Romance is not just a young person's game. Dating sites and apps geared specifically towards seniors make locating partners easier than ever for older individuals. If you are a senior who recently found and married your golden-year love, doing a few things can help make your union smoother so you can enjoy the rest of your lives together to the utmost. Marriage In A Box recommends the following:
Figure Out Your Habitation Situation
Married couples typically cohabitate, but it can be a struggle to decide whether you should move in with your new spouse or he or she should move in with you. Purchasing a new home together is a potential solution. Considerations you need to discuss with each other include the budget, proximity to family, and space.
Stand Unified on Finances
Research shows that financial issues are one of the leading causes of divorce. Since you married later in life, both you and your spouse likely have more assets than younger couples just starting out would. Carefully consider if you want to keep finances completely separate and split all expenses, have a joint account just for household costs, and mix nothing else or merge everything.
Whatever you decide, it must be a unanimous decision between the two of you. Discuss major purchases beforehand regardless of what you choose, because it may affect your partner as well.
Update your estate plan and will or seek legal counsel and create them if you don't already have them. You may feel like there's no rush since life expectancy is predicted to be longer in the coming decades and you have plenty of time, but statistics show that approximately 50% of individuals die without a will. Both you and your new spouse have existing loved ones (children, grandchildren, siblings, friends, etc.) to consider as well as a new husband or wife. It is imperative to get in agreement about your separate or collective estates. If you don't have a plan, it can cause conflict in probate after your decease between other heirs and your spouse.
Bond Over Shared Interests
Marriage takes work to keep the relationship strong. While you obviously share interests that brought you together in the first place, you need to spend time together to continue strengthening your bond and alleviate boredom. Shared experiences serve to make your connection and intimacy with each other stronger.
One way to do this is to volunteer for a charity you both support; you can even help out online. Explore the world together. Combine and complete your bucket lists together.
Another way you can spend time together while also padding your retirement income is by starting a business together. Becoming an entrepreneur is not like clocking into another 9-to-5 job. It doesn't have to be anything complicated or with a high educational or economic cost to get into. Simple ideas such as pet care, tutoring, freelance writing or web design, babysitting, or selling crafts are viable options that grant you extra room in your budget while allowing you the flexibility and free time to live the life you want.
Maintain an Open and Honest Relationship Based on Respect, Love, and Understanding
Communication, mutual respect, understanding, and plain compassion and empathy for your spouse are key to maintaining a marriage. Misunderstandings caused by poor communication can cause major issues. Talk frequently, about everything, and, as the old adage goes, don't go to sleep angry.
Going into the commitment with a firm understanding that you are now part of a whole and need to be together on important issues can help your marriage stay strong as you continue your lives together.
Despite your best intentions to keep your romance alive, the business of running a life together often gets in the way. Most of your time together is spent in maintenance mode. You are going to work, cleaning, running errands, and spending time with family. How can you give your marriage a little jolt to revive that spark and help us reconnect on a more intimate level?
Taking a vacation with your partner may be the exact remedy you and your spouse need to reignite that connection and spark.
Here are a few tips to make this vacation more intimate.
Plan together. Make choosing a vacation and creating an itinerary part of the fun, kind of like vacation foreplay. Spend some time together as a couple discussing potential travel destinations and lodging possibilities.
Forget the itinerary. Make your vacation a relaxing experience with your spouse. Don’t schedule a packed itinerary or you will be too tired from all the activities to focus on each other.
Ease into sex. On vacation, there’s a lot of pressure to have the "perfect sex”. Such high expectations can lead to internalized pressure and disappointment. Spend a lot of time cuddling, making out and just enjoying each other’s company. The sex will take care of itself.
Keep it light and positive. A vacation is a time to relax and enjoy each other without the day-to-day distractions. Keep it light and positive.
Choose the perfect place to unwind alongside your spouse at this classic, elegant inn with signature wraps, facials, and massages. Enjoy gourmet meals at their AAA Five Diamond restaurant prepared with healthy ingredients.
Get away from it all! Unplug and leave all the distractions behind in a cozy cabin surrounded by 80 acres of nature. Restore your souls in a gentle wooded surrounding, cuddled together by a slow burning fire.
Treat yourselves to elegant accommodations in this early 1900’s historic resort with private terraces overlooking Cascade Bay on Orcas Island. Whale watch from your Harborside room or charter a sailboat. Refresh your body and soul in the historic indoor therapeutic quiet pool.
Located in a 330-acre nature preserve, with two-and-a half miles of beautiful beach, this private island escape is just what you need. Long walks on the beach, dolphin and manatee watch tours, golf, tennis, or nature activities combine with fine dining and spa comforts.
Your relationship, just like your house or your car, needs regular maintenance to stay in good working order. Do you take your car in for regular oil changes and checkups? Do you have a HVAC company service and check up on your furnace and air conditioner? Failure to take care of those tasks and your car or house will eventually fall into disrepair and stop working, The same is true for your marriage.
Regular relationship maintenance will keep the love alive and the investment in your relationship strong. Relationship maintenance is the regular behaviors that partners engage in to stay together in a happy marriage. Researchers Laura Stafford and Daniel J. Canary identified a set of five general relationship behaviors that, when engaged in regularly, increase the quality of the relationship.
Positivity.
A 10:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions is ideal. The more positivity you can share the better. Positivity is not simply a happy disposition all the time. It is more about how you approach your spouse.
If you disagree, are you able to listen for what makes sense in what your spouse shared?
Do you know to change toxic talk into fix-it talk?
When you see your spouse are you able to share a positive thought about your day rather than a negative one?
A kiss, hug or loving physical contact all increase the positivity ratio and help maintain a warm and loving climate in your marriage.
Openness.
Most couples spend a good deal of time together which, if you are not careful, can create an atmosphere of dismissal when your spouse is sharing.
Are you receptive to your partner?
When your partner needs to share something about their day or air a grievance, are you open to hearing what they share?
Successful couples listen skillfully and ask good questions to create an engaging conversation.
Listening
Being a supportive partner requires solid listening skills.
Do you feel you can count on your partner to lend an ear when times get tough?
Are you able to support your partner when they need a shoulder to lean on
Knowing your partner’s love language and making sure you are filling their “love tank” is good relationship maintenance.
Social interaction
Engaging in meaningful social interactions together is a relationship building activity. It is especially true if you spend time with other successful couples. Spending time with other couples help you remember why you fell in love in the first place. It is also an opportunity to see how other couples navigate their relationship so you can fine tune yours.
Sharing tasks and responsibilities.
This kind of relationship maintenance requires solid decision-making skills. Most married couples share a household, which in turn means they share a great many responsibilities. Successful couples make decisions and work through the to-do list gracefully. These kinds of skills take practice. The nature of sharing a life together affords many opportunities for that sort of thing.
At least once every season, couples should schedule a regular marriage checkup. Take a walk, go on a mini-retreat, or whatever you can do that gets you out of your regular routine. You need a place where you can both discuss what’s working, what areas needs tending to, and what you both need to do to improve things moving forward. Having these talks and knowing they are firmly on the schedule creates a sense that the partnership matters and is being cared for.
For many couples, marriage is work, or at least a work in progress. Make sure you are doing the necessary relationship maintenance to keep your foundation rock solid.
Long-term solutions to the most common relationship struggles.
