It’s that time of year. The time of year where most people fall into one of two camps: the “I’ve already finished my holiday shopping” camp, or the “What are you talking about, I’ve got a whole month” camp.
All joking aside, the holidays can be stressful, and this year is definitely no exception. Maybe your partner is hard to buy for, or maybe they’re not. Maybe you love the task of finding the perfect gift for them or maybe it’s a struggle. Perhaps money is tight this year, or you just want to do things differently (it’s 2020 after all). Wherever you’re at, here are four “gift” ideas that will strengthen your relationship (and don’t have to cost a lot of money).
Everyone knows we should all be striving to create healthy
habits in our daily lives, and we also know the struggle that can sometimes be.
It’s hard! Habits are little behaviors, routines, or rituals we do on a regular
basis – sometimes they just kind of happen over time, and other times we’ve
worked to make it happen. In addition to the healthy habits we have, we also
likely have some unhealthy ones that we try to break. That is also hard!
We most often think of habits when it comes to things like lifestyle: nutrition and exercise, or maybe even more relevant these days, work life, specifically productivity as so many of us have transitioned to working from home. However, there’s another part of life that can benefit from healthy habits – your relationships! And specifically, your marriage.
When
you finally get the chance to reunite and reconnect with your partner at the
end of the day, what do you say?
“How was your day?”
There’s
definitely nothing wrong with this question! It shows you’re interested in each
other’s daily lives and can be a great way to start a more in-depth conversation.
But when you both start asking the question mindlessly and responding with
one-word answers, it might be time to say hey, we can do better!
Author’s Note: This blog post was written mid-March, just before COVID-19 stay-at-home orders became widespread throughout the country, drastically altering the way we live our daily lives. At the time, celebrating anything seemed like an artifact of a previous life.
As the weeks wore on, the importance of celebration became clear; celebrations are necessary. And as a result, we’ve seen birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, and more celebrated in new and creative ways. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, our relationships, and what we value most. We hope this post carries a new layer of meaning as we begin navigating forward with this changed perspective.
What do you celebrate in your
relationship?
Do you go all out for every birthday and
anniversary or are you in a season of life where you barely have time to yell,
“Happy Anniversary!” across the room as you head off in separate
directions?
Do you celebrate the big milestones? What
about the small victories? Do you still commemorate your dating anniversary?
What about the anniversary of when you first met?
The thing is, we choose whether we want to
make celebrations a priority, whether we celebrate both the big and small
occasions, and whether we do that through grand or mundane gestures. By doing
so, we create our own relationship celebration “culture.”
Did you know that routines in a relationship can be valuable?
As a society, we have developed a strikingly negative perspective of falling into a routine in our relationships. We view spontaneity as the ideal norm. With that being said, spontaneity is fun and important in a relationship, but routines are just as necessary. Read More
