At some point in a long-term relationship, many couples stop being lovers and become logistics partners. The mortgage, the kids, the calendar, the endless loop of “did you pay that?”—it crowds out everything else until two people are essentially roommates with a shared Netflix account. The spark doesn’t disappear overnight. It just slowly gets buried under everything else life piles on.
According to Florida-based marriage and family therapist Cheralyn Leeby, Ph.D., LMFT, writing in Psychology Today, the most common answer she gets when she asks couples what they enjoy doing together is: “We pretty much watch TV every night.” Sorry, but sitting in the same room watching the same screen isn’t the same as actually connecting.
Research supports this—couples benefit most from experiences that feel engaging, growth-oriented, and emotionally alive. According to a 2019 study, there are four types of intimacy that actually rebuild attraction.
Playfulness comes naturally early on. A lot of couples just gradually stop making room for it. The bar for getting it back is actually pretty low—a 10-minute dance party in your living room qualifies. So does attempting a ridiculous dance challenge together or swaying to a song you both know by heart. Leeby describes friends who do karaoke at dinner parties, badly, and that’s entirely the point. “We feel safe enough to be funny, free, and unguarded with each other,” she writes.
A walk after dinner, coffee outside before the day gets going, sitting somewhere without anything to scroll—small moves, real returns. Leeby calls this contemplative intimacy, and describes it as what develops when two people actually slow down and pay attention to the world around them, and each other. Get out of the house, and the conversation tends to get out of its rut too.
Most couples have the same twelve conversations on rotation. Conversation cards interrupt that loop. Leeby describes a birthday gathering where friends answered prompts like “What is a compliment you have never received but would love to hear?” People who’d known each other for years laughed, got a little caught off guard, and left knowing something new. Worth a shot.
Shared purpose turns out to be one of the more underrated relationship tools out there. Volunteering, mentoring, community work—these reveal sides of a partner that ordinary daily life never shows. Ordinary routines hardly ever reveal a partner’s generosity, patience, or character the way service does. Seeing someone you’ve known for a decade through a completely different lens has a way of reigniting things that familiarity had dulled.
A few deliberate hours a week, swapped out for something that actually involves both of you, is a reasonable place to start.
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