In this day and age, it’s become increasingly difficult to simply enjoy the company of your significant other. Sure, you may both laugh at the same jokes when watching Parks and Recreation on Netflix, but you’re not appreciating each other in that moment, you’re appreciating Amy Poehler.
Well, that very well may be an understandable experience, but you should remember that if you want to truly enjoy your romance, you should dedicate some time to simply focusing on getting to know your better half.
Sex hardly counts, so don’t act like you’re already where you need to be.
If you want to remember why you love someone, you should. . .
Go Hiking Together
Hiking is a wonderful way to expose yourself to the beauty, the majesty, the sheer awesome power of nature.
It’s also a wonderful way to get very bored, very quickly. Walking through the woods may sound like fun, until you realize that it involves walking through the woods for a long, long time.
As such, you’ll start to actually talk to your significant other, if only to kill the time. You may even realize that you have quite a lot in common. You two should probably date.
(Editorial disclaimer: I love hiking. But I also love NPR. Both are, admittedly, very boring.)
Reminisce
When you meet up with old friends, you probably talk about your memories from childhood.
When you meet up with your significant other (every single day), you probably talk about who is doing the dishes.
Why not spend some time reminding each other about the early days of your relationship, when you first fell in love? It’s a nice, easy way to remind yourself that you’re together for a reason.
Commit To A Week Without Entertainment
This one may be tough, but it’s something our ancestors had to do approximately all of the time.
Take a week off from TV. And the radio. And Netflix. And Youtube. And Youporn.
These distractions may help us unwind after a day of work, but they certainly don’t help you get to know your partner any better. If you both agree to spend an entire week avoiding such distractions, you may find that you’re both pretty good at keeping each other entertained.
Set Goals Together
Being in a relationship, when it’s healthy, means being part of a team. Unfortunately, this can be less-than-exciting when the goal of the team is “make sure we keep each other happy enough to not break up.”
So, give yourself a more interesting goal. Decide to get in shape for a marathon together. Collaborate on a creative endeavor. Form a band called The White Stripes and fuel rumors about the real nature of your relationship.
Those are just ideas, and one of them is already taken, but they should hopefully inspire you to join forces with your partner in a way that will bring you closer together.
(Or lead one of you to a successful career and another one of you to obscurity.)
Pretend You’re On A First Date
First dates are exciting, because we get to learn all the (hopefully) interesting details of our new romantic partner’s identity.
In a long-term relationship, though, we take for granted the fact that we may not yet know everything there is to know about a person. No matter how long you’ve been together, there are some topics you may have never spoken of.
So, commit to going on another “first date,” in which you decide to only discuss issues that have never come up before. As long as neither one of you secretly committed a heinous crime and is now living under a false identity, it’s a pretty safe bet that this will reignite some passion in your relationship.