Wholesome Recreational Activities

I learned the phrase "wholesome recreational activities" in Mormonism, and I do not know if any phrase has ever sounded more like it arrived wearing church shoes.

It is so earnest. So clean. So ready for a clipboard, a folding chair, and a lesson about appropriate dating behavior.

And yet I love it.

I shared it with Alana, and we have giggled about it ever since. It became one of those phrases that starts as a joke and then refuses to stay only a joke because there is something true hiding inside it. Couples really do need wholesome recreational activities. They need to do something, anything, together.

Not because every date has to become a memory book moment. Not because romance is a performance. Not because a relationship is failing if the weekend does not look beautiful online. Because love needs motion. It needs shared air. It needs little adventures where the point is not productivity, problem-solving, parenting, scheduling, or recovering from the last hard thing.

Love has to become visible. Sometimes visible love is a walk after dinner. Sometimes it is a sandwich in the park. Sometimes it is wandering a store you do not need anything from, laughing at the weird seasonal aisle, and calling it a date because you chose to be together on purpose.

In blended family life, it is easy for the couple to become the logistics department. Who is driving? Who is cooking? What is the schedule? Which child needs what? What did the other house say? What bill is due? What needs to be repaired emotionally before bedtime?

Those things matter. But if the only time a couple spends together is operational, the relationship can start to feel like a shared inbox.

Wholesome recreation interrupts that.

It says: before we solve everything, can we remember that we like each other? Can we give the marriage a little oxygen? Can we stop managing the family long enough to enjoy being two people who chose each other?

A Few Practices

• Keep a short list of easy things you can do with less than one hour and less than twenty dollars.
• Let the activity be simple enough that it can survive a tired week.
• Put phones away for part of it, even if only for twenty minutes.
• Do not turn the outing into a meeting about the children, money, or the schedule.
• Laugh at the phrase if you need to. Then actually go wholesome recreate.

The next right step is usually smaller than we want it to be.

That is good news here. The answer may not be a trip, a reservation, or a grand romantic plan. It may be ice cream. It may be a walk by the water. It may be a morning coffee on a bench. It may be going to a farmer's market and buying one unnecessary peach because summer asked nicely.

The activity is not the point. The togetherness is the point.

I think that is why the old phrase still works on me. It is funny, but it is not cynical. It assumes that what we do with our bodies, time, and attention matters. It assumes that courtship is not only about chemistry, but about choosing environments where love can stay clean, kind, and awake.

I am not dating inside the old Mormon rulebook anymore, but I still believe couples are formed by the things they repeatedly do together. We become the people who take walks, or the people who only collapse on separate screens. We become the people who try small adventures, or the people who wait until life is perfect before enjoying each other.

Life is not going to become perfect first.

So this is my invitation, especially as summer opens the door: wholesome recreate. Say it with a straight face if you can. Say it while laughing if you cannot. But do it. Take the person you love somewhere ordinary and let ordinary be enough.

A couple does not only need to talk through hard things. A couple needs fresh air, shared jokes, low stakes, and proof that joy still belongs in the house.

Go do something together. Anything good. Anything kind. Anything that lets love breathe.