles, play romantic music, have
a lot of throw pillows. A bottle of wine or champagne will be nice.
Ask
each couple to make a list of the romantic things they have already
done as a couple. Then ask them to make a list of the romantic things
they would still like to do. Share your lists. The exchange will help
you get tips from each other’s experiences. You may also help each
other make your own romantic ideas come true. For instance, one couple
can offer to babysit while the other couple takes the night off.

Keep track of your romantic ideas—all that you have done and still want to do.
Put together a scrapbook of your adventures, no matter how simple: the
paper napkin at the restaurant you had a surprise lunch in, a matchbox
from a coffee shop, movie tickets. Label each entry. After a few years,
looking through this scrapbook will help you relive those moments.
Don’t forget to reserve some more pages for adventures you still want
to do.
And finally, to paraphrase the
age-old advice given by Merlin to Arthur in the musical Camelot: how to
handle a partner is to love her, simply love him, merely love her.