Synopsis: Long, hot, lazy days are here again. The kids may be home and under foot, you and your spouse may be longing for time to be together, or apart. Summer is a restless time. We think we should be having fun, but are we? Not only that, in or workaholic society, we tend to save up our vacation time for a once a year splurge and by time we get to it, we are often in such need that the set aside time can be fraught with tension and rendered useless. It becomes one more event to be planned in our already over scheduled over crowded lives. We all need more down time to keep our relationships going. We all need to take mini-vacations from our “stress-mess” lives on a daily or weekly basis. Few of us do. Take mini vacations daily, weekly or monthly. Whatever you do, don’t wait, don’t save up all you free time for one major splurge. If you do, the splurge may never come. The marriage you save can be your own.

Viva Vacations

Long, hot, lazy days are here again. The kids may be home and under foot, you and your spouse may be longing for time to be together, or apart. Summer is a restless time. We think we should be having fun, but are we? Not only that, in or workaholic society, we tend to save up our vacation time for a once a year splurge and by time we get to it, we are often in such need that the set aside time can be fraught with tension and rendered useless. It becomes one more event to be planned in our already over scheduled over crowded lives. We all need more down time to keep our relationships going. We all need to take mini-vacations from our “stress-mess” lives on a daily or weekly basis. Few of us do. Before we realize what has happened, we are “barking” at our loved ones---or not talking at all. Everything irritates us and we feel like crawling out of our own skin. The idea of building in special time for “our couple” on a weekly basis seems like an interesting concept; one to put on the back burner until we get around to it. Wrong! If you don’t take care of yourself and your spouse first, you may find yourselves heading towards divorce court and never realize how you got there. Many of us tend to “Give at the office” and have nothing left to give at home. Keeping a marriage alive requires communication. Without it, many marriages go dead. One antidote to preventing a dead marriage is to build in a date a week. Choose a date night and keep it. Stay away from the computer, stay away from the kids, get out of the house if you can and talk about yourselves and your feelings. Talk about what ails you and what brings you joy, talk and listen and listen and talk some more. I recommend a “lunch date” to couples as a way of keeping their connection alive, a way of being together and reconnecting when they are each involved in their individual daily activities and they are not exhausted at the end of the day. Many of us wind up giving the leftovers to those we most cherish, when in fact in order to keep a marriage going, it should be the other way round. If we ran a marriage like a business, in that we took care of the partnership daily and didn’t let things slide, I am sure there would be a lot more happy marriages and the divorce rate would drop. We all need ways of remembering the good things about the person we married. We all need to see our spouse away from our usual routines, to see them in a new or once known light. I remember a discussion with the husband of a well-known female executive where he spoke of not knowing the person he saw speak at a conference he attended as “the spouse of.” In fact, he was sure he would never want to fight with the (almost a stranger) strong, competent, woman he saw on the podium. Yes, it was his wife and the mother of his children. Yes, it was the same woman he loved, but he had forgotten that competence was an interesting and exciting aspect of her. In fact, it was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her in the first place. The woman he had come to think of as his wife was the companion he saw in her bathrobe at he end of the day and who always seemed a bit frazzled juggling work and children and with little time for him. Seeing his wife out of the home setting had jolted his voltage. His romantic feelings were reignited. Viva Vacations! Keep this message close to your heart. Take mini ones daily, weekly or monthly. Whatever you do, don’t wait, don’t save up all you free time for one major splurge. If you do, the splurge may never come. The marriage you save can be your own. This column's for you, Dr. D. Dorree Lynn, PH.D.

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