Builiding Your Relationship With Your Spouse

I was just thinking of this last night, how couples can work on their relationships. I'm not talking about marital problems or anything like that, but what they do to strengthen their relationship, what they do to spend time together etc.

My husband and I have been married for almost 9 years. I can't believe that I met him 10 years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago...we were young, both 18, still teenagers! Now we're both close to hitting 29 and we've been married almost a decade. Time certainly changes a relationship, and it can have its ups and downs. We've certainly had our fair share of those, but in the end, we still love each other.

So, back to my original point, how do you work on your relationship? What do you do together that keeps your marriage strong? My husband and I talked about this last night and realized we need to spend more time doing things together when he is home. Since he has gotten his lap-top, and me my PC, we don't' spend enough time together. Before we had our computers (we were computer free for two years), we always played games together. One of our favorites is "Mo-Mo", a really fun card game. And I always beat him at Yahtzee. Wait, I take that back...I DESTROY him when we play Yahtzee, LOL!! He beats me at Scrabble, and we do equally well at Trivial Pursuit. We just love to play games together, and have resolved to get back into it once he comes home again for Christmas. I'm really looking forward to it.

We always have a fun time when we do this. We'll sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and play for hours sometimes. We laugh, and flirt, and joke and playfully insult each other's game strategy. The TV doesn't come on, no computers either. It is just us and the game, in the kitchen. I wish we had not forgot this over the past few months, but we are making an effort to do it again. Now, we do talk for hours each day sometimes over the phone, but there is just something different about it when we're in person. It just fills me with happiness!! We are hours from family, and our sitter is now 45 minutes away also, so we aren't left with many choices to go out on a date. We get those when we can, so we substitute with our kitchen games.

So tell me what you and your spouse do for fun? What helps to strengthen your relationship?