My marriage got quiet
Shayne O'Brien · RockPointe Church, Leander
Somebody once wrote this about their marriage.
"Do all relationships go stale after five years? We don't seem to have much to talk about anymore. We used to talk about us. Now it's living logistics and the kids. I have no major complaints, but the excitement is gone. We watch a lot of television. We read. We have friends. But when we're alone together it's pretty dull. We even often sleep in separate bedrooms so we don't keep each other awake. Is there some way to recapture the old magic?"
If any of that sounds like your house, start here: nothing is wrong with you.
Nobody in that letter is a villain. Nobody cheated. Nobody yelled. That is exactly what makes it so hard to talk about. There is no problem to point at. There is just a quiet where something used to be.
Quiet is not the same as parked
A relationship is always doing one of two things. It is growing together, or it is drifting apart. It does not sit still.
That sounds like bad news. It is actually the best news on this page, because drift is not a verdict. Drift is a direction. And a direction can change.
It is easier to fall in love than it is to stay in love. Not because staying takes more talent. Because we stop doing the things we did when we were falling.
Think about what you used to do. You paid attention. You called for no reason. You noticed what they were wearing. You made plans. You asked a question and actually listened to the answer, and then you asked another one.
None of that was technique. That is just what being interested in a person looks like.
Then life got loud. Work, kids, bills, the calendar. You did not decide to stop. You got busy, and the person who understands you best is always the easiest person to postpone. They'll understand.
The enemy of a marriage is hardly ever a villain. Usually it is a schedule.
The part nobody warns you about
Something happens in long relationships that almost nobody names out loud.
When you start expecting something, you stop thanking somebody for it.
Somebody makes the coffee every morning for twenty years. At some point it quits being a kindness and becomes just the way mornings work. Nobody decided that. It happened. And the day it happened, a person who is still doing something for you every single morning stopped getting thanked for it.
Now multiply that. The trash, the laundry, the school pickup, the paycheck, the oil change, the groceries. Twenty years of it. You end up with two people doing an enormous amount for each other, and neither one of them feeling much of it.
That is what quiet usually is. Not the absence of love. The absence of noticing.
Gratitude is just saying "I didn't expect that" about something you have every right to expect by now.
Feelings follow actions
Most people wait until they feel close before they do anything close. They wait a long time.
It runs the other direction. It is far easier to act your way into a feeling than to feel your way into an action. Do the things, and the feelings come back looking for you. Wait on the feelings, and you will keep waiting.
Four of them. None cost much.
Attention. Time with no screen and no agenda. Ask them a question you don't already know the answer to. Not a logistics question. A question about them.
Appreciation. Out loud, daily, and specific. Not "you're a good mom." Say the actual thing you watched them do.
Affection. The non sexual kind, and more of it than you think. Hold their hand in the car. Sit closer on the couch. If you are thinking "I'm just not an affectionate person," that is not genetics. It is a habit you picked up somewhere, and habits can be put down.
Adventure. Most marriages are not miserable. They are boring. And boredom does more quiet damage than conflict does, because nobody ever sits down to have a fight about being bored. So do one thing a week together that is not a chore. One rule: no kids. If the kids come, it is a family outing, not a date.
One more thing
A lot of people living in a quiet house start to privately wonder whether they married the wrong person.
Most of them didn't.
I am not going to tell you that is true in every case, because it isn't. If what is happening in your home is abuse or betrayal, this is not the page you need, and please talk to somebody today. But ordinary quiet, the letter at the top of this page, is not a wrong person problem. It is a stopped doing the things problem. That one has a road back.
So pick one thing off that list. Do it this week, without announcing it, and without waiting until you feel like it.
The feeling is downstream. It always was.
And if you'd rather talk to a person, I am one. You can write me here. No pitch. If all you want is to say it out loud to somebody, that counts.