Verified by 
Couples can thrive in many ways. As my colleague Howard Markman said long ago, Tolstoy was wrong in the opening lines of Anna Karenina when he wrote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It may be just the opposite: There is the most diversity and mystery on the positive side of two people's connection rather than the negative. Couples who are miserable tend to look pretty similar to other couples who are miserable, with either nasty conflicts or growing indifference — or both — being their way. There’s not a lot of creativity in all that, but there are an astounding number of ways you’ll see couples thriving in happy, healthy marriages.
One of the things that can help keep your relationship strong is to do things together in some of the leisure time you have available. However, how this actually works out depends on if the things you are doing together are things you both like to do together. Some couples have a number of clear, common interests, which makes it pretty easy to decide what to do when you have, or make, the time for it. But if you don’t, it will take more thought and care to find what works.
In a 2002 study that remains one of the best on the topic, Duane Crawford and colleagues Renate Houts, Ted Huston, and Laura George described patterns affecting "Compatibility, Leisure, and Satisfaction in Marital Relationships." They found that the way leisure activities impact marital happiness is more complex than you might think it should be. Specifically, they used diary methods to study marital happiness in a sample of people that they followed for over a decade. They found that the pursuit of leisure activities as a couple was less strongly associated with marital happiness than most people believe.
Crawford and colleagues found something obvious, yet nuanced: The benefit for a marriage from spending leisure time together depends on compatibility in interests. Most tellingly, they found that is it no real boost to marital bliss, now or in the future, if a couple routinely engages in leisure activities that mostly only the husband enjoys. In other words, when women are just going along to get along, it’s a lose-lose deal for the marital quality of both partners. These researchers detail some of the reasons why women may be more likely than men to try to accommodate a partner's interests. Among the ideas they consider is a point made by Stephanie Coontz, suggesting that, too often, husbands may not even be fully aware of their wives' lack of interest in some of the things the husbands enjoy doing together, because (some) women may be too good at covering up what they really feel about what the couple does with its leisure time.
Two partners don’t have to share all of their interests to have a great marriage. That would be oppressive and barely possible. However, when a couple mostly does things that are more fun for just one partner, it comes at a cost. (Crawford and colleagues also showed that spending a lot of time pursuing individual interests, each partner on their own, can be a sign of problems.)
My Advice
1. Make a list. Couples will do best to find a few things to do for fun and friend time together that they both enjoy. This does not have to be a big list, but it’s worth figuring out what you'd put on it—and to communicate about it. Are you sure that your partner shares your fondness for golf? For eating in sports bars? For lingering in art museums? Figure out your overlapping list, and do some of those things regularly.
2. Make the time, and keep issues off-limits during that time. This is arguably the most important advice about keeping fun alive in all the books my colleagues and I have written about marriage. (For example, this one.) Most of us are busy and distracted. To do things together, the first priority is to set aside some time for it. It can be a lot or a little, but it needs to be some. Second, and less obvious, you need to protect that time from conflict and issues. You can decide not to slide into letting issues and problems that need solving to be triggered in that time you’ve set aside to be connected. Of course, then you also need to make other time to deal with those issues constructively.
3. Speak up. If you are good at faking it (you know what I mean), you may not be doing your marriage any favors. Sure, each partner should be willing to do some of the things that the other finds enjoyable, even if it’s not high on their own list. That’s a sign of a healthy relationship — not a problem. But if you know that the two of you rarely do “fun” things that you find fun, consider speaking up, if you have not already done so.
4. Focus on enjoying being together. Compatibility of interests is a great strength in a marriage, but even if you are not compatible in your leisure interests, stay fully present and work at enjoying that you are doing something together, even if it's not your favorite thing. In light of the findings of Crawford and colleagues, I would suggest that men, in particular, might need to step it up here.
5. Single and Searching? My advice for those looking to make a good match is a common refrain of mine: Go slow. Be careful. Know what you want, and look for it. Don’t slide into situations in which you increase your odds of settling for a relationship in which you share few of the values and interests that make it easier to keep a marriage happy. You don’t need to find perfect compatibility. (If that’s your goal, good luck with that.) But it’s okay, and important, to look for the type of person with whom you can share a fuller life.
Lastly, I want to suggest that it’s okay if what you do in your leisure time, together or apart, is not the most important part of why your marriage works. Knowing some ways to have fun together is valuable, but it’s not the only thing. There are many ways to build a great life together.
Follow me on twitter. (@DecideOrSlide)
