Have you ever started an exercise program with high hopes and pure intentions, only to lose your momentum over time?

You do great for a week or two, and that 30-minute workout each day seems like a piece of cake.  You’re feeling your mojo return and starting to make some real progress, but then…

Life Happens

You have a rough week at work, your kid gets sick and your dog dies (now that would be a really bad week).

Before you know it, that time you set aside to better yourself and do the things that you know are good for you seems to disappear.  You end up right back in your same old routine, and a fit lifestyle doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards for you.

The same “intruders” will attack your Couple Time as well, and you need to be prepared to defend against them.  After all, it’s this small amount of time that feeds your Marriage Mojo and sets the course for rekindling the romance between you and your spouse.

In Lesson #1, we looked at how easy it is to find 15 minutes each day to “just be a couple” while you focus on your spouse.  It’s the 1% solution, and it’s surely attainable even for those of us with insanely busy lives.

This is a vital first step, but real quality in romance (and all other areas of your married lives together) comes about when we use this time consistently over the long haul.  And I can tell you from experience that this is the real challenge.

Trust Me, I’ve Been There

In fact, even as I write you, this challenge is on my mind.  My wife and I recently had a conversation about how we’ve slipped in our commitment to our daily 15 minutes lately.

I am a big believer in this approach, and it has done so much for our marriage (and the romance we enjoy), yet we struggle, too.

So, what do we do?  We get back on track, refocus on our priorities, and give our time unconditionally once again.  Life is not perfect, and neither is marriage, but both can be improved dramatically with perseverance and a clear focus on what’s really important to us.

That’s how we find our Marriage Mojo every time we manage to lose it among the many (lesser) priorities in our crazy lives.

How to Defend YOUR 15 Minutes

Here are the tips that we have found most effective in ensuring that we maintain our time commitment to each other each day:

• Know your priorities and act on them – It starts with your mindset and the statement to your spouse that he/she really is the most important thing in your crazy-busy life.

• Set healthy boundaries – You must put boundaries on the other activities in your life to provide the structure needed to preserve Couple Time each day.  You may really enjoy your work, your television shows or your blog (tell me about it), but you must put caps on the time you expend on them if you want your spouse to trust your stated priorities.

• Find the right time for you – Each couple is different, so you really need to discuss this plan and find a time in your day when you can best avoid interruptions and distractions.  For us, this is right after we put our kids to bed and before we do anything else.  For others, this could be first thing in the morning, or it could even be by phone if your spouse is traveling or stationed overseas.  Romance shouldn’t end just because you can’t be in the same room.

• Set a time and make it part of your daily life – Once you establish a time, you need to treat it like an important appointment that cannot be missed except for emergencies. You can DVR the baseball game and the dishes will wait for 15 minutes.  Just like an exercise program, it’s the little slip-ups that will ruin your progress and knock you off-track.  Remember that.

• Turn off and turn away distractions – Turn off the TV, put your cell phone in the other room and put that magazine on the table away.  This is your Couple Time and you can’t approach it with a distracted mind and expect to have a meaningful experience with your spouse.  You really need to focus and be present for your wife or husband.  You have the other 99% of your day to be distracted!

• Be accountable to each other– This is the most valuable tool in your defense arsenal!  If your wife tells you she’s just too tired to talk tonight or your husband says you need to wait until the game ends, tell them that’s not acceptable to you.  Your spouse is your accountability partner, and they need to bust you whenever you try to push aside your 15 minutes.

If you want to reap the awesome romantic benefits that your Couple Time holds for your marriage, I cannot tell you how important it is that you defend your sacred time each day.  When you do slip up, don’t throw your hands up and say it’s not working.  Talk about it, and work together to find your mojo!< If you have other "defense" tips that you think other couples would benefit from hearing, please reply to this email and let me know.  I’d love to enhance this list for future recipients of this newsletter!

Stand Firm!

In our next lesson, we’ll dive into our first “romantic exercise” and discuss what to do during your 15 minutes.  I think you’ll really enjoy the high-impact and low-time-required activities that you’ll be doing together.  You should receive Lesson #3 in a couple of days.

In the meantime, please use your 15 minutes each day to “just talk” about your day and why you decided to give this little challenge a try.  I think you’ll find that simply committing to this time for each other will prove to be quite romantic.

I’ll see you then!

All the best,

-Dustin

P.S. – The exercise analogy was no coincidence!  Your fitness and overall health are so important for your marriage.  If you’d like to learn more about how to make fitness part of your busy life, I’d love to have you visit us over at Fit Marriage.