by Scott Stanley
Couples can thrive in many ways. As my colleague Howard
Markman said long ago, Tolstoy was wrong in the opening lines of Anna Karenina
when he wrote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way.” It may be just the opposite; there is the most diversity and
mystery on the positive side of how two people connect rather than the
negative. Couples who are miserable tend to look pretty similar to other
couples who are miserable with either nasty conflict or growing indifference—or
both—being their way. There’s not a lot of creativity in all that, but there
are an astounding numbers of ways you’ll see couples thriving in happy, healthy
marriages.
One of the things that can help keep your marriage strong is
to do things together in some of the leisure time you have available. However, how
this actually works out depends on if the things you are doing together are
things you both like to do together.
Some couples have a number of clear, common interests in what they like to do
for fun, which makes it pretty easy to decide what to do when you have, or make,
the time for it. But not all couples have such common interests, and if you
don’t, it will take more thought and care to find what works.
In a study from 2002 that remains one of the best ever on
the topic, Duane Crawford and colleagues Renate Houts, Ted Huston, and Laura
George described patterns affecting Compatibility, Leisure, and Satisfaction in Marital Relationships. They found that the way leisure time activities
impact marital happiness is more complex than you might think it should be. Specifically,
they used diary methods to study marital happiness in a sample that they followed
for over a decade. They found that the pursuit of leisure activities as a
couple was less strongly associated with marital happiness than most people believe.
Crawford and colleagues found something obvious yet nuanced:
the benefit in a marriage from spending leisure time together depends on compatibility
in interests. Most tellingly, they found that is it no real boost to marital
bliss, now or into the future, if a couple routinely engages in leisure activities
that mostly only the husband enjoys. In other words, when women are going along
to get a long, it’s a lose, lose deal for the marital quality of both partners. These researchers detail some
of the reasons why women may be more likely to try to accommodate to their
partners’ interests than men. Among the ideas they consider is a point made by Stephanie Coontz suggesting that, too often, husbands may not even be fully aware of
their wives lack of interest in some of the things the husbands enjoy doing together
because (some) women may be so good at covering up what they really feel about
what things the couple do with their leisure time.
Two partners don’t have to have all interests in common to have
a great marriage. That would be oppressive and barely possible. However, when a
couple mostly does things that are more fun for one partner and not the other, that
comes at a cost. Crawford and colleagues also showed that spending a lot of
time pursuing individual interests, each partner on their own, can be a sign of
problems.
My Advice
Make a list. Couples
will do best to find a few things to do for fun and friend time together that
they both enjoy. This does not have to be a big list but it’s worth figuring
out what’s on it. And communicating about that. Do you really know that your
partner shares your fondness for golf? For eating out in sports bars? For lingering
in art museums? Figure out the overlapping list and do some of those things
regularly.
Make the time and keep
issues off limits during that time. This is, arguably, the most important
advice about keeping fun alive in all the books my colleagues and I have
written about marriage (for example, this one and that).
Most of us are busy and distracted. To do things together, the first priority
is to set aside some time for it. That can be a lot or a little, but it needs
to be some. Second, and less obvious to many, you need to protect that time
from conflict and issues. You can decide not to slide into letting issues and
problems (that need solving) to be triggered in time you’ve set aside to be
connected. Of course, then you also need to make time to deal with issues as
issues, constructively.
Speak up. If you
are good faking it (you know what I mean), maybe that’s not doing your marriage
any great favors. Sure, each partner should be willing to do some of the things
that the other finds enjoyable even if it’s not high on one’s own list. That’s
a signof a healthy relationship—not a problem. But if you know that the two of
you are rarely doing “fun” things that you
find fun, consider speaking up if you are not already doing so.
Focus on enjoying
being together. Compatibility in interests is a great strength in a
marriage, but even where you are not compatible in your leisure interests, be
fully present and work at enjoying that you are doing something together even
if the current activity is not your own favorite thing. In light of the findings
of Crawford and colleagues, I want to suggest that men, in particular, might
need to step it up, here.
Single and Searching?
My advice for those looking to make a good match is a common refrain for me. Go
slow. Be careful. Know what you want, and look for that. Don’t slide into
situations where you increase your odds of settling for a relationship where
you share little of the values and interests in life that make it easier to
keep a marriage happy. You don’t need to find perfect compatibility. If that’s your goal, good luck with that. But it’s okay and important to look
for the type of person with whom you can share a fuller life.
Lastly, I want to suggest that it’s okay if what you do in
your leisure time, together or apart, is not the most important part of why
your marriage works. Knowing some ways to have fun together is valuable but it’s not the only thing. There are many ways to build a
great life together.
