Being married to a true Irishman (a Belfast boy!) let me begin today’s post by wishing everyone a happy St. Pat’s!

And speaking of marriage…

These days we’re so incredibly busy and stressed that our most meaningful relationships often suffer from neglect.  We WANT to have a more meaningful marrige/family life, but when we actually DO have time, we’re not sure what to do with it, and we’re too tired to come up with something creative.

Well, here’s an idea all ready to go:

What if once a week you took a marriage walk with your spouse?  Here’s how that works:

• Book off a night in your calendar, and do whatever it takes to keep that time free from interruptions.
• Put on comfy shoes and start a nice slow stroll – this is NOT a power walk (that’s actually a really important thing to remember, for dozens of reasons I won’t go into here, today) Hold hands, walk arm in arm, take it slow.
• The first couple of times, just catch up on your day.  Find out what’s going on.  Avoid all “hot” topics.  Re-connect.
• Once you have the habit in place, use this time to go deeper by asking questions.  If you don’t know what to ask you could try these for starters, and then you could move on to “Couples Conversation Starter Questions” with each of you randomly grabbing, say 3 cards before leaving for your walk.
• Take time to really talk about your answers, and make sure you keep the environment safe.  Allow each other to speak truth, and if it hurts, don’t react immediately.  Explore it a little deeper and see if there’s a way to move past the hurt to healing.
• Make sure you laugh from time to time – in fact, as often as possible!

Happy Walking!

Darlene

PS – oh, and just a little nudge here: remember that Exercise Can Spice Up Your Sex Life