With COVID-19 still running rampant, many of us are spending more time with our spouse than we ever have before.
This can be both wonderful and challenging, as I am sure you have been experiencing. An important thing to keep in mind is just because you’re spending more time under one roof, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re spending more quality time together.
Research shows that married couples merely passing time together is no substitute for consciously being present to one another. In fact, a lack of spending quality time together is one of the most common reasons for failed marriages today.
Lack of quality time leads to an estranged relationship
When you don’t spend enough quality time with your spouse, you may find the person you live with becoming more and more a mystery or stranger to you. You feel less capable of predicting their moods or more surprised by what comes out of their mouths.
Quality time is a window of opportunity
Spending quality time together is an opportunity to share the opportunities, challenges, or just thoughts that are influencing your day to day and shaping who you are.
The more time you make to share and listen to each other, the more you’re in tune with how life is shaping each other or how you’re growing and changing.
While growth and change are good things, when you’re married, it’s important that you grow together or you increase the risk of growing apart.
So, how do you grow together?
By spending quality time together.
What quality time with your spouse means
Spending quality time together means having each other’s undivided attention. This means you need to be together, exclusively investing your time and attention in each other without the presence of things or people who distract you.
These distractions include having the kids around or checking your phone.
We’re not saying that spending quality time with your spouse is easy, we’re simply saying it is an investment worth making and will pay dividends long-term.
So, acknowledge what you know to be true. Your spouse is the most important person in the world and deserves your time and attention and you can, if you want to, re-order your life to ensure they know it each day.
A tip on where to begin
Where to start? You likely already know, but here is a good place to begin.
Schedule time with your spouse each day and be sure each week to schedule something special that reminds them that they are the most important person in your life.
Remember, a little goes a long way in a relationship.
Good luck!