How do we bring back the spark after 2 years apart?

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Question

we got married 2 years ago but have basically been living separate lives since the start. i took a job in chicago and he stayed in austin for grad school. we thought it’d be fine short term but here we are… barely seeing each other and when we do, it feels awkward. like that first date energy? gone. we used to text dirty stuff all the time but now it’s just “how was traffic” and “did you pay the electric bill”.

last time we were together, we tried having sex and it was just… meh. no heat, no urgency, nothing. i kept thinking about whether i left the stove on. like seriously. we both just laid there after and stared at the ceiling.

i love him, i really do. we’re great together when we talk—same jokes, same stupid memes, we still laugh till we snort. but the physical part? feels dead. and distance makes it worse because you can’t just fix it with a surprise kiss or a long hug.

so how the hell do you reignite something when you’re never in the same room? any of you been through this…?

Aaliyah Jackson · Answer

Okay so my husband and I were in almost the exact same spot married 18 months in we lived in seperate cities for his residency I swear we forgot what the other person even sounded like after a while

What finally snapped us out of it was this dumb 3-day weekend we forced ourselves to take zero phones no plans nothing just being together startin g conversations that actually went somewhere not just logistics
We started small like cooking together and watching dumb reality TV like we did early on and slowly brought back flirty texts not about bills like hey remember that time we got stuck in the elevator and almost kissed or sending an old photo of us from before the distance
Also tried scheduling sex which felt weird at first but honestly helped take the pressure off and after a few times it started feeling natural again
The real shift was stoppin g treating our time like a checklist and relearning each other like we were datin
It didn’t fix everything overnight but it was a start

How do we bring back the spark after 2 years apart?

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