When you’ve been married for a long time sometimes the flame dies out a bit. You get into the monotony of the days. By the time one or both of you get home from work, get the kids fed and down for bed, somehow you are both too tired to talk. And you can’t talk before the kids go to bed because they require every ounce of your attention, especially of the one that just got home. After they are in bed and in order to enjoy the peace and quiet of nobody needing something from you and no deadline to meet, you don’t talk. You just sit down and turn on the tv and zone out until it’s time for you to go to bed yourself. You mutter “Good night, I love you” before you roll over and fall asleep. I don’t know about you, but that tends to be the rut that my husband and I get in. There is still tons of love there, but the day to day obligations get in the way of any sort of romance. The flame needs to occasionally be reignited.
That is what happened for my husband and I this year on our anniversary. We had been living in Washington state since 2006 but in October of last year (2014) we got an opportunity to discuss moving back to Colorado. We heavily weighed the pros and cons, but once we made the decision that we would move we began planning our anniversary before even figuring out if we would move ourselves or hire a company or any of the other logistics of moving. Our anniversary was at the end of August and we started planning last October! Why were we so excited? Well, the move to Colorado brought us back to the land of the Grandparents! And what did that mean for us? Instead of just a couple hours out for dinner, we got to leave the kids with the Grandparents and head out of town for the entire weekend!! We hadn’t done anything other than dinner for our anniversary in over 5 years because of the kids. Yes, we had people to watch the kids but we always somehow felt guilty leaving them for more than a couple hours while we went to a restaurant. Dinner to some might sound like the normal, but for us, we knew we needed to reignite the flame. See, we were together for 10 years, married for 7, before having kids. For some couples the majority of their relationship has been with kids so that is their normal. But not for us. We love our kids without a doubt. But we also miss having the time of just the two of us. We are still learning how to navigate the lifestyle change for us. So, when we decided on moving back to Colorado (which meant being within 45 minutes of the Grandparents) we immediately started planning our getaway.
We headed back to the same spot where we went out of town for the first time as a couple. Back when we were in that new love and infatuation stage. We went back to Glenwood Springs. After 12 years of marriage and the daily life taking away some of our spark, this little getaway felt like we were dating again. I became infatuated with my husband again. You can’t ask for much more than that for an anniversary!
Falling in love again didn’t wait until we got there. It started on the drive. I pulled up pinterest and searched for “road trip with spouse” ideas. I came across this post and downloaded their questionnaire. You were supposed to answer for the other person if you could, although some of them were hard to even figure out for yourself. There were 50 questions and we answered the last one as we were pulling into our hotel. About 10 questions in I found myself looking at him like I haven’t looked at him in years. I began to feel like I did when we were on our way out to Glenwood Springs for the first time. The best part about the questionnaire though was that it showed how much we really do know each other. But also that we don’t know everything. There is still a little bit of mystery left in us. It was perfect and it set the stage for an incredible weekend.
We checked into our hotel and then went out to dinner. The last several times we went out to dinner without the kids they were all we could talk about. That or work. But this time we just continued the conversations that had begun as a result of the questionnaire. We talked about deep stuff, funny stuffy, sad stuff. The food was good but the company and conversation were perfect.
The next day, we SLEPT IN! Oh how amazing that was! Our hotel is right at the base of this small amusement park called Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. It’s an amusement park literally on the side of the mountain. We rode a roller coaster, rode the alpine slide, road on a two person zip line type ride (which was so scary that my fingers when numb I was holding on so tight – yet I managed to do it twice!). There are also living caves up there that you can do tours in. We did two of the walking tours. They also do another one where you get a full jump suit, a hard hat with a light, knee pads and elbow pads and you go crawling around through the tight spaces of the cave. We will go back sometime to do that one – they were all booked up while we were there. The mere fact that we were at an amusement park felt like we were dating again too. It was so much fun! Then we went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant there: Juicy Lucy’s Steakhouse. We always get the steamed artichoke for an appetizer and then their steaks are amazing. We were planning on swinging by the hot springs after dinner but we both ate so much we were so uncomfortable.
We slept in again the next day and then headed home. This anniversary getaway put fuel on and reignited the fire of our love. It made our love feel brand new after 15 years together. Sadly we are already somewhat back to the monotony of our day to day, but we are already planning our next getaway. The anticipation is half the fun!
So, if your relationship is feeling a little ho-hum and needs a little spark put back into, remember where you first went out of town together, or think of whatever your favorite memory as a couple is and try to recreate it. Plan it in enough advance so you can both look forward to and get excited for recreating this “best” time. Hopefully it will do for you what it did for us!
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