Marriage is a challenge and it’s easy for couples to lose their way, start taking each other for granted, and sometimes fall out of love.
But there are ways to rekindle love with your wife if you are willing to make the time and effort to do it. It’s not hard to do, you have done it before when fell in love.
Here are 8 things to try if you want a happier wife
1. Talk about the situation
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I encourage you first and foremost to talk to your wife about how you feel and what you want to do. You feel some space in your marriage and are interested in finding each other again. It is important both spouses are on board. If she just isn’t interested, don’t waste your time.
I had a male client who worked for months to rekindle his marriage, only to have her ask for a divorce in the end. She was just going through the paces, not really invested in the outcome of his efforts. So, check in with your wife and agree to move forward and rekindle your love with your wife.
2. Do things you used to do together
Remember when you and your wife first met, the things you used to do together, the things you did together that led to your falling in love?
Do you still do any of those things? I am guessing probably not, and if you do still do them, you probably don’t do them very often.
The past can be a powerful thing. Think about how you feel when you hear a song from your youth or smell something that reminds you of something in your past, as demonstrated in a study on autobiographical odor memory. Can’t you “feel” those things? Don’t they take you back to a moment in time you can feel in your body, even if just for a moment?
So what can you do with your wife, to help reignite your love?
I have a client who told me when he and his wife dated before their marriage, they did two things every weekend. They went for a long hike and took themselves out for margaritas afterward. Getting up early in the morning and being on the trail before everyone else made them feel so close and earning those margaritas together made them feel like they were a team.
Since they have gotten married, those weekends together have disappeared. To be fair, weekends can be consumed with kids’ activities, work, or commitments to extended family. But, also to be fair, some of their weekends were free. Yet, they didn’t take advantage of those free weekends to spend any time together.
I would encourage you to make the time to do the things you and your wife used to do together. Get a babysitter for the kids. Plan ahead and have it on your calendar so nothing else gets in there. Whatever it takes for you to spend time together doing the things you used to love to do.
3. Do new things together
On the flip side, I always encourage men who are looking to rekindle love with their wives to do new things together.
We all tend to get into ruts and do the same things over and over and over especially when we have been married for a long time. A study of boredom in marriage shows how that kind of stagnation can kill the love in a marriage.
So, what are new things you and your wife can do? It can be as simple as going for a walk together every night or something a little more complicated like learning how to dance. Anything involving the two of you, side by side, learning something new to shakes up your life just a little bit.
4. Touch each other
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Be honest. How often do you and your wife touch each other? Other than maybe the occasionally married people’s physical intimacy, do you have the same kind of physicality you used to have before you were married?
While I know having more intimacy would be lovely, I would encourage you to invest in a simpler form of physical touch — hugs and hand-holding. Why? Because human beings communicate better with actions than words, as explored in the Journal of Communication Management (2022). Words can sometimes come out wrong — a hug is always a hug, something to make you feel good.
A 10-second hug every day can bring a couple closer. And holding hands will connect you in a way almost nothing else can. So, take the time to touch your wife. It might feel weird to do at first if it’s something you haven’t done for a while but you will grow to enjoy it very much. I promise.
5. Learn each other’s love language
For many people, when they try to make their partner feel loved, they give their partner what they would need to feel loved. And then they don’t understand why it doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because what one person needs to feel loved might not work for another person. So, their efforts are in vain.
This is where the love languages come in. In theory, there are 5 love languages: physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, and gift-giving. If you can speak to your partner in their love language, they will feel loved.
When I was married, we didn’t know about the love languages. If we had, we would have known my love language was quality time and his physical touch and we would have stopped giving each other acts of service!
So, learn each other’s love languages. It’s easy to do. Just go on to this website and take the quiz. Do it together!
6. Use your words
I hear the same thing over and over, from men and women. “They don’t need me to tell them I love them. They know.” And, I tell them, over and over, it isn’t necessarily true!
People need to hear they are loved, someone thinks they are beautiful, or someone is proud of them. It’s just human nature — affirmations make us feel loved, connected, and nurtured, whether by others or ourselves as evidenced in a 2024 study.
So many couples, while they might have been good at this in the beginning, stop telling their partner how they feel about them as time goes on. As a result, neither one of them feels loved and connected and their feelings for each other fade.
This can be easily stopped if you both just start speaking up about what you see and how you feel. I don’t mean to love bomb your partner. That won’t feel authentic. But when she walks in the room, tell her how great she looks. I promise you, the effects will be immediate.
7. Have regular check-ins
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I remember the summer my husband and I decided to have a drink together every night after work. It was something we had stopped doing once our kids took over our lives.
The pattern was that he would come home from work, I would be in the middle of dinner and homework, and I would put him right to work. We would do everything we needed to do for the rest of the night, falling into bed, exhausted, barely having acknowledged each other. This only disconnected us.
So, make an effort to check in at least weekly with your partner and even more often if possible. Learn about what is going on in each other’s lives and how each other is feeling.
What can you do to support each other? Rebuild your connection so you feel close to each other in a way you haven’t done for a while.
8. Talk about the future
Talking about the future is something couples do regularly when they are first together. Those heady days of falling in love and visualizing what the future could hold.
Unfortunately, talking about dreams for the future often gets put on hold during the chaos of married life. And, if dreams are being considered, they are often just for oneself and not for a couple.
Talking about the future is a verbalization that you see each other together going forward. A confirmation of your hopes and dreams for the future, no matter how distant, are aligned. This is an essential part of feeling connected.
My ex-husband and I used to talk about the future often. We were nervous about it because our marriage was struggling but still, we talked about it. When he stopped wanting to talk about the future, I knew it was a sign our marriage was over.
So, keep looking ahead with your wife. It will make you excited about things to come!
I hope you now see it is possible to rekindle love with your wife.
I know some of the things I have listed might seem a little bit intimidating and of course they do — most or even all of them are things you are out of practice doing. But it doesn’t mean you can’t start up again.
You can do it!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi’s bylines have appeared in The Good Men Project, MSN, PopSugar, Prevention, Huffington Post, and Psych Central, among many others.
