43: FUN is the Foundation for your Happy Marriage

Listen Now

Episode Transcription

Welcome back to another episode of the Road to Life Podcast with Meredith and Craig. Whoop whoop. Whoop whoop. What are we talking about today? Fun. We're talking about fun. Having fun. No shortage of fun over here. Well, cause we make it a priority. Yeah. It's a focus. Yeah. It's a major pillar of our belief system on relationships.

It is. What are we doing this for if we're not having fun? Exactly. I feel like it's so underrated. I feel like fun, weirdly, is a very underrated part of a strong marriage.

I agree in a way that people don't necessarily think about their marriage as fun, being intentional about fun. I don't think fun is underrated from the high level of everybody wants to have fun. Everybody wants to have fun. Everybody knows what fun is. Everyone wants to have it. Fun is critical. I feel like most people. don't see that as a critical input. And I don't know if it's because we just get caught up in the busyness of life. Like fun just seems to be something like it's a nice to have at the end. If we've got time, energy, resources, we'll have fun.

As opposed to no fun is critical is something we plan in to our lives. Fun builds intimacy. It builds trust. It builds communication. It builds all the major components of a healthy relationship. If you're having fun and not only that, but it's momentum building too, because you've had the fun together and you've built the bond.

And then you get to relive it and reminisce and talk about the good times and relive those fun moments. And it just builds on top of the fun you've already had, having more fun talking about the fun. You might say it's exponential. It's exponential. Exactly.

If we believe that fun is critical to having a strong marriage, to being emotionally connected, to building trust, to keeping communication strong. Then how would we go about planning for it? Like what, what does that even look like? What do we even do? Like what do we do? Yeah. Well, we, we are intentional about our date nights. We have date nights every week. We plan to do something together one night a week.

We oftentimes most times get to do it more than one night a week, but minimum non negotiable, non negotiable once per week. So I think starting there and those date nights can be, you know, some ideas for date nights, create a jar, throw some stuff that you guys want to do together. Mm hmm. Pull one out and go do it.

Mini golf. Okay. We're gonna go do mini golf. Oh, dinner at the new restaurant. Okay. We're going to go do dinner at the new restaurant. We're going to do a night at the drive in, which we did recently, which was really fun. For our anniversary. We haven't done that. I haven't been to the drive in in 20 years.

Yeah. It was fun. It was fun to do. So yeah, just, you know, throw some stuff in a jar, pull it out and do it on a date night.

We try to make fun in the mundane stuff too. Oh yeah. Life's not all date nights and drive ins like life is 99 percent making dinner, doing laundry, you know, working life is 99 percent of the mundane.

And so if we don't find a way to integrate some fun into the stuff you have to do in the run of a day, just as adults to adult life and you know, move your life forward. then it becomes really hard to consistently have fun. If you're always waiting for the vacation for the weekly date night, if you're waiting for that, it becomes hard to be regularly having fun.

So we also find ways to sort of squeeze fun into the stuff that we have to do anyway. And one way we do that is like we have to make dinner. I'm like, what did we just do? You gotta eat, you gotta eat. And so, it becomes a little more fun if you turn on some music and you get in there together. We used to be really good at trying new recipes and following those along together and, you know, bumping into each other in the kitchen as we figured them out.

We're less into new recipes and more into Efficiency. Efficiency these days. And so there's less bumping into each other in the kitchen, but still, you take this, I'll take this, and I'll peel the carrots and you chop the cucumber and salad will get made and the music is on and you know, we're doing that together, dancing as we go and just listening to music that we enjoy.

And that's one way that we make something that we have to do a little bit more fun. Mm hmm. Anyone who's listened to other episodes may have heard of the cardboard penis. Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah, we do. That's what she said. We use the cardboard penis doing mundane tasks like getting dressed in the morning.

You might find a cardboard penis fall out of your shirt or your pants. And now you have a chuckle and now you have to go figure out where you're going to put that for the other person to find. Right, and it's funny because, well it's funny when the cardboard penis falls out and you're like, Oh, he got me.

Hmm. And then I'll come out in the shirt that you know, you hid that penis in and you're like, but then I'm always in a hurry to try and hide it before you see me. Yeah. You don't want to get caught. Don't want to get caught hiding it. It's a, it's, it's kind of part of the rules that it's a secret mission to hide it.

And Trying to hide it in something that you're not going to wear tomorrow because then it's right back over. It's, it's, I want it to be in your closet or in your stuff for as long as possible. And there's two of them actually. I feel like we haven't seen one in a really long time, so I'm sure that's buried in your closet.

It's probably in a sweater that I don't wear until winter or something. Finding ways to squeeze fun into the regular day to day things that we do.

Another way, I think, to introduce some fun is Playing tourist in your own city.

take a day, both of you stop working for the day, and go to the museum. Take the drive to the world's largest rocking chair. And second largest rocking chair, if it happens to be a few hours away. It is because we've been to both the largest and second largest rocking chairs. But do those fun sort of, be a tourist in your own city, it's not it's not hard, doesn't take a lot of time, but, you know, it creates some fun and some bonding moments. Your idea of the jar. Putting the ideas of things you want to do in the jar, then once a week you pull them out and you try something new. Cooking classes, yoga classes, dance classes, painting classes, pottery classes.

There's no shortage of, there's no shortage of things you can try. And it's really cool thing is, is that you might find a hobby that you do long term together. Like it might turn into something that's, Oh, we love this. This is so cool. Let's do this. Like a cooking class. Maybe you both find some sort of joy in cooking and now you bonus you get to do that all the time at home and get to eat great food. Bonus. I also love the idea of a book club for two. Like we pick a book. We read the book, we talk about the book together, we learn about how we each interpret the book, you know, it's just a way to sit down, have some fun together.

Sitting down and writing out your bucket lists. that's actually something we've done that was a ton of fun. Cause you're letting your mind, dream and go to places that you've always wanted to. And then you get to explain why you've always wanted to scuba dive with whale sharks. And why you've always wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle.

And, not only do you learn more about each other and the things that have always It's been something in your mind that you've wanted to do, but because you're getting to, to think through these things together, it's, it's fun to try and make the list and then start picking things off the list, like actually start doing them.

You probably are taking vacations every year. Are you being intentional about making them bucket list idea vacations and are you taking vacations? Just the two of you and spending that time taking a weekend away together just to reconnect.

You can incorporate your kids in this too. You can also bring like You want to have time for yourself as well, but also People we have kids and other things other responsibilities integrate it integrate it into your life so that You You know, they're getting to experience these cool things. Fun. You can have fun with your spouse and also with your kids at the same time.

We did the Olympics there a few weeks ago. That was really fun.

Yeah. We had the nephews playing all kinds of different sports and we got to play too. Yeah. And they created their, their personal flags, the flag ceremony, opening ceremony and the closing ceremony and the medals. And that was fun.

And I guess one other thing is you already have things that you like to do. Incorporate your spouse. invite them along, do, do, do your favorite stuff, do their favorite stuff. You may not love it all the time, but it builds a bond and it can be fun to, to see them in their element, doing their thing, loving it.

And you get to participate and see see that up close. Now I'm not saying that you might want, not want to go to the golf course every other week with them, but to watch them in their element could be a really cool bonding experience. I'm sure they'd love it too. Yeah. We used to have a basketball court not far from our place where we used to live.

And so we'd go up. And I'm not a huge lover of playing basketball. I have, I have a expiry time on how long I can shoot hoops. Cause, you know, I didn't play it growing up. I'm not, I'm not a basketball player, but you love basketball. And so on a Saturday afternoon, we'd walk up and go play basketball.

And, I'd play for 20 minutes or so. And then I sit in on a park bench or sit in the grass. Watch you play for another hour. Yeah. I love it. And we also had some fun because we got caught in a hailstorm where like literally golf ball size hail was coming at us and we had to run for cover.

Remember that? And there wasn't much cover. We were like pinned against the wall with like a, I don't know, maybe Foot of overhead. And it was coming in a little bit sideways and you'd get nicked with one and yelp. And yeah, but we couldn't go anywhere because we were going to get peppered. Yeah. And when the hail finally let up, it was still pouring rain and we ran home, but it was a fun memory.

That was a fun time we had, but also now we look back on that with fond memories. It was fun and we get to relive it and reconnect over that fun. So it's more fun. Right. Fun is, it's integral. It's an integral part of what makes a relationship successful. And I think that so many times like divorce rates are high and it's a lot of time is because we've not been intentional about injecting fun into our relationship.

We let the fun go out of our relationship. The reason that people don't want to continue in a relationship is it's not fun anymore. Really like, yeah, communication breaks down. We're no longer intimate. All those things happen. But really at the end of the day, it's because this isn't fun for me. I don't want to do this.

I'm not enjoying myself. Right. And of those things that just broke down, what was the first thing to go? Most of the time, the first thing that goes in your relationship is the fun. Because work is busy and kids are busy. Life is busy. Things get busy. And if you're not intentional about protecting the time for fun or creating the space for fun in the mundane, the fun is what goes first.

And then once the fun goes, that's when the communication starts to break down. That's when the trust starts to break down. That's when the intimacy breaks down and then you end up not being able to communicate and you end up not feeling connected and the intimacy is gone. All that stuff is the downstream, the knock on impact of fun.

And so keeping fun a priority in your relationship, or reintroducing fun if it's magically disappeared over the years, bringing fun back is what's going to get your relationship back on track. Once you're having fun, it becomes easier to rebuild communication, rebuild your connection, reestablish your intimacy.

All that gets easier if you're having fun together. Mm hmm. So fun, joy, exploration, adventure, curiosity. Those are all words I would use to describe how you re inject that playfulness back into your relationship and start building from there. And when you can do that, to your point, communication, intimacy, it all starts to come back.

Like you start to build. That communication that intimacy back from fun. Yeah, it's almost like you need to have a lens for fun So you can find it in the mundane But also so you can start treating things as fun as an adventure like the hailstorm you mentioned a few minutes ago, that could have been a Negative.

Yeah. Yeah easily. Yeah, but if you keep the lens on Life is a freaking adventure at every turn, and if you look for the fun and the joy in any moment, in getting stuck in a crazy hailstorm, that was a little bit scary in the moment, but we kept that filter on the world of fun and adventure and it became a fun and adventurous moment that we now share and look back on with a lot of joy and laughter. It's not just about going out and having the cool date and going on the trip because all that stuff's important and that's fun and you need that too but it's also keeping that filter of your life so that you can see the opportunity for fun and adventure when it presents itself and so for us when we're on a road trip and I say right, but I meant left because my left and rights are just not my forte and you know We turn left and we should have turned right now We don't know where we're going and we're lost instead of you getting frustrated with me that we're lost It's the lens of adventure.

Well, I wonder what we're gonna see on this road. Yeah But yeah, it is all about your attitude. So we're talking about injecting fun, but it really is about having an attitude that is got a positive outlook. It's looking for the optimistic things. It's looking for the fun. It's looking for the opportunities to inject play and adventure.

And it isn't something that you can just switch on. It takes intention. It takes some work and figuring out. What are the things that I like to do? Where can I find those moments in the day to do the little things that may bring a smile to my face or bring a smile to my spouse's face. It's just having a reframe and starting to think about fun first and foremost. Play, adventure, smile, joy, curiosity. It's all about your attitude.

Find a way to prioritize fun in your life. Seek it out. Inject it and keep your fun filter on so you can find the fun and things that maybe don't seem fun on the surface like giant hailstorms. Couldn't have said better myself.

That's it. That's all. That's it. That's all. Well, we hope you loved this episode And if you did, we hope you would share it with a friend who might also love it And we will see you next week. Catch you on the next one. Bye. Bye. Bye.