Marital Ruts

“See, I am doing a new thing!”

Isaiah 43:19

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO MY MARRIAGE WAS BREAKING MY wrist. The break was serious enough to require surgery, and suddenly, Lisa and I got thrust out of our routine. We did almost everything together, in part because I needed so much help. Since I had to limit my exercise to walking, we took near-daily strolls together. We shopped together. We answered e-mail together (at first I couldn’t type). For a while, Lisa even helped me get dressed (okay, you try tying your shoe with one hand!).

Forced out of our routine, Lisa and I discovered a deeper and newer love. The romance was always there; it had just lain buried under layers of always doing the same thing. Isn’t this really one of the greatest challenges many marriages face: the mind-numbing routine?

Theologian Paul Evdokimov insightfully touched on this reality in his classic work The Sacrament of Love: “The day-to-day profanes the sacred. . . . It is in the fearsome struggle against the duration and murderous repetitions that the human being appears most vulnerable. The prosaic in life brings him down to the infernal element of boredom.”^a

You don’t have to break a wrist to rouse yourself from this boredom; sometimes just getting away will do the trick. Years later, Lisa and I spent a long weekend in New York City. Being together nonstop for five days suddenly made it seem strange the first time I left the house alone upon our return—something I had taken for granted so many times before. I got so used to having Lisa by my side—eating every meal with me, no kids asking us questions, no errands pulling us apart—that it seemed strange when we returned to the “real world.” I noticed for several days afterward that I acted far more affectionate with Lisa—even better, I acted that way without even thinking about it.

Marriage is a long journey, and any long journey requires occasionally getting off the road to eat, to fill up the car with gas, or simply to rest. Has your love fallen into a rut? Is your marriage slowly getting buried under the daily routine? What can you do differently to break out of the box and renew your love for each other?

Maybe your rut is more behavioral—you’ve learned to tune out your spouse’s voice or you always make love in the same, predictable way or on the same, predictable night. Maybe you’ve completely stopped trying to find creative ways to demonstrate your affection and care. Perhaps you’ve become so ensconced in the workweek routine—the early-morning departure, the commute, the time away from home, coming back in the evening tired and grouchy—that you’re completely missing opportunities to affirm and reconnect with each other.

Never underestimate the element of occasional surprise in delighting your spouse and building up your marriage. It can be so simple—a wife going to the trouble of picking out an audiobook that her husband can listen to on his morning commute; a husband buying his wife a completely unexpected gift, unconnected to any holiday or anniversary, for no other reason than to tell her he loves her. What would it mean to your spouse if you took an afternoon off—from work or watching the kids—to go to a matinee, take a walk around the lake, or go on a picnic? Sometimes all it takes is something out of the ordinary, something that says, “I don’t take you—or us—for granted. I’ve put some special thought into this. I want to fight the ‘murderous repetitions’ and ‘infernal element of boredom.’ ”

Never underestimate the element of occasional surprise in delighting your spouse and building up your marriage.

Through Ezekiel, God promised Israel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). In the same way we can become callous toward God, so we can become callous toward each other. Pray for a new spirit and attitude toward your spouse, that your “heart of stone” will become a “heart of flesh.”