Last Sunday night after the end of our couples' weekend workshop , we made a date to go ice skating on Monday morning at a local rink. 

Though we loved skating when younger, it had been many years since our last serious turn on the ice, so we needed to find out whether would still to be a possibility for fun for us.  

We're happy to report we we're not disappointed! It was a blast. We'd forgotten how much fun it was. In fact, we've decided to keep a skating date every week through the winter.  

This experience reminded us of the importance of keeping relationships alive with fun, especially new, active, or rediscovered fun together, so we also decided to make this the subject of this issue's article

"What Are You Doing to Have Fun?"

As the holiday season comes on full blast, this comes with our best wishes for including fully the mutual gift of fun as the source of aliveness you deserve from your life and your relationship.

"What Are You Doing to Have Fun?"

Fun is not just a luxury for relationships. it is a necessity. 

When Harville Hendrix  questioned his couples about what they did for fun, he discovered that most of what they did together consisted of activities that required only a minimum amount of interaction with each other,  activities like watching  TV and going to the movies. He noted that there is nothing wrong with those activities, but that these activities involved someone else  providing the entertainment. They are passive.

He also noted that as they age couples seem to forget how to have interactive fun.  In further surveying his couples, he found out that the average amount of time couples spent  laughing and doing  fun things together was about 10 minutes a week! 

 
So he set out to prescribe this all important activity of having fun and laughing together as a necessary component of their relationship growth, because he also saw that when couples laugh with each other it helps to identify each other as a source of pleasure.

Having  fun helps to nurture your connection with each other, especially as a complement to other components of mutual caring: gifts, cards, appreciations, and surprises. And of course there's no better time for couples to be thinking of active fun than during this holiday season.

So what do you do or what would be fun for you to do, just the two of you, and especially - if you are parents - without the children?  We urge you to get together and each of you think out loud about what you would like to do for fun.  Think back of what was fun for you as children.  Was there something you always wanted to do but couldn't because no one was willing to help you do this?    Did you want to learn to ski?  Or did you want to play games?  Card or board games? 

Listen to each other  about what fun might mean for both of you, especially the fun you always wanted.  Having fun is a great holiday gift to each of you  as well as to the relationship, that is to say your individual senses of connection and awareness as well as the feelings of safety and pleasure you will be creating in your relationship.

If a sense of aliveness and novelty are hard for you and your partner to come by these days,  also consider letting us help you get the fun and romance back with a Getting the Love You Want© couples weekend workshop;