Making a marriage last is work. Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that part of the work can’t be fun. Part of the work is going on adventures together. Plan to getaway on a regular basis. Couples need times to reconnect and detoxify from the everyday problems and just have fun together.
Crystal and I will soon take a trip to a local State Park for a couple of days. We say it’s to celebrate our anniversary, but we just like to get away. Because we do this sort of thing on a regular basis we always have something to look forward to and something to remember.
My parents are the best example I can think of a couple who knew how to get away. I grew up vacationing with them. We went all over: east coast, west coast, and everywhere in-between. Throw in a few European vacations and you get the idea. I used to worry about how they would be after dad retired. I had no idea, but our family vacations were just a warm up for retirement travels; Florida every year and Hawaii every other year. About every third or fourth year there was a trip to Europe, where after WW2, they met.
What really impressed me was that they never just went some place to sit on a beach or look out a window. They moved around and had adventures. The last time they were in Europe was 2005. It was a nice fall like day in September and they had decided to take a cable car ride up a mountain near Innsbruck, Austria. They had reached the top, around 7500 ft. above Innsbruck, and had just come back from a walk when an announcement was made. The cable car was broken. There was no easy way to get down and no time table for the repair. A few brave healthy young people began the five or six mile trek down the mountain. It probably took at least a half hour for my dad to convince my mom that, at eighty-three and seventy-nine, they were just young enough, and it would be an adventure. Several hours of hiking later mom’s legs could no longer carry her and she sat down. They had no idea that they were just a few hundred yards from the bottom of the mountain. Just then a young couple, who were out for exercise, came by. When my parents explained their predicament, the couple decided to help. After all, how much better exercise is there than waking down a mountain with an old lady on your shoulders?
Later that evening they heard about the incident on the news. About a hundred people were still stuck in the cable cars. It was then they realized that they had been the lucky ones.
Like I said, having adventures is an important part of making a marriage last. Hopefully, everything will go according to plan, but there are no guarantees in life. Of course sometimes you can have more fun when you throw out the plan. Or at least you might get a more interesting story. So the next time your marriage needs a boost, plan an adventure. Never let the everyday stress get in the way of living life to the fullest. Remember you’re in this together, so live like it.