Is it normal for marriage to get boring?
Marriage tends to become complicated and messy, as couples share space and opinions (e.g. negotiating sexuality, tying each other’s finances together, dealing with countless decisions that daily married life demands, and talking about issues about having and raising a child).
In a marriage, couples can move in and out of relational conflict and boredom at any point, especially when one spouse expects their significant half to be responsible for their happiness and fill up their empty emotional space.
When a couple feels bored with each other, it generally reflects a constant lack of focus on each other’s life plan as well as personal growth. As a part of coupling up, it can be just a part of the inevitable process of going through periods of blame and distance. And the real problem does not occur until one or both sides begin to catastrophize their marital boredom and cultivate a negative attitude towards it. In that case, the problematic spouse may think, “Maybe I have married the wrong person.”, “We no longer have anything in common”, “The love has already gone out of the marriage”…
It is crucial for couples to be aware that even a very healthy marriage will move through some periods of too much conflict and too much distance. In fact, when we are engaged in our own long-term projects and friendships, sometimes we may also get depressed by the monotony and boredom; but we know well we should not give them up easily.
As long as couples can muster up goodwill, maturity, as well as a genuine wish for a harmonious relationship, a marriage will not be too stale to be remedied.
As described above, if you also feel bored in a stale marriage and you desire to rekindle the relationship, you do not have to wait for your spouse to change first, instead, you might proactively engage in bold and positive acts to change the current relationship dynamic.
How do you deal with your boring spouse?
What not to do when your spouse feels bored:
- Stop inundating him/her with your unnecessary problems/worries.
- Don’t beg your spouse to communicate with you if he/she always gives you a silent treatment.
- No need to ask your spouse how you can make him/her satisfied/happy.
- No need to ask your spouse to make any change for you, especially those changes that may make him/her unhappy/uncomfortable; otherwise it will be easily interpreted as a compulsion.
- Don’t attempt to ingratiate yourself with him/her.
What you can do in moderation if your spouse still reciprocates:
- Express your appreciation and admiration for him/her when he/she does something nice.
- Show your sincere interest in what he/she likes to do.
- If you notice your spouse still has a good desire for sex, you can try to be more playful in bed, for example, you might try to use more erotic words to flirt with him/her.
- If you are a husband, try harder to masculinize yourself; likewise, if you are a wife, try harder to feminize yourself; many people admit that they were strongly attracted to their spouse’s femininity/masculinity; but they lament that it has already been replaced with flip-flops, baggy shirts, sweat pants …
- I bet you have ever heard the proverb: “Absence can make the heart grow fonder”. Being too independent can also destroy a long-term relationship. Especially if you realize that you and your spouse almost always cling together wherever your spouse goes, you might consider a relationship distance. It is natural for us to tend to become tired of meeting the same old people in day-to-day life as time passes; And probably when your marriage is boring, either or both of you two have a similar experience.
- Maybe there is something little or unimportant about yourself that your spouse does not like and that you feel justified in keeping doing, such as your consumption custom, your dressing style, and your temper… when it comes to those things, you might consider moderately change them for your spouse. This can be a way to win his/her favor.
- Do something nice for your spouse. (e.g. washing his/her car, buying his/her favorite magazine or wine, and cooking his/her favorite food). Likewise, you can also do something nice for someone who is very important to him/her, whether they are his/her close friends, mother, father, sister, brother…
- Don’t go to extremes. To heal the relationship, you do not have to desperately put up with anything about your spouse, such as his/her silent treatment, lack of motivation to maintain the marriage, negative emotions, his/her wild accusation… Remember, your spouse will also be turned off if you put up with anything that he/she does to you. Meanwhile, you also do not have to go to another extreme – don’t issue ultimatums; for example, maybe, you have felt that you could take no more in this boring relationship; but if you jump to ultimatums by saying tough words like “today, you need to tell me why you are so unhappy/bored with me, otherwise we do not have to continue the relationship.” This will also cause a lot of unnecessary drama in your relationship.
Why does your spouse get bored of you?
There could be a variety of factors that causes boredom in a marriage; the following just points out some common factors:
- Boring sex: a lot of people become more and more uninterested in sex, as their married life goes on. Naturally, your spouse may also feel that you have become insensitive to his/her sexual needs; for quite a few people who suffer from a constant lack of sexual intimacy, they admit that they ever got tempted to look outside. No doubt, if a spouse can always give the other one good sex, it will go a long way toward reducing boredom in their married life.
- Unforgiveness: during the long married life, inevitably your spouse feels offended by you at some point. Probably, he/she has registered your disappointment and dwelled on the unpleasant past for a long time. When your spouse becomes unwilling to forgive you and just sees the bad part of you, he/she can hardly feel the sense of love; and she will get bored of you over time.
- Financial pressure: when your spouse becomes not able to fulfill the basic family responsibility like before, he/she may get irritated, and even he/she may regret why he/she get himself/herself into the “mess of marriage”. In such a situation, you should be more supportive and give him/her more encouragement rather than put more pressure on him/her.
- Work pressure: we all have the experience – pressure at work may affect our behavior in our daily life. As a partner, you should also be smart to identify the times the great work pressure is wearing him/her down; at that time, if he/she does not want you to disturb him/her but you still nag on him/her, he/she will easily feel bored of you; so just ask him/her whether you could help him/her do something beneficial; surely, if he/she wants to share the specific news, events, and inner feelings with you, it is better; and if he/she just does not want, give him/her some private space and time.
Do you feel that your marriage lacks sex?
When your marriage is boring, probably you feel that your marriage has fallen into a sexless state. And you may wonder whether you can survive in a sexless marriage.
No newly married couple ever imagined the day they would stop having sex or live with sexual boredom. Yet, according to related research in North America, approximately 15%~20% of married couples admit that they experience long periods of time that they are not sexually intimate as before.
Surely, sex is always a necessary thing needed between married couples. So on the one hand, you need to try to rekindle the sexual connection; on the other hand, you have to be aware of a fact – as we age, both men and women inevitably experience significant changes in sex drive; now you and your spouse may have different libido levels; you two may have different opinions as to how to maintain the sex life in this long-term relationship. Probably, sometimes you desire more sex, but your spouse is not interested at that point, or he/she may be content with the sex life; but anyway, a sexless marriage does not mean the relationship lacks love; and quite a few couples survive in their sexless marriages, and sexual intimacy should be regarded as an issue that can be worked on and improved over time.
For more tips on how to deal with the sexless marriage, you might go on to read the post below:
how to survive in a sexless marriage – is a sexless relationship doomed.
The final word:
If you feel like your spouse is bored in your married, probably so he/she is. You know him/her best, so probably your take on it is correct. In such a case, you might try to get him/her to see the fascinating and amazing side of you. For more tips on how to make your spouse feel that you deserve passion, adoration, love, and devotion from him/her, you might go on to read the page below to adopt more suggestions from Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
When your marriage is stale, how to fix it and keep it alive.
What to do when your marriage lacks passion – Get the spark back.