7 Ways to Rekindle Love with Your Wife
Marriage is long and hard and it’s easy for married couples to lose their way. To start taking each other for granted and to, sometimes, fall out of love.
But there are ways to rekindle love with your wife, if you are willing to make the time and the effort to do it. And it’s not that hard to do…you have done it before, when you were falling IN love.
What I would encourage you first and foremost to do is to talk to your wife about how you feel and what you want to do. That you are feeling some space in your marriage and that you are interested in finding each other again. It is important that both spouses are on board. If she just isn’t interested, don’t waste your time.
I did have a male client who worked for months to rekindle his marriage, only to have her ask for a divorce in the end. She was just going through the paces, not really invested in the outcome of his efforts.
So, after you have checked in with your spouse and agreed to move forward, here are 7 ways to rekindle your love with your wife.
#1 – Do things that you used to do together.
Remember when you and your wife first met, the things that you used to do together, the things that you did together that led to your falling in love?
Do you still do any of those things? I am guessing probably not. And if you do still do them, you probably don’t do them very often.
The past can be a powerful thing. Think about how you feel when you hear a song from your youth or smell something that reminds you of something in your past. Can’t you “feel†those things. Don’t they take you back to a moment in time that you can feel in your body, even if just for a moment?
So you can do with your wife, to help reignite your love.
I have a client who told me that, when he and his wife dated before their marriage, they did two things every weekend. They went for a long hike and took themselves out for margaritas afterwards. Getting up early in the morning and being on the trail before everyone else made them feel so close and earning those margaritas together made them feel like they were a team.
Since they have gotten married, those weekends together have disappeared. To be fair, weekends can be consumed with kids’ activities or work or commitments to extended family. But, also to be fair, some of their weekends were free. And yet, they didn’t take advantage of those free weekends to spend any time together.
I would encourage you to make the time to do the things that you and your wife used to do together. Get a babysitter for the kids. Plan ahead and have it on your calendar so that nothing else gets in they. Whatever it takes for you to spend time together doing the things that you used to love to do.
#2 – Do new things together.
On the flip side, I always encourage men who are looking to rekindle love with their wives is to do new things together.
We all tend to get into ruts, to do the same things over and over and over, especially when we have been married for a long time. And that kind of stagnation can kill the love in a marriage.
So, what are things that you and your wife can do together that is new? It can be as simple as going for a walk together every night or something a little more complicated like learning how to dance. Anything that will involve the two of you, side by side, learning something new that shakes up your life just a little bit.
#3 – Touch each other.
Be honest. How often do you and your wife touch each other? Other than maybe the occasionally married people sex, do you have the same kind of physicality that you used to have before you were married.
While I know that having more sex would be lovely, I would encourage to you to invest in a simpler form of physical touch – hugs and hand holding. Why? Because human beings communicate better with actions than words. Words can sometime come out wrong – a hug is always a hug. Something that makes you feel good.
They say that a 10 second hug every day can bring a couple together. And holding hands while driving in the car or taking a walk will connect you in a way that almost nothing else can.
So, take the time to touch your wife. It might feel weird to do at first if it’s something that you haven’t done for a while but you will grow to enjoy it very much. I promise.
#4- Learn each other’s love language.
For many people, when they try to make their partner feel loved, they give their partner what they would need to feel loved. And then they don’t understand why it doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because what one person needs to feel loved might not work for another person. So, their efforts are in vain.
This is where the love languages come in. In theory, there are 5 love languages: physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time and gift giving. If you can speak to your partner in their love language, they will feel loved.
When I was married, we didn’t know about the love languages. If we had, we would have known that my love language was quality time and his physical touch and we would have stopped giving each other acts of service!
So, learn each other’s love languages. It’s easy to do. Just go on to this website and take the quiz. Do it together!
#5- Use your words.
I hear the same thing over and over, from men and from women. “He/she doesn’t need me to tell them I love them. They know.†And, I tell them, over and over, that it isn’t necessarily true!
People need to hear that they are loved. That someone thinks that they are beautiful. That someone is proud of something that has been accomplished. It’s just human nature – affirmations can make us feel love and connected and nurtured.
So many couples, while they might have been good at this in the beginning, stop telling their partner how they feel about them as time goes on. As a result, neither one of them feels loved and connected and their feelings for each other fade.
This can be easily stopped if you both just start speaking up about what you see and how you feel.
I don’t mean to love bomb your partner. That won’t feel authentic. But when she walks in the room, tell her how great she looks. I promise you, the effects will be immediate.
#6 – Regular Check Ins.
I remember the summer that my husband and I decided to have a drink together every night after work. It was something that we had stopped doing once our kids took over our lives.
The pattern was that he would come home form work and I would be in the middle of dinner and homework and I would put him right to work. We would do everything that we needed to do for the rest of the night, falling into bed, exhausted, barely having acknowledged each other.
And this only disconnected us.
So, make an effort to check in at least weekly with your partner, even more if possible. Learn about what is going on in each other’s lives. How each other is feeling. What to can to support each other. Rebuild your connection so that you feel close to each other in a way you haven’t done for a while.
#7 – Talk about the future.
Talking about the future is something that couples do regularly when they are first together. Those heady days of falling in love and visualizing what the future could hold.
Unfortunately, talking about dreams for the future often gets put on hold during the chaos of married life. And, if there are dreams being considered, they are often just for oneself and not for a couple.
Talking about the future is a verbalization that you see each other together going forward. A confirmation that you know that your hopes and dreams for the future, no matter how distant, are aligned. This is an essential part of feeling connected.
My ex-husband and I used to talk about the future often. We were nervous about it because our marriage was struggling but still we talked about it. When he stopped wanting to talk about the future, I knew that it was a sign that our marriage was over.
So, keep looking ahead with your wife. It will make you excited about things to come!
I hope that you now see that it is possible to rekindle love with your wife.
I know that some of the things that I have listed might seem a little bit intimidating and of course they do – most or even all of them are things that you are out of practice doing. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start up again.
You can do it!
I am a NYC based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate. My writing has been published on The Huffington Post, Prevention, Psych Central, Pop Sugar, MSN and The Good Man Project, among others. I work with all kinds of people to help them go from depressed and overwhelmed to confident and happy in their relationships and in their world.
