Every marriage needs to hit the reset button every 3-5 years. Why? Because people grow. And you encounter…what I call…the “new needs”.

Remember when you where 20 years old? Did you have the same social, physical, financial, or emotional needs as you did when you were 15? Probably not. As you grew up, some needs were satisfied, some changed, and some new ones emerged.

The “New Needs”

The same growth occurred when you turned 25. You didn’t have the same needs as you did when you were 20. And neither did you have the same needs when you turned 30.

Every five years or so, as a part of your natural growth and maturity, you acquire a set of new needs designed to make you feel socially, physically, financially, and emotionally complete.

This maturity continues in marriage as well. The things that satisfied your needs in the beginning of your marriage…by year 5…bore you to tears. They will/are likely causing you some frustrations as well.

My wife and I experienced this around year five. We were feeling like we were in a rut and getting on each other’s nerves more than in previous years. The filters that we use to prevent us from saying thing that hurt the other person’s feeling were filtering less and less irritations. I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew that we needed to do something different.

This was the indicator that the skills we brought into our marriage had gone through the natural life cycle of forming, storming, norming performing, and adjourning. They’d run their course and were at the adjourning stage. It was time to add some skills to compensate for the new needs our marriage grew into.

5 Step to Reinventing Your Marriage

If you’re feeling this uneasiness in your marriage, don’t misconstrue these feelings as “the thrill is gone”, and use it as fodder to consider getting a divorce. This is the natural cycle of growth in your marriage. The next order of this is to reinvent your marriage.  Here are 5 steps to reinventing your marriage.

1. Take a trip to do some marriage reinventing. DO NOT merely sit at the kitchen table and try to reinvent your marriage. There are too many distractions. Worst case scenario, get a sitter for the kids and go out to dinner and get a hotel room for the night. My wife and I took a 4-day cruise to the Bahamas to discuss our issues.
2. Create New Values & Standards. Create new values and standards in your marriage that incorporate both of your needs and preferences (these are the “new needs” you must identified). Just focus on one or two things you want to reinvent. Too many will be over burdensome.
3. Prioritized Values & Standards. Agree to place a higher priority on the values and standards of your marriage than your personal preferences. This only works if both of yall do it. Otherwise one person will feel like they are being taken advantage of.
4. Create New Precedents. The majority of problems in relationships are associated with the difference in how each person solves problems or makes decisions. Create new precedents for how to solve problems and make decisions. Then follow them.
5. Incorporate Fun into Your Marriage. Not everything has to be about bills, the kids, or work…or a bunch of to-do list items. You must make time to enjoy the here and now with each other and have fun in those moments. Otherwise, your marriage will just be about accomplishing goals and meeting deadlines…and not about enjoying the journey you’re taking through life together.

You have to make time to work on your marriage. No one just stumbles upon a happy marriage. They are pursued with diligence.

As you grow and mature personally and relationally, make sure you build into your maturation schedule a time to reinvent your marriage…otherwise you might find yourself wanting to remove yourself from it.

HLHT – What are you doing to reinvent your marriage?

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