This blog post was originally posted on September 30, 2020, and has since been updated to include an expanded list of tips for strengthening your relationship.
Feeling a bit disconnected from your partner? Relationship feeling stale? You’re not alone. In fact, it’s perfectly normal for feelings, chemistry, and a sense of deep connection to wax and wane in a relationship. The good news is that, as humans, we are designed to connect, and there are many ways, even simple ones, that can restore the feeling of closeness with your partner. Here are 41 ideas you can use to help your relationship get its shine back.
41 Ways to Strengthen a Relationship
- Create something together – Find a shared interest and go in on a project together. It can be anything from a meal, to an art or craft, or maybe a garden or even a little side hustle. Big or small, find something to create… together.
- Join a couple’s group – By learning and sharing with other couples, you can get to know your own relationship on a deeper level – and who knows? You just might make some new friends to meet up with for couples dates!
- Do something thrilling together – The anticipatory planning, the nervous moments leading up to it, the rush of the thrilling event itself, and the post-event recovery all have their own opportunities for bonding and sparks, plus you’ll be creating emotionally-charged memories to draw on as you deepen your relationship in the future.
- Ask one new question each day – Get to know each other on new levels by asking a different question each day. If you need some ideas to get you started, our Relationship Repair card decks can help, but coming up with your own questions can be a lot of fun, too.
- Socialize together – In addition to fulfilling our needs as social beings, socializing together allows us to experience more facets of our partner, notice more nuance in how they interact with the world, and can even provide a mirror for the health of the relationship.
- Recreate your first date – If the location is still accessible, you can go back to the same spot to recreate the magic of your first date. For those of us who can’t easily get to our first date location, we can lean on some creativity to recreate the scene!
- Reorganize the workload to put each partner’s strengths to use
- Pray/meditate together – Even if you and your partner are of different faiths or paths, just taking the time to be together and with something larger than you both can be a gently humbling experience that opens the gates for spiritual and emotional closeness.
- Take a special getaway together – It doesn’t matter if you get away for a week of luxury in Paris, an overnight stay at a local hotel, or a weekend of primitive camping, some time away, together, can be a great way to refocus your attention on each other and the relationship. Leaving the daily stresses and to-do’s behind, even just for 24 hours, can help you both decompress, reconnect, and share some meaningful quality time together.
- Take a getaway individually – There really is truth to the old adage, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” A little time away from our partner can offer some time to reflect on ourselves, our partner, and our relationship, and provide opportunities to return with a fresh perspective and some new tales to share.
- Sign up for a couple’s workshop together – While a couple’s group will typically run weekly for a period of time, a couple’s workshop often lasts a few hours, a day, or a weekend. Because couples workshops usually provide space for deep work in a relatively short period of time, a relationship workshop can be a great way to fast-track growth in your relationship.
- Share a childhood memory you’ve never shared with your partner- It can be something surface-level, or something you’ve never shared with anyone before. If it’s something deeper, be sure to consider time and environment when sharing to ensure you both have the space to process if need be.
- Revisit old plans that never took shape and see if there’s a spark to make them happen – Maybe it was a plan when you first started dating. Or maybe it was a plan you had before kids that took a backseat when you became parents. Even if you don’t rekindle a spark for the plans, it’s fun to look back together and reflect on who you used to be as a couple and how your aspirations have changed.
- Take time to learn more about one of your partner’s hobbies – You don’t have to pretend to love a hobby that you don’t (in fact, it’s not recommended to do so), but it might mean a lot to your partner if you learned enough to even have a basic familiarity with something they love. Even better if you can learn enough to have a conversation about it!
- Take turns serving each other breakfast in bed – It can be something elaborate like a full pancake breakfast, or something simpler like coffee, toast, and jam, depending on what your partner might like. This is a great way to offer an act of kindness, while also letting your partner know you remember their preferences.
- Carve out a block of time each day, turn off all electronics, and focus just on each other – This just might be one of the most effective ways to strengthen your bond with your partner – spending intentional time where you each have the other’s undivided attention will open the pathway for more meaningful connection.
- Tackle the tough discussions – Not talking about the tough subjects can hurt a relationship, whereas successfully navigating difficult conversations, together, can deepen your bond and improve your partnership.
- Surprise your partner with a romantic and intimate setting – Feel free to get as daring as you’d like, just remember to keep your partner’s preferences in mind as well!
- Make something for your partner – A keepsake album of things they cherish, a card, a piece of art, or anything that shows they’re worth the time and effort to express how you feel.
- Discuss boundaries in the relationship – For those of us who have had a hard time with boundaries, it might feel a little uncomfortable to talk about them, and that’s totally normal! Boundaries can deepen our relationship with ourselves and free up space for our relationship to grow, so the undertaking can certainly be rewarding.
- Dream (together) about the future – The next time you find that you and your partner have some downtime to share, engage them in a conversation about your mutual dreams for the future. Don’t be afraid to dream big – as we shift and grow, we become more capable of achieving goals, so what once was impossible might now be within reach.
- Set a goal and make a plan to achieve it together – Little or big, setting, planning, working toward, and achieving a goal with your partner can be a fun way to strengthen how you work together.
- Visit with another couple that inspires you both – As social animals, we learn by watching others, and it’s no different when it comes to “doing” relationships. We tend to take on traits of those we share spaces with, so visiting with inspiring couples in healthy relationships can give a great boost to our own.
- Find a quiet place in nature and take turns reading a novel to each other – You can hike to a favorite spot, cuddle up under a nearby tree, or even just head out to the back yard to enjoy each other, the sounds of nature, and some literature that stirs the soul.
- Get involved in a community services project together – It’s well-documented that altruistic acts have all sorts of benefits, so it’s no surprise that when we do kind things for others as a couple, the relationship gets a boost, too.
- Surprise your partner with love notes in unexpected places – Think about how your partner spends their day and leave them sweet little notes in the places they’ll be. Some ideas are to slip a note in their jacket pocket, on the windshield of their car, or even send a card in the mail at their workplace.
- Meet with a relationship coach or therapist to get a new perspective – You can do couples or individual sessions, or even group sessions or a workshop, depending on what you and your partner need.
- Spend 15 minutes asking each other personal questions about fears, hopes, dreams, and make eye contact while doing it. If one or both of you are neurodivergent and uncomfortable with prolonged eye contact, you can use your favorite way of connecting and sharing physical space while you ask each other personal questions.
- Commit to doing, together, the thing you’ve both been putting off – You can divide a task and conquer it, then celebrate together on a job well done! Seriously though, completing a task is an easy and healthy way to boost your dopamine and what better way to maximize those natural feel-good chemicals than to share them with your partner?!
- Create an album together of your favorite memories – Digital, physical, it doesn’t matter! The goal here is to share some time walking down memory lane.
- Visit family you both enjoy being with – Positive relationships with close family can make us feel safe, secure, and loved, often providing us a sense of groundedness in a chaotic world.
- Create a digital “mixtape” of songs that hold significance in your relationship – Music wakes up our senses, and, when paired with memory, can open up access to deep and positive emotion about our partner
- Encourage your partner to start the thing they’ve been afraid of, and ask how you can be supportive of them
- Exercise together, then help each other stretch afterward. Whether you’re both a little competitive and want to race each other on the treadmill, or like to do things as a team and find some two-person exercises, you can find an exercise routine that fits your relationship. Helping each other stretch can deepen the bond, as certain chemicals are released during stretching that can bring on positive feelings, and those positive feelings are then associated with your partner.
- Make a lunch date and plan a special picnic – You might want to try this one when you both have a day off from work so you can really enjoy the time you share together. You can surprise your partner, or plan together, but aim for a leisurely lunch with plenty of time for eating and talking in one of your favorite spots.
- If you live together, create a safe space in the home where you can both spend time together, and leave any negativity outside of the space. This can be a certain room, part of a room, or any space where you both fit and feel safe and comfortable.
- Longer hugs – When possible, extend hugs to 20 seconds or more to jumpstart the oxytocin, a feel-good bonding chemical that is produced when humans are connected through (wanted) touch.
- Make your favorite childhood meals for each other. There are so many ways to make this idea your own. Maybe you could cook together, and teach each other how to make the recipe. Maybe one of you could prepare your favorite childhood meal, then sit down to enjoy it together while sharing stories about why it’s your favorite childhood meal. If you both enjoy a little friendly competition, you could write out the recipes and instructions, then give them to the other person and see how close their cooking gets to what you remember from childhood. Get creative and enjoy plenty of opportunities to bond over the sharing of food and memories.
- Read The Five Love Languages together and explore each other’s primary and secondary languages of love. Developed by Gary Chapman, love languages are a concept that can help us better understand how our partner gives and receives love. The five languages – words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch, quality time, and gifts are all outlined in his book, which can help guide you on a deep dive toward understanding your partner’s perception of love, as well as your own.
- Separately read a relationship self-help book you both agree on, then compare notes and agree to put in place one thing you learned. You might set it up book club style, where you each read a certain chapter each week, then the two of you come together to discuss what you’ve read. Or maybe one of you reads the book and makes notes in the margins to offer the other person a deeper insight as they read.
- If you live together, be curious about traditional living arrangements that maybe you’d like to do away with. For example, sleeping in separate rooms, or contributing to chores based on traditional gender roles. There’s no “right” way to set up your living arrangements, but with some thought, you can optimize your living space, routines, and habits in a way that helps you both be your best.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but serves more as a starting point to be more intentional in your relationship. Even if you don’t choose something from this list, I hope that it will inspire you to come up with other ideas to strengthen the connection in your relationship. Your relationship is worth the work, and so are you.
