4 Fun Couple Challenges to Reinvigorate Your Relationship

If it feels like the only conversations you and your partner have are centered around whose turn it is to stop at the grocery store or when the kids should be picked up from school—you’re not alone.

A study found that the average couple talks with one other for about 35 minutes per week—mostly about errands and completing tasks, says Morgan Daffron, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Brooklyn, N.Y. With a never-ending to-do list and so many daily obligations competing for our attention, it can be difficult for couples to spend quality time together. 

However, small changes that encourage couples to engage each other for modest amounts of time each day can strengthen a relationship, says Daffron.

One way to ensure we connect with our partner daily is to try a couple’s challenge that prompts us to engage in conversation and show appreciation for each other. “It injects trust, kindness, warmth and love—all the things we need to feel connected and safe in a relationship in a world where we’re pulled in so many different directions,” says Frankie Bashan, licensed clinical psychologist, and founder and CEO at Little Gay Book, an LGBTQ+ matchmaking service in San Francisco.

Here are four engaging couple challenges that don’t require a large financial investment and are easy to do at home.

1. Write love notes for seven days

When was the last time you told your partner what you love about them? Writing love notes for seven days gives you an opportunity to bring intimacy, love, belonging and attachment into the relationship, Daffron says.

The idea is for each member of the couple to write a note to their partner recognizing something they love about them every day for a week. “The love notes remind us on a daily basis the practice of how we feel about our partner and gets us into the habit of expressing how important that person is to us,” Bashan says.

Writing love notes also gives us the needed reserves to see our partner in a positive light even when things are stressful or not going as well, says Michela Stevenson, an associate marriage and family therapist at Hold the Vision Therapy in Chicago. “When people are going through times of stress, they tend to view the negative side of things, so this helps people view the positive aspects of the relationship,” she says.

2. Commit to no-phone date nights

Looking at our phone every few minutes has become a habit for most of us. Couples trying to spend quality time together may need to put boundaries around their phone use when they are together, Bashan says. She recommends couples commit to spending an hour and a half being present with each other without their phones, either during dinner or while watching TV or a movie. “Unless this structure is set in place and we commit to it, we won’t do it on our own,” Bashan says.

3. Spend a week trying something new

Trying a new activity together can add spontaneity to a relationship. Bashan explains that it can also help a couple relate to one another, provide new topics to discuss, and create a mutual sense of excitement. 

A new activity could be as simple as cooking dinner together, playing a board game or listening to a podcast or audiobook—and then discussing it. If you’re interested in trying a new game, Stevenson recommends card games like Where Should We Begin or The {   } And that can help couples have deeper conversations. “I tell my couples, if you don’t have the energy to figure out how to play it as the game, just draw out conversation cards and ask each other,” she says.

4. Track kindness

One way to remind each other how much we are loved and valued is to track acts of kindness by having each partner put a marble or button in a bowl or jar each time the partner is moved by something their significant other does.

This challenge becomes a visual reminder of your love for each other, says Patricia Dixon, a licensed clinical psychologist in East Palmetto, Florida. If those buttons aren’t stacking up fast enough, then you might realize you’ve been neglecting your partner, she says.

“A lot of time we do things and we don’t even know how our partner is receiving or perceiving it,” Bashan says. This challenge will reflect to each other the things we do that are seen and noticed.

“It’s this idea of catching your partner doing something kind, because a lot of us can focus on the ‘why did you leave your socks on the coffee table?’ or ‘why is the toilet seat up?’ when you know there are a lot of really good things that we can catch our partner doing,” Daffron says.

Extra points if you tell your partner what they did to make you put a button in the bowl, Stevenson says. 

Commit to trying throughout the year

Rather than doing a challenge for a week or a month, consider committing to using what you learned from the challenge to create relationship rules, Daffron says. For instance, you might make it a rule that you sit at a table and talk during dinner once a week, or you put away your phones for 90 minutes each week when you spend time together.

“I tell couples that in a relationship it’s constant work, and you never stop putting in the work and when you do, that’s when things start to divide and separate,” Dixon says.

These simple, but effective, couple challenges can help you see your partner in a new light and help remind you why you fell in love. 

Photo by adriaticfoto/Shutterstock

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