5 Common Ways We Suck the Life Right Out of our Marriage

3.  Putting Your Dreams on Hold

When we get married, we often talk about the future and all the dreams we have for our life together.  We are so excited to work towards these dreams together, and we look forward to making new ones as we grow older.  The longer we’re married, we tend to forget these hopes and dreams, and we get lost in the grind of life.  We become so hyper-focused on the task at hand: work, kids, finances, illness, obligations, parents, etc..  We start seeing our pre-marital dreams as childish or out-of-reach, and we find ourselves in years of “survival mode”.  It’s so easy to fall into this cycle.  Before we know it, we either have a broken marriage or we look up into each other’s aged eyes and we honestly don’t even know each other any more.  After so many years of neglecting our relationship and taking care of everything and everyone else, we can lose touch.

I recently spoke with a kind, elderly woman who was describing this scenario to me with tears in her eyes.  She told me how much she dearly loved her husband.  They had built a beautiful life together, but they had lost touch along the way.  She didn’t know what their dreams were anymore.  She said the silence in her home was sometimes deafening, and she so longed to have something to look forward to with her husband.

There is still hope for this woman’s marriage and any marriage that is in a rut.

We need to take the time and make the effort to remember the dreams we once had as a younger married couple.
We need to work towards fulfilling them in big and small ways, during each phase of our marriage.

Maybe you and your spouse have a cause that you believe in that you can work towards as a family; find a walk/run or event you can participate in together.  Maybe there is a ministry in your church that you collectively have a passion for; go volunteer together.  Maybe there is a vacation that you have always wanted to take together; start saving for it and make it happen.  Maybe you wish you had a regular date night; start with taking a date night once a month and then make it more often.  Don’t put it on hold.  We aren’t guaranteed tomorrow.  We can’t forget to dream together.

For more on this, read, “4 SIMPLE STEPS that will Instantly Improve Your Marriage,” by clicking here.