Marriage – Leisure Activities

     This can be divided up into three areas:
1) things to do with your spouse
2) things to do with your family (kids)
3) things to do by yourself

1) I cannot say it strongly enough…never stop dating your spouse. The types of dates will change over the years. Make it a regular time, like every week or two. Take a cooking class together, go hiking, go to the movies, join a bible study class, go to an art gallery or a museum. If you’re like me, I’m not very creative. So, I bought some books for ideas. Books like “Dating Your Mate”, “10,000 ways to say I love you” and “How to make love with your clothes on: 101 ways to romance your wife”. Asking each other questions from the book “201 Great Questions” by Jerry D. Jones is a fun thing to do as it gets you to know your spouse better.

2) For years when our boys were young, we had a weekly ‘Family Night’. We had a special dinner, then we played a board game or went to the park to play frisbee or went to a museum. It was the same night every week. Our boys looked forward to it every week.

3) I like to read so every week I made sure that I had time to read. Maybe your thing is doing odd jobs around the house, or gardening, or running/working out. Whatever it is, you need “me time”, to refresh and recharge your soul.

     At the beginning of each week, or maybe every two weeks, plan what and when you’re going to do these things. Figure out how much time they’ll take and how much money they’ll cost. On most of these things you won’t have to spend a lot of money. The benefits will far outweigh any costs.