My spouse and I dated for 5-ish years starting in uni, before getting married and we're now coming up on the 10th anniversary. The spark has been missing for a while now, and I feel like we're headed towards a dead bedroom kind of situation. But not just sex wise, even just fun wise.

We're both in similar positions career wise, earn similar amounts, split chores down the middle (to the point of just alternating between what we do each week. Ex: I plan and cook this week while they do the dishes and laundry, and switch tasks the next week). No kids/pets in the mix - just the two of us.

There's a lot of love and respect between us, we rarely ever fight, and there's no obvious point of friction that I can say is the source of our issue. It's hard to even say that there's an issue unless I squint a little.

When I do squint, I can see that we're just going through the motions. We go on "fun" dates and spend a lot of time just existing without actually having fun or talking. When we do the same activities (board games, pub crawl, pottery, concerts etc) with other friends, we tend to actually have fun. This has over time resulted in a situation where we plan more and more things in groups instead of just the two of us.

We barely even talk about the exciting new things we discovered today with each other. I've caught myself looking forward to telling something to a coworker of the opposite gender, and have since limited my interaction with them. But I was actually having fun while talking to said coworker, you know?

Any hoo, any recommendations based on things that worked for you?

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[–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I am going to try to channel my inner Dan Savage and talk about how to bring al excitement and adventure in your life. He does talk about this often and I have tried his advice in my own life to some success.

When you are dating someone new, they are the adventure you are on. They are unknown, exciting and a little dangerous both in and out of the bedroom. Once a relationship mature they are no longer a source of adventure but rather a source of comfort which removes mystery. So you will need to create, adventure and mystery together.

This means doing things separately in your day to day life. Find hobbies and events independent of each other so you can be your own person and then talk with each other about it. Space both gives you adventure and gives you something to talk about. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The other thing you should do is work to see each other through a strangers eyes. Ester Perel goes through this in detail in her book Mating in captivity which you should read because it's about this whole problem. The idea is seeing your partner as a stranger would.

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