How Do I Bring Romance Back Into My Marriage?

Lisa is a phenomenal cook. And there's a moment I've experienced a thousand times in our house. She starts chopping onions and bell peppers, throws in a little garlic, and gets it all sauteing in a pan. I'm three rooms away. I don't see anything. But I smell it. And I walk into that kitchen and say, "What are you making?"

Here's the thing about an aroma. You cannot contain it. It doesn't stay in the kitchen. It fills the whole house.

That's what romance is supposed to be in a marriage. Not a night on the calendar. An aroma. Something that permeates every room, every conversation, every ordinary Tuesday.

But most couples I talk to don't have that. What they have is a marriage that smells like nothing at all. And they can't figure out when it happened.

Romance Is Not an Event. It's an Environment.

I'm a guy, so I compartmentalize. This box is work. This box is recreation. And over here in this box is my romantic life, a box I open on anniversaries and Valentine's Day.

Lisa said something to me that reframed the whole thing: romance is not an event, it's an environment you create in your home.

Read that again, because it changes everything. If romance is an event, then you can fail at it and try again next February. If romance is an environment, then you are creating it, or destroying it, every single day.

Scripture uses this exact language. Second Corinthians 2:15 says that we are the pleasing aroma of Christ. Your life gives off a smell. So does your marriage. The question isn't whether you're producing an aroma. The question is what you smell like, or whether you're stinking up the joint.

The Recipe Wreckers

Every recipe can be wrecked. Some cooks just don't need to be in the kitchen. Over the years Lisa and I have given these couples names, and I want you to be honest about which one you recognize.

Rudeness. Say hello to Rick and Rhonda Rude. There's no softness. The tone is crass, abrupt, dismissive. I've watched people speak more tenderly to their dog than to the person they made a lifetime covenant with. And here's the math on that: it takes about twenty positive comments to erase one negative one. You are not breaking even.

Monotony. Meet Mark and Mandy Monotony. This is the guy who has hung his courting jersey from the rafters. He dated her. He romanced her. He won. Now it's dinner, Netflix, repeat. Boring and predictable. There was a restaurant Lisa and I used to eat at years ago, and the sign inside read: if you don't take your lady here, someone else will. That's not a scare tactic. That's just how a vacuum works. So have an affair, with your spouse.

Criticism. Curtis and Karen Critical. There's a place for critique. There is no place for a constant diet of criticism. The moment it stops being about the issue and starts being about the person, you've crossed a line, and your words are landing somewhere that takes years to heal. Left unchecked, that's the first step in the slide that ends marriages.

Exhaustion. Ted and Tina Tired. "Honey, I'm just so tired." Then the phone rings, it's their sister, and suddenly they've got the energy to sprint down the hall and back. Tired is real. Tired is also, sometimes, a very convenient story.

Technology. Tom and Tammy Technology. Nearly half of spouses say technology is a problem in their marriage, and a similar number take it to bed with them. I've come up with a word for it: technorrhea. So much screen time that the whole marriage gets sick. Get a basket. Drop the phones in it. Don't bring technology to the table when you're eating with your spouse or your kids.

Money. Matt and Mary Money are so frozen by finance they can't do any romance. How much does that cost? How much does that cost? Listen to me: don't let a limited budget limit your creativity. Some of the most creative things Lisa and I have ever done came out of a season when we had no money at all. Restriction breeds creativity, but only if you don't let the price tag be your first thought.

Ice. Ira and Irene Ice freeze each other out. But God made you one flesh. Which means when you freeze out your spouse, the frostbite is coming for you, too.

The habit of no. And then there's Ned and Nona No. We'll come back to them. They may be the most dangerous couple on this list.

What Does the Bible Say About Sex in Christian Marriage?

The church has spent decades being awkward and silent here, and I think that's a mistake. We kicked the bed out of the church. It's time to put it back, because if we won't talk about sex in Christian marriage, the culture absolutely will, and the culture is a terrible teacher.

First Corinthians 7:3-4 says the husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. Her body doesn't belong to her alone, and his doesn't belong to him alone. That's a stunning passage. It's mutual. It's not about power. It's about privilege.

Here's the framework I come back to, and it spells out S-E-X.

S is for Supernatural. God invented it. He established it for one man and one woman inside the covenant of marriage. This is not a cultural accident. It's a design, and it's a picture of something bigger. Jesus is the bridegroom, the church is His bride, and marriage is the only human relationship that mirrors that.

E is for Enjoyment. Read Genesis carefully and you'll find that God invented intimacy for pleasure first and procreation second. That surprises people. It shouldn't. And here's the pastoral point underneath it: if there's no intimacy in your marriage, or if it isn't enjoyable, don't just endure it. Something is in the way. Get counsel and find out what the barrier is, because God's design is for both of you to be fulfilled in each other.

X is for this: God created it, and it is not X-rated. Our culture has handed the entire curriculum over to pornography, and it is a counterfeit. No spouse on earth can compete with a fiction, and they shouldn't have to. Learn from the One who came up with it, not from a screen.

Dr. Willard Harley tells a story that has never left me. A husband and wife are in a room with a glass of water on the table. The wife is unable to lift the glass herself, so her husband has to give it to her. She says she's thirsty. He says he doesn't feel like it right now. An hour goes by. She asks again. He tells her that with an attitude like that, she can wait even longer, and he walks out. Hours later, when she finally gets the water, she's already dreading the next time she'll be thirsty, because she knows exactly what it's going to cost her.

Harley says: I've just described the intimate life of a lot of married couples.

You are your spouse's only option. That's not a burden. That's a privilege. And if you look at your spouse with disdain, disrespect, or low-grade energy in this area, you will never experience marriage the way God intended it. Never.

Know Your No's

Now, back to Ned and Nona No.

First Corinthians 7:5 says: do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Notice what it does not say. It doesn't say never say no. It says know your no's. There's a world of difference between "No." and "Honey, it's been a brutal day, what if we made it tomorrow?" One is a door slamming. The other is a no with an appointment attached.

Rarely are two people in the same mood at the same moment. That's normal. That's marriage. The issue isn't the no. It's the tone, the pattern, and whether there's a yes anywhere on the horizon. And it takes real conversation to get there, which is why how you talk to each other matters as much as anything else on this list.

The Recipe for Getting Romance Back

So how do you actually bring romance back into your marriage? Four steps.

1. Follow the recipe. Stop improvising with a design you didn't create. God invented marriage. He thought it up in Genesis. He invented intimacy too, and He invented it for pleasure first, procreation second. If you're going to learn about romance, learn it from the One who came up with it.

2. Check the temperature. 52.2. There are 52 weeks in a year. Date your spouse once a week. Every week. Then, twice a year, spend a night away from the kids. That's the 52.2 principle, and it changed the temperature of our marriage more than anything else on this list. You don't need to spend a fortune. My definition of kids is Keeping Intimacy at a Distance Successfully. We love ours, but the romance can't wait until they leave.

3. Clean out the pantry. You cannot cook in a filthy kitchen. Get the issues on the table, openly, honestly, out loud. Unspoken resentment is the expired ingredient in the back of the shelf that ruins every meal you try to make. If you can't get there on your own, get wise counsel. That's not weakness. That's cleaning the pantry.

4. Enjoy the meal. Find something you love doing together, and I don't just mean in the bedroom. So many couples tell me their spouse is boring. But you used to laugh together. You used to go somewhere together. So go back and get it. Bring the past into the present.

The House Will Smell Like Something

Here's what I know after more than forty years of marriage: your house is going to smell like something. Your kids are going to walk through it and breathe it in. Your friends are going to catch a whiff of it. You don't get to opt out of the aroma. You only get to decide what's cooking.

And I'll tell you the honest truth. None of this works on willpower. You can white-knuckle a date night. You cannot white-knuckle an environment. This only happens by the power of the gospel, with the Spirit of God actually operative in your life and in your home.

If you've never made Jesus the center of your life, you can settle that right now, right where you are. Tell Him you know you're a sinner. Turn from it. Ask Him to come in and take His rightful place at the center.

But if you're willing to work? If both of you are willing to work? I believe a hundred percent of marriages can flourish. Not survive. Flourish.

Go start something in the kitchen.