Things that make a marriage cool: Doing sports together

Spending quality time with your partners brings you closer together, but if that quality time includes doing sports, you kill two birds with one stone! How so? Well, doing sports together has many other cool benefits.

• Improves your looks. Do you want to look your best and stay attractive to your partner? Exercise is the answer! Don’t take your partner’s admiration for granted. Of course, a marriage should be based on deeper qualities than physical appearance. Still, looking after your body will make you look your best, increase your confidence, all of which will make you very attractive to your partner.
• Has health benefits. It is known that doing sports lowers the risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis. Not only physical health, mental health benefits greatly from doing exercise. It relieves us of stress, is relaxing, and boosts happy feelings. It can also positively affect self-esteem.

There are so many sports you can do with your partner, some are even more fun if you do them together!

My suggestions:

Our personal favorites are skiing & snowboarding, jogging, beach volleyball, and windsurfing. These are the sports we do together most often and are most passionate about. Of course, some people are disabled or suffer from chronic diseases or advancing age that prevent them from engaging in vigorous exercise. However, even such couples can benefit from doing light exercise. That can mean just going for a walk in the neighborhood. It’s better than sitting at home in front of the screens all day!

Do you do sports together with your partner? Which are your favorites?

Things that make a marriage cool: Playing with your partner

I’m thinking of starting a series “Things that make a marriage cool”. Because there are so many, they wouldn’t all fit nicely in one post, and they each deserve a separate post 🙂 That being said, I will start with playing.

To make things clear right away: I’m not referring to playing around. This is one of the things that are extremely uncool in marriage, and I will also intend to write a post about those (lots of announcements in this post!).

I am talking about good, old-fashioned playing, the kind we all did when we were kids.Now just because we are grown-ups it doesn’t mean we should stop playing. Actually we shouldn’t stop, since there is equally strong evidence that support the benefits of play in adults. It lifts mood, unleashes creativity, strengthens bonds with our loved ones, to name just a few. And in marriage it can also break the daily routine, keep the spark alive, and make the marriage cooler.

The type of play probably changes as we grow up (but there is nothing wrong if you still love playing with your Legos!) so here are a few ideas from the agenda of me&my husband:

– Hide and seek. How to play: Turn off the lights in your apartment/house, turn on music so that you don’t hear your partner hiding, count to 20, and play like you did when you were a kid! It’s hilarious to discover all the unpredictable places you can use as hiding places, and doing it in dark adds some more excitement 😉 Last time we played I found my husband out on the balcony of the 1st floor! (it was freezing cold outside)

– Board games. If you’re not a fan of board games and your partner is, give them a second chance! This is what my husband did for me (thank you!!) and now he enjoys playing. Board games can make for great evening fun when you don’t feel like going out. The key is to find a game you both enjoy. There are tons out there, our favorite ones at the moment are Activity (you will need friends), Ligretto, and Cluedo.

– (Remote control) car racing. This is one where I bend in for my hubby. He has a big passion for everything remote control and so we often find ourselves on a empty piste of a supermarket on Sunday afternoon testing our driving skills. I don’t actually try to win of course. We are both happy if I don’t crash.

– Archery. When we do it, I play the assistant and measure the distance with the laser distance meter. That’s because his bow is way too strong for me and I don’t have my own yet. But now we bought a new toy that I will be able to use too: a Slingshot! We’re going to test it tomorrow and I’m actually quite eager! I just wonder what we’re going to shoot…hmmm…. 🙂

– Guess the wine. We both love good wine and discovering new kinds. So we would test each others ability to recognize the type of wine we’re drinking.

– Hopping dots. The newest fad app from Play store… It’s a brainy one and we compete who is going to come farther in levels 🙂

This is just our personal favorites. Like I said, it is important to find something you will both enjoy! Some final tips: 1) Learn to laugh at yourself, 2) Don’t focus on winning, enjoy the game, 3) Be willing to try new things and 4) Make time for playing!

How do you play with your partner?

Enjoy Friday evening!

Nina