Married couples, what do you do for everyday fun?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(Besides the obvious, of course…)

Essentially, my wife and I are looking for suggestions on what you guys do for fun during the myriad, mundane evenings of life. You know, when you’re both home from work, what do you guys do? We’re not looking for anything extravagant; quite the opposite, in fact. Free stuff, or basically so, and things that can be done many, many evenings.

Hmm, maybe if I told you what we do now, that’d paint a better picture of the sorts of suggestions I’m looking for.

Right now, we play cards (although two-player card games are rare), play with our cat (no kids here), watch movies/TV, sit and read, or play video games (occasionally).

So, what do you guys and gals do to fill the time before bed?

TIA…

2

Watch TV, play around in the kitchen with new recipes (we are both avid cooks, and like to try new dishes), play with the cats, read, “waste hours of my fleeting life on the Dope,” play chess, screw. :smiley:

3

We go to the YMCA every other evening for about 45 minutes. We are Scrabble fanatics, so we play whenever we’re both bored (we also have several other board games.) On Sunday afternoons over Bloody Marys, we do the NYT Crossword puzzle (usually in about an hour. We watch too much TV, as well! That’s all I can come up with right now.

4

My parents play video games a lot (a bit abnormal I suppose, but there it is).

Crosswords, Sudoku (firefox spelling suggestions for Sudoku: “Ludovika” and “Shikoku”), going on walks or exercising, board games, card games. My ex and I used to play Scrabble a lot too when we were more or less living together. Go out for an evening to a local park for a nice walk, stuff like that.

5

WAIT! :eek: YOU MEAN THERE’S MORE TO MARRIAGE THAN EATING DINNER IN FRONT OF THE TUBE THEN GOING TO BED???

Share man!! What is it! :):slight_smile: :smiley:

Just kidding.

You have explained the first couple years of marriage in the Phlosphr household. We are working like heathens and rarely have time for anything else. We do not have children yet, so we quickly needed to find things to do. Basically we had to step out of our little married shells and FIND things to do…

Find things you both love to do and find others who like to do similar things. Do you like hiking or kayaking? They are both cheap habits once you get the initial investments out of the way…Kayaks, paddles, life vests…or Hiking shoes, back back (camelbak) etc…etc…

I’m involved with several environmental groupd who are always organizing things to do on the weekends. Cleaning up beaches, going on Nature hikes…These always lead into inevitable dinner and drinks at some future date, and some even evolve into friendships.

I was a psych prof. for several years post grad and we always had difficulty finding things to do with my collegues…I had to wait until I got out of academia to find some really down to earth people… odd I know.

Anyway there are four things that can make a healthy marriage.

Time alone together.

Time alone with other couples.

Time apart where you know where your mate is.

And time apart where you do not know where your mate is…

It’s an odd combo, but it’s true for a happy marriage.

6

Well, back in the day when there was a spousal unit, we belonged to community associations so we’d attend meetings and end up on committes and such which required work. I was doing my MA for a while, so there’d be work on that. And we also did Scottish dancing so there’d be lessons and dances.

We also had subscriptions to concerts and we’d often have folks over - sometimes just to share whatever we were having for dinner; other times we’d do the whole dinner party thing and other times we’d eat at restaurants alone or with friends. Sometimes we’d go for walks. And when there were events in town we’d go to them, like Winterlude or the Tulip Festival.

If we were in, we’d watch TV sometimes. Other times we’d read papers or magazines and read bits to each other. And talk - we were big yakkers and never ran out of conversation.

7

We talk a lot. About the buisiness, weird customers, interesting patients, the drama that is the lives of our friends, our families. We read and talk about the books. We watch movies and talk about those. We read books and fantasize about the movies we’d make them into. We go to the grocery store and buy interesting foods. We try new restaurants.
We Dope.
We’re boring. We talk about how boring we are and how great it is to be us.

8

I work for the newspaper, and one of my jobs is organizing the community calendar of events, and the community briefs section. I always keep a lookout for fun things to do in the area that are free or cheap (for instance, we have a wine walk every month that’s $10 a person, and loads of fun. There’s also tons of free concerts). We’ll go by ourselves or with friends or family. This is my general suggestion to everyone who is bored - check your local newspaper or city Web site.

My husband and I love video games, so we’ll play a lot of games together - either we’ll get a game that has two-player (our favorite is SSX-3) or we’ll watch each other play the game and occasionally hand it off and let the other continue.

I don’t think this helps because of where I live, but occasionally we’ll each take $5 and go play nickel poker at a local casino. It wastes time and the casino usually has live entertainment and free drinks.

We watch a lot of movies.

Every payday we buy one item of camping gear, be it cookware, candles, a camp stove, or a tent. We’ve amassed a large quantity of camping gear. Occasionally for weekends we’ll go to a campsite, alone or with friends, and just chill out. It’s fun, especially on three-day weekends.

He loves using his hands, so he’s always making things, whether it’s improvements to the apartment (he just put up shelving I’ve been wanting for a while in the kitchen) or just neat stuff, and often times I’ll help.

We also play with the cat. Sometimes this brings great joy to the cat, and sometimes, great chagrin.

My parents live in town, so we usually go over there for dinner once a week, and everyone watches a movie together.

And of course, there’s always sex. :wink:

~Tasha

9

This weekend we hung out with neighbors and our kids, took the dog for a walk in the woods, played tennis, gardened, and watched the NCAA tourney.

If you’re bored, I’d suggest connecting to your community. Volunteer or take up a sport (golf, tennis) or join a bridge club.

10

He plays either flight simulator or train simulator. I am on the Dope or reading a book or magazine, or sleeping. We eat dinner together and discuss our days, but really aren’t much for doing stuff together on a mundane basis. I’m pretty sure neither of us finds this problematic.

On weekends sometimes we break out of the mundane. I like to do things that involve animals in some way. For example, we’ve been to a cat show, a Dog Olympics, a rescue sanctuary, local nature parks, and some odd dog competition where they chase balls down a course (the Border Collies kicked butt…). Occasionally we’ll take in a play or a cultural/community festival. We do church things both together and separately. Sometimes I drag him to my Toastmasters stuff. He has dragged me to train shows.

For years I purchased board games with the thought that we would play them, but we rarely do. I have now put them away in the closet until I’m done with graduate school.

I’m not sure any of this is helpful, but you asked.

11

Backgammon

12

Agreed with any number of the above posters who said “little mutual interests.” El Perro Fumando and I are both trivia geeks, so we always have Jeopardy on during dinner, and own four genuses of Trivial Pursuit (not including the SNL DVD one), that we cycle through as we realize “I’ve seen these questions before.” We enjoy videogames, and recently bought a Wii (the only child we intend to have for quite some time), and that has a number of great multiplayer games that can last anywhere between a few minutes (Warioware) and an hour (multiple rounds on Wii Sports or a game of Madden). Once the weather is nicer (and especially once school is done for her), we’ll try and go to the driving range and out golfing any chance we get. Otherwise, we just curl up with a movie or TV.

13

I’m engaged, can I answer?

We take the dog on really long walks. Really, really long. Like we pick a trail and don hiking boots. We also ride our bikes along the lake, or do something simple like play catch in the park. (Helps if you have a sporty fiancee/wife). We play Scrabble a bit too. Or we make crazy difficult meals that are fun to make: culinary experiments that are labor intensive (and occasionally disaster strikes). So all of that is free to do (ingredients for crazy meals aside).

My fiancee also loves to look through the free weekly newspaper to find cultural events that look fun. Many are free and worth the visit. Like “art in the park” outdoor exhibits, or pay-what-you-can theater nights, or outdoor music festivals. Some galleries have free or pay-what-you-can nights. We spent one whole summer scouring the city for things to do that were 100% free. It made for quite a whacky summer because we went to things that normally would never appeal to us. We’ve never really regretted attending any of them, but there are some events we won’t go to again.

14

My relationship is kind of odd, as we work together and spend our weekends together. We’re together almost 24/7.

We play World of Warcraft together, sometimes cards (cribbage is a great two player game that doesn’t take a ton of skill) and watch LOTS of movies. Last count has us at over 300 DVDs. We roll up D&D characters we’ll never play. We think of hypothetical names for our future pets.

We walk to the store or go to the local park to hike. We wrestle with the dog. We spend hours in bed just talking and making each other laugh.

15

Cook together, garden, look up stuff in reference books, watch a movie, dance, go for a walk, do parallel play in the same room (e.g., I read a novel and she does a sudoku).

16

Dance classes.

17

We just moved into a new (to us) house, so there are always home improvement projects to work on.

We also like riding (or walking) and checking out other folks landscaping and borrowing ideas to implement in our yard.

We also used to spend a lot of time in flea markets, thrift stores, Salvation Army stores, etc., searching for the overlooked diamond in the rough.

Quiet, solitary projects where we’re both doing our own thing but in the same room. I might be working on a stained glass piece or quilting, and he might be putting new line on his fishing reels.

Today we bummed around Lowe’s for awhile, dreaming, planning and drooling over stuff we wanted, and then came home and refurbished some flower beds.

There are a whole lot of clothing optional activities that I don’t think I’ll outline here :slight_smile:

18

Video games, biking, hiking, brewing beer (we’ve recently started a cost cutting measure of ‘no drinking in the house unless you made it yourself’), parallel play with books and internet. Harassing the parrot. We have a lot of mutual hobbies, and some not-so-mutual (he puts up my bird watching and I put up with marathon training).

19

If you’re into dancing at all (doesn’t matter if it’s latin, swing, or standard ballroom) you can probably find something to do any night of the week for <$5/person.

We also read books out loud to each other, usually at night in bed or while one of us is doing something boring like cleaning up the kitchen. He had only read 2 or 3 Terry Pratchett books when we first met. We’re fixing that :slight_smile:

Other than that, we like to take 2 hour walks around town looking at houses and dreaming about where we’ll be in 5, 10, 50 years. We like to go to the grocery outlet and find new wines based solely on how interesting the label is (the best so far was a red called Vampyre from Transylvania. Really). We keep an eye on the local paper for restauraunts with live music and other free/ultra cheap events.

We invite friends over for Bad Movie Night (last one was Gingerdead Man starring Gary Busey).

I’m always amazed at how rarely we get bored together.

20

We read to each other a lot. I read more often, but we’ve gotten through maybe twenty novels in eight years. We do the parallel play thing (Thanks Shoshana, I like that term) with me reading and him playing video games.

We go for walks, especially at night. We live right near the beach, and it’s a nice area for walking.