And you will make a new start, listening obediently to God, keeping all his commandments that I’m commanding you today. God, your God, will outdo himself in making things go well for you.
Deuteronomy 30:8-9
Recently we sat on the floor in a crowded airline terminal and played a game of Scrabble on our trusty iPad. We had about thirty minutes to kill before we could board our flight and a quick game would do the trick.
We’ve had a longstanding competition in our marriage with this game. We play to win. And on this occasion the game was especially tight. The score was teetering back and forth with nearly every move. Triple word scores hung in the balance.
It was anyone’s game.
It was also time to board our flight and we barely heard the announcement from the agent. We’d lost track of where we were and how much time had passed. We had to scramble to gather our belongings and get on the plane.
That’s engagement.
Researchers sometimes call it “flow” and it has to do with a state of being so wrapped up in an activity that we lose ourselves in it.
If you were to ask us how we felt in the midst of our Scrabble competition we would have likely said, “nothing.” We were just passing time.
But it was the engagement of our minds and our beings in the process that brought about a sense of satisfaction that heightens happiness. And researchers are finding that a sense of engagement together as a couple is essential to a healthy marriage.
Of course, engagement doesn’t require competition. Engagement can ensue while tending a garden, talking together about your goals and dreams on a road trip, playing or listening to music, working on a home improvement project, or preparing for an important milestone.
Anything that includes the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity is engagement. So as you begin a new year together in your marriage, how will you cultivate more engagement in your relationship?
Reflect and Respond
What can the two of you do, in specific terms, to bring about more engagement in your relationship this year?
Go ahead, tell us in the comments.
Related Resource
Explore the science, the art, and the practice of happiness in marriage. Drawing from real-life examples, Drs. Les and Leslie offer insights into how your brain and relationship affect each other as you make happiness in your marriage a conscious, delightful habit.
Self-improvement (work shops, trainings, creativity thinking) facilitated together.
This explains perfectly why my husband and I have the best and most intimate conversations while we are driving in the car or walking around/repairing our farm’s electric fence!
I think I will ask him to walk the fence more often, whether it needs it or not.
. . . and, sometimes we just have sex, while at other times we engage, sexually. I suggest one is being intimate – whether it involves sex or playing scrabble or farkle or working in the yard in a connected/engaged manner – while the other is just being in the same space doing something . . . seemingly together . . . at the same time. Great subject to discuss! Thanks!
Unfortunately my husband and myself are at the other side of the spectrum in that we hardly every engage each other. Infact we can be seated next to each other or in the car and not have much to say. I want to say so much, but am always questioning my thoughts and how it will be accepted and what the reaction will be that I don’t say anything and it may be the same on his end too. We do need to learn to engage each other and start communicating, for starters, I guess. Help! I do long for this kind of togetherness!
Dear Sister Merlyn,
Because of an abusive first marriage (of 20 years), I also have questioned my thoughts and wondered what the reaction would be. If there is a person in your past who did not respond lovingly to your thoughts and feelings, please consider some counseling to let the hurts from the past go. Unless it is your husband who has taught you to be wary, he deserves a chance to hear what you have to say and respond from his heart. I have learned, and so has my dear husband, that we can trust each other with our thoughts and it has brought much closeness and intimacy.
I also needed to learn that when my husband vents about his parents (who we live with and take care of), I need to listen and agree with him, but not rise up and start airing my issues and hurts, or it makes him shut down. There is a time and a place for all sorts of words and a wise person guards their tongue. But sharing openly and honestly also will find it’s time.
Blessings to you and your husband!
Thanks for sharing that, too often we sit and look at the walls, other people instead of really ” engaging” we need that. When my husband and I are working in the yard or at our little farm with the animals and chores we get silly and even dance in a horse stall! It’s truly being in the present moment! Just like our Abba-Father with each of us!
Blessings to you both,
Bonnie
My wife and I engage in friendly competition of table tennis on a regular bases. We have fun in passing the win back and forth. We also make exercise fun by going bike riding during the summer months. This summer we had to make a negative thing positive by working together on a basement cleaning project. We hired a builder to remodel but he stopped without completing the project. So we dug in together to make the most out of a bad situation. Last year we competed your marriage mentor course. The thing we would like to do this year is to take up ballroom dancing!
We decided that we are going to do a side business together. We just started a month ago and it is so much fun! And, the other night, I was telling him how I used to play a card game with my brother and sister years ago but couldn’t remember how to play and he knew the game and remembered the rules! We play it almost every night now. It’s so good to laugh and dream together.
what do you do when your Husband has to work on the other side of the world and when you only see each other 3 times a year?
How do you build intimacy without even seeing each other? How do you trust when you have no idea what’s going on in their life. When he has separate friends., Separate home, separate church his own foreign bank account,
Reading all these comments make me very sad! I want so badly to have this intimacy with my husband of 48 years .. we have been struggling for a very long time .. he refuses to go to counseling.. we are a Christian couple that both love the Lord.. my husband is not open to reading a book together .. no self help books .. I’ve pleaded with him that when you are sick you go to the Dr.. we have a sick marriage .. his one liner is “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”.. he said the truth is in both of us we don’t need anything else . We just need to walk in what we know is true.. if we live that ,all will be fine .that’s not working .. I don’t know where to turn . And I don’t agree with him . God uses people to give us insight in his word.. The Bible is self help . Our communication is at a “0”. I don’t know where to turn on my own.