The tips include everything from “get off your phones” to “listen more” to “find an older married couple to spend time with,” but my favorite is definitely “double down on your positive time together.” Examine your leisure time. Are you regularly doing something with your spare time, as a couple, that you both enjoy doing? It’s trickier for couples without a lot of overlapping interests.
The pursuit of leisure activities as a couple was less strongly associated with marital happiness than most people believe. The determining factor is that both partners must enjoy the activity. Now this may seem like a duh finding, of course both partners should enjoy the leisure activities, but consider how many couples you know where one partner is not all that psyched for football, contra-dancing, wine-tasting or NASCAR, but goes along anyway. It is no real boost to marital bliss, now or into the future, if a couple routinely engages in leisure activities that mostly only the husband enjoys. In other words, you actually can’t fake it till you make it.