Boring Marriages Aren't Broken, and That's Exactly What Makes Them Dangerous #692

Boring marriages aren't broken marriages. Nobody's fighting. Nobody's unhappy enough to leave. You just feel flat, two people running the same household. And that's exactly what makes them dangerous.

In this episode, I break down why the spark dies in long-term relationships, and more importantly, the exact system I use with clients to bring it back, even when life is full, the career is demanding, and the kids are running the show. This is the conversation most couples avoid having until it's too late.

You'll learn:
- Why the honeymoon phase ends, and the real reason comfort becomes the enemy
- How sitting across from your partner with nothing new to say is a signal, not a sentence
- The two-list system: Mini Bucket List and Bucket List, and the cadence that keeps the spark alive
- Why shared new experiences are the fastest fix for emotional disconnection
- The infidelity stats that nobody talks about, and what they actually tell us about what couples are missing
- Why the experiences that go wrong are the ones you'll talk about forever
- How to stop wondering if the grass is greener and start watering your own

Free Bucket List Tool → https://www.lachlanstuart.com.au/the-list
Free Life Performance Scorecard → https://scorecard.lachlanstuart.com.au/

Transcript

Why Boring Feels So Risky

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

Boring marriages aren't broken marriages, and that's what makes them dangerous. Nobody's fighting, nobody's unhappy enough to leave. Yet you're just you're feeling flat. Two people running the same household, and that's the reason it has nothing to do with love. Let me show you what's actually going on and how we can fix it. When you watch this video and listen to this episode, you'll know exactly how to bring the spark back into your marriage, even when it's a full life, you've got a busy career, and you've got children.

The Honeymoon Phase Then Comfort

Lachlan Stuart 0:29

Let's talk firstly about why the spark dies and why this has a lot to do with the adventure that we need to bring back. In the beginning, they call it the honeymoon phase. There's a lot of new experiences happening because you're getting to know each other and your partner is getting to know you. In that, there's a curiosity, there's the what does this person have to offer? Do I really like that about this person? What makes them tick? Who are their friends? Who are their family? And that's exciting. It can be a little bit daunting, but for the most part, it is exciting. And because of that, we're looking at life in a different way. Now, what happens over time is we go through that honeymoon phase, which is what a lot of people talk about, and then we get into comfort, right? Comfort comes through routine. We are creatures of habit. Eventually, you start knowing what makes your partner tick, what they enjoy doing, their routines, and that just becomes the day-to-day life. And early on, that's quite nice because you feel this like you can almost just relax and be yourself around this person because you know what to expect. But if that happens for too long, that is where the danger happens. This is where the spark goes to die. And that sounds very scary, but it's true. Because it is through monotony, it is through routine that we stop thinking about things, we stop being intentional. And when you're not being intentional, meaning you're not deciding why you're doing what you're doing or what you would like to gain from something, you just go through the motions. Now, when you're looking at your partner and you're sitting across the table and you're thinking to yourself, well, I don't really have much to say to them. I know what their day has been like, I know what time they got up. We spoke about the kids, I know what they did this afternoon. Now we're having a dinner that we've had for the last 20 years together. That's not exciting. Imagine, imagine sitting across from your partner, someone who was continuing to experience new things, where you were asking them, Hey, I know you went on this hike today. Tell me about it. What was the thing that you enjoyed most? What did you learn? Were there any scary parts? It changes the whole dynamic of the conversation, which then changes the whole dynamic of the relationships. Now, here's the real cool part. When you go, well, if one of us is doing new experiences and it can generate different conversations and bring excitement back in that passion, imagine if you were both doing shared experiences together. The spark dies, in my opinion, because we aren't doing that as a couple. In the beginning, everything's new. Over time, it becomes routine, and you do what you want to do, and your partner generally does what they want to do. My wife and I we try to get interested in what the other person's interested in. My wife's a musician. I consider myself an athlete, so we have very different interests, but I love being around my wife when she's doing what she loves. I feed off her energy, even though there's some things where I'm like, it's not really of interest to me. I love the fact that she lights up and I get to learn from her about what excites her and what she's building towards. Just like she is doing the same for me. One thing she's very excited about now that I've completed the 58 marathons is what are we doing in the men's health space? I closed down my academy during the 58 Marathons, which was an online group program, and now we're getting close to bringing it back, and it's going to come back as the arena, which I'm very excited about. And if you're interested in it, just comment arena below or DM me on Instagram. And I just want to see if there's a bit of interest, and I'll start speaking about it more over the next couple of weeks. And some of you have messaged me about why I've been in control, but having worked with my business strategist, he's like, the name Arena is way better. And I'll explain later why. But my wife's very excited to learn why I'm driven to do this after all these years, why I'm still working in the men's health space, why I want to play create a space where men like you can walk side by side other incredible men who are wanting to be a better version of themselves. So that is a very cool thing that she's excited by, even though I'm sure she doesn't really care too much about what's going on there. She's excited that I'm excited by something. And then when we bring it back to what are we doing together with a new kid, it's very easy to put your experiences and your marriage on the back burner. Freddie was up at like, I don't know, I think Amy was up with him from about 2.30 this morning, and I kept waking up and you could hear him grizzling. I said to Amy, I was just like, I'll be up at 4:30, just hold on till 4:30. And she was like, Yeah, no, no dramas. And then I got up at 4:30 and I'd been up with him. We went for a long two-hour walk, but then I came back and we're both pretty knackered, and little Freddie had a nap. But off the back of that, it's very easy to then go, well, tonight we want to go to bed early. It's very easy to go, well, I'm so tired, I don't want to put the effort in with my partner, and that's the continuation of this spark dying. And it goes

Build Shared Adventures On Purpose

Lachlan Stuart 5:20

back a step that when you get comfortable and you're not being intentional, you're taking the spark away. So here's what we want to start doing, and I believe it's an instant fix. If you start creating experiences together and being intentional, you can do this at a cadence that works for you. It might be a weekly date night, it might be a fortnightly date night, it might be a monthly family weekend. I got a client, Gabe, and he is a champion. Even before we started working together, he's a very successful in the property space, has a young son, and every month he and his family do a trip away together. And it's not always, you know, you don't need a passport for it, but he makes sure it's whether it's the coast or they'll go see Mount Kutha here in Brisbane. They just do something as a family, and it's scheduled in every month. And I find that so awesome because he's investing in keeping the spark alive, not only for his marriage, but for his family, and that's going to improve the relationship. So you can see, I'm sure he sits at home with his wife and they talk about how their son was when he saw Mount Kutha for the first time, or when they went to America just recently. They get to have these experiences and these conversations that aren't just focusing on what their relationship was like, it's like this is what we're currently doing, and that is a really good example of why we want to continue creating these shared experiences. So let's break it down quickly. And I I had this, I'm starting to work out like how do I do my notes so that I can teach, but also just have the key points. But if we look at the cadence of catch-ups, and when I say catch-ups, I mean like adventures, I look at it in two forms. We can look at it as bucket lists, and I'm sure you have heard about a bucket list, it's a list of things that you would love to experience or have in your life. For me, you know, seeing Tottenham Hot Spur play at Whiteheart Lane is one of mine to see that 800-meter final at the Brisbane Olympics is one of mine to take my mum on an overseas trip with just the two of us, which I did tick, was on the bucket list, and they're the big things, right? They might take a little bit of time and planning, and you might not do them as frequently. That's the bucket list one. So we got that, and you want to build a bucket list. And I'm gonna have a tool in the comments below that you'll be able to download that can help you with this. It'll be an AI agent or something, so it's super simple, it won't take you any longer than two minutes to get that done. But the second thing that we look into do before we create the cadence is a mini bucket list. Now, the mini bucket list is other things that you want to experience, but they don't take as much time, energy, or money. So they're things that you could do weekly. You might say, or for me, for example, one thing I have been doing lately is taking different clients to virtual golf. And the reason being is a bucket list is one, I want to get better at my golf, so I'm really enjoying it, but I also want to connect with different people and understand what makes them tick. So I've ticked that off, right? And I wouldn't really say that's a mini bucket list now, that's just more of an experience with that. But other things that I want to do is you want to get a running pram with my son, and that'll be a tick, and then it will become a bit of a habit. I want to take my son and teach him to surf, like that's a mini bucket list, it's not a big deal, but it's something easy to do. And now I know I'm talking about my son, but with my wife, some mini bucket lists could be checking out a new restaurant, it could be taking her or creating a date experience when she gets home. And I actually did this a number of weeks ago. She came home, I had the bath run, I had the candles on. Now I found out she didn't really want the candles on, so we blew those out, and she just had a nice warm bath and you know 15-20 minutes to herself, which she really enjoyed. And that didn't take too much time, but she really appreciated it, and then we got to speak about that after. So think about it like this: two lists, mini bucket list, minimal outlay, minimal time, easy to do, but new. Second one is the bucket list is more effort, more energy, and maybe costs a little bit more to make it do, but it would be something that you could, you know, talk about for the rest of the year, something very cool. Now, when we look at cadence, I would put the bucket list under mini bucket list. Sorry, I'll just put it MB here. Mini bucket list, you could do weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, no longer, right? No longer. You want to be doing those consistently because they're the things that get the I guess the deposits. And if you've been here long enough, you'll have heard me talk about the daily deposits. These would be the either weekly, fortnightly, or monthly deposits to the experiences within your with your life. This is investing in the spark. So even if you do have a month of illness or you're going traveling, there's something to deposit from. So there's some something to withdraw from because if you don't have that, that's where things really fall apart. Now, when we look at the bucket list, I would personally go quarterly bi-annually, so every six months or annually. I feel like annually is still great for a big one, but that's how I would look at breaking it down. So if you look at it like this, you can go through now and you'll see this little thing that I've created for you. You can put in your own, or you can use some of my ideas, and you could just spin the button that has here's my mini bucket list, what's going to be my item for the cadence that you choose, whether it's monthly, fortnightly, or uh weekly. And here's my bucket list. Let's spin that so it almost takes the decision out of your mind and you just go, cool, this is the thing that it's given me. I've already created my list, let's do it. And that's what we do. And I can promise you, off the back of that, your relationship is gonna go through the roof because when you're having these new experiences again, it almost feels like you're starting to date, you're not always gonna like the experiences that you have. That's part of life. But how often and how many experiences have you had that were shit? And you look back, and that's the thing that you talk about more than the experiences that were great. My wife and I always talk about experiences where things went wrong. In the moment you hate it, but after it's a bloody funny story or a cool story to share. It's not the ones where it's like I flew business class and I went to Disneyland and it all went smoothly. That's just like, well, cool, there was no adversity, there's nothing that makes that really memorable. So I want you to think about like think about it like that. Two other things I just want to quickly cover before we wrap

Bucket Lists Cadence And Consistency

Lachlan Stuart 11:40

this one up. There's two interesting stats here infidelity, so cheating. Right? 52% of men and 60% of women said that that was coming from two reasons. The first one and the most important was emotional disconnection. If you're not feeling connected, you're not having experiences together and you're not communicating. So, once again, go back to if you want to not have a boring marriage, do fun things, have adventures, and have experiences, and that's going to make you feel emotionally connected because when you share things together, you're like two peas in a pod. The second thing is people are feeling neglected at home, but that's a different video for a different time. And the the other point that I wanted to get across was people are losing faith in relationships lasting the long term. Now, if you think your relationship's boring and you're like, well, I wonder if the grass is greener, start watering your own grass and start creating the experiences. I promise you that if you just do the simple thing that I said, write the list of your mini bucket list, write the list of your bucket list, and then work out a cadence that suits you and your lifestyle and your relationships, you will turn things around really quickly. I have seen it not only with Gabe, the client that I said, but I've seen it with Charlie, another bloke that I've worked with, and so many dudes. And this will be something that we're looking to put into our group program, the arena, because I know that there are many men out there like you who are doing well in life, but you are sitting across from your partner and you're starting to go, well, this is a little bit boring. It doesn't mean your marriage sucks, by the way. It just means you need to start being a little bit more intentional with it. So if you've enjoyed

Cheating Stats Water Your Grass

Lachlan Stuart 13:17

that one, remember you can comment below, comment arena if you're interested. There'll also be the link for the little app that allows you to build that mini bucket list bucket list there that you can use for free. Super easy, super win. I'm not even gonna ask for your email address. And that would be that. I look forward to seeing you guys in the next video. Thanks for being.