So many times I have heard people tell me that they are bored in their marriage. Interestingly boredom is given a great deal of credit for the number of divorces we have in our culture today.

These are often the same people who have ruminated for sometimes years about “Will they find a great mate?” Now that they have a husband or wife, and perhaps kids to consider, they fondly remember their single day of freedom and spontaneity.  They long for the days when they could travel, go to bars, shop, and pack a bag and leave without considering anyone else but themselves?

Boredom can become a real problem if you do not understand it,  how it happens and how to cure it quickly.  Boredom is quite normal for human beings to feel. In fact, humans are just about the greatest species in existence when it comes to their ability to “feel” bored. 

It is true that being married can and does bring delicious moments of ecstasy to our lives. But those moments are always punctuated by times of boredom, confusion and apathy.  There are two major things that set us up for boredom. One is expectations, and the other is something I have named the Maui Syndrome.

Let's address expectations first. Many people  have the expectation that they should never feel bored, sad, mad, confused, angry, hurt or any negative emotion in their marriage. This is craziness. We will feel all of our emotions in our marriage, all of the good, and all of the bad. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote:

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity—in freedom.

Along with expectations, their is another very human experience that sets us up to experience boredom, as I mentioned above, I call it the Maui Syndrome. (For much more detailed information about the Maui Syndrome - See article: What is The Maui Syndrome is what causes people to not only get bored with their marriage but become very unhappy and miserable and want out.)

Entitlement (a feeling that we have a right to demand, to get what we want when we want it, and for all of our expectations to be met without having to respectfully and effectively communicate them) is at the root of the Maui Syndrome. So let's discuss this attitude or feelings of, entitlement. Entitlement causes us to forget the wonderful in our lives, and instead pushes us to focus strictly on our perceived lack. We forget that the value of the present, the familiar, the already experienced. We begin to take our relationships for granted and worse, we stop seeing them as the precious gifts they are. 

Whether it involves a marriage partner, significant other, family member, friend, or business associate the necessary ingredients for a great relationship are always the same. They include the following:

TRUST, which comes from integrity 

GOOD COMMUNICATION, which comes out of our ability to listen 

APPRECIATION, which requires that we remember that life and our relationships that fill it, are of great value.

Entitlement blinds us to gratitude. It steals all appreciation from our hearts and begins that will poison, endanger and weaken even the greatest of relationships.

Entitlement infects our relationships like a virus, and causes us to begin to take one another for granted, or worse, become desensitized to what was spectacular about the relationship in the beginning. It kills off the possibilities that live within each relationship. How exactly does this happen? We lose our ability to remember the value of what we presently have and appreciate it.

M. J. Ryan tells us in her book, Attitudes of Gratitude, “Gratitude lights up what is already there. You don’t necessarily have anything more or different, but suddenly you can actually see what is. And because you can see, you no longer take it for granted.”

So how can we cure boredom in a relationship? It is easy, remember how valuable the relationship that you have is, and go out of your way to do something wonderful and exciting for your partner to help them remember as well. I promise it will cure your boredom, every time. For more indepth information about how to cure boredom and feel satisfied and excited again go to the article: How to feel satisfied in your marriage again.