How to Bring Pleasure, Play, and Joy Back into Your Marriage

What Happens When You Miss What’s Good

Picture this. You're sitting in your dream spot. Maybe it's a beach house in Maui. Doors wide open breeze. Rolling in your feet. Kicked up on the deck. Railing. Drink in hand. Maybe it's a cabin in the woods.

Fire going morning, mist on the trees, perfect silence. Maybe you're on a bungalow in Fiji, perched above clear blue water. The kind of place you'd only go once you finally made it. You're here to rest, to breathe, to enjoy. But then you notice something. The windows you're looking through, they're filthy covered in smudges, fingerprints, streaks.

You can still see the view, but part of your brain fixates on the mess. And now you're asking, do I clean the window first? Do I get frustrated that no one else noticed? Do I miss the whole damn view because I'm too focused on what's wrong with the glass?

That is marriage. The view is good. The love is real.

But if all you ever see are the streaks, the flaws, the irritations, the things she does that drive you nuts, you'll miss the whole thing. You'll miss the joy, the ease, the connection, the reason you signed up for this in the first place. This episode is about that. It's all about seeing the beauty through the mess.

About choosing joy. Even when things aren't perfect, about letting yourself enjoy your wife and your life, not just fix them, because if you wait until everything is perfect to enjoy your marriage, you'll never enjoy it. We're going to talk about pleasure, why it matters, why it's not a luxury, and what happens when you stop trying to control everything and start letting yourself.

Flaws, quirks and all working on this in my own marriage played a huge role in turning it around, and it might just do the same for you. So let's get started.

Welcome to Better Husband, the podcast that helps you answer the question, how can I be a better husband? I'm Angelo Santiago, a men's marriage and relationship coach, and every week I bring you practical insights to help you strengthen your marriage and become the best husband you can be.

When I Used to Try to Fix Her

I wanna start off by getting honest with you about.

Something I'm not proud of. Early in my marriage, I used to get irritated at the smallest things my wife would do. The way she left her shoes in the doorway, the way she told a long story with way more detail than I thought necessary. The way she started talking to me, right as I sat down to relax after a long shift at the firehouse, none of it was a big deal, but back then it felt huge.

It felt like a personal offense and I'd let it get to me. I'd get short or cold or quiet, and what started as a little irritation would snowball into us not talking for the rest of the night or snapping at each other, or me withdrawing arms crossed thinking, why can't she just stop doing that? I had this unspoken belief that if she could just change those little things, we'd be fine.

If she could just adjust, just tweak a few behaviors, then I. Could finally relax, then I could finally enjoy her. That was my immaturity. That was my desire for control. And I remember a moment still clear in my mind where she looked at me and said, can you just love me as I am? Like all of me quirks and all?

And that hit me hard and it stuck with me because I realized in that moment I wasn't loving her fully. I was loving a version of her that was easier for me to deal with. I was loving conditionally, and that's not true Love. It took me a long time to admit that, a long time to really see how my irritation wasn't about her quirks, it was about me, my need for control, my discomfort with imperfection.

My belief that if she could just change, that I could be happy. But that's backwards. That's not how joy works in a marriage. That's how resentment works. Since then, we've done a lot of repair. I've done a lot of inner work. I've learned how to pause, how to breathe, how to stop trying to mold her into who I thought she should be, and now those same quirks, the ones that used to drive me crazy, I smile at them, I see them and think that's her, and I don't wanna lose that.

I wasted too much time trying to improve what didn't need fixing. What needed to change was me. And now I can say with full honesty, I love her as she is.

The Shift from Control to Acceptance

And that shift from control to acceptance, from tension to joy is what I want to talk about today. Because some of you are in that same place. You're waiting to enjoy your marriage until everything feels just right.

But what if the joy you're waiting for is on the other side of acceptance?

Most men don't realize this, but one of the fastest ways to drain the joy from your marriage is to try to control it. I don't just mean yelling or laying down rules or micromanaging. I'm talking about the subtle ways control shows up the way you expect her to talk a certain way, the way you brace when she starts sharing something emotional, the way you tally how many nights she's gone out with friends versus how many breaks you've had the way you secretly think.

If she would just stop doing this one thing. And control doesn't have to be loud because sometimes it shows up covertly as passive aggressiveness, as quiet, frustration, eye rolls shutting down, and when control takes over, joy shuts down. Because joy needs openness, it needs freedom, it needs room to breathe because joy by nature, it's free.

It's spontaneous, it doesn't show up when everything is perfect. It shows up when you're relaxed, when you're present, when you stop, gripping so tight to how things should be and just let things be. Think about this. When was this the last time you felt genuinely joyful in your marriage? Not satisfied. Not not fighting, but actually happy, light, playful.

I guarantee you it wasn't when you were nitpicking or fixing. It was when you were in it. Laughing together, doing something fun, sitting on the porch, talking about nothing. Maybe it was after sex when the walls came down, or during a walk or while cooking. Those little moments of delight, they never come from control.

They come from presence. I want you to hear this clearly. The need to control is killing your ability to enjoy your marriage. It's killing your ability to enjoy her, and probably it's killing your ability to enjoy yourself too. You don't need more control. You need more trust, more presence, more room for life to happen without jumping into fix it.

And yes, that can start with her, but it can also start with you. And if you're serious about being a better husband, it should start with you. If you haven't caught on yet, let me just say it outright, her quirks, her flaws, her imperfections aren't the problem. The problem is that you've convinced yourself that they are.

Somewhere along the way, most of us started keeping a mental list of, she's too emotional. She always brings things up at the worst time. She never lets things go. She's not as affectionate as she used to be. She nags too much, talks too long, cares too little about what I'm doing, and the story that builds underneath that list is subtle but deadly.

If she would just change, I could finally feel okay. We would finally be okay. But the truth is, and I say this with love because I've lived it, that list and that story that's destroying your marriage because no matter how much she changes, there will always be something else. There will always be another quirk, another disappointment, another part of her that doesn't line up with how you think things should go.

And if your love depends on her fitting into your expectations, then it's not really love. That doesn't mean you have to accept hurtful behavior or sweep big issues under the rug. I'm not talking about betrayal or disrespect, I'm talking about the everyday ways we try to mold our partners into something more convenient for us, more easy, more familiar, more like us, but mature love doesn't demand perfection.

Mature love makes room. It says, you are different than me, and I can love that about you. You are not doing this the way I would, but I choose to stay connected anyway. You frustrate me sometimes, and I can hold that without pushing you away or closing myself off. Real joy in marriage doesn't come from finally having the perfect partner.

It comes from releasing the illusion that you need one. And here's something that's surprised a lot of men I've worked with. The moment you stop resisting her quirks and start accepting them, they lose their power to bother you. They actually become kind of endearing, sometimes, even beautiful. You start to notice the intention behind the things that used to irritate you.

The way she triple checks something. Maybe it's how she feels safe. The way she wants to talk everything through. Maybe it's how she tries to connect the way she gets animated or loud or fired up about small things. Maybe that's how she shows passion. The point is, if you're always trying to fix her, you'll never get to love her and you'll miss the chance to receive the love she's already offering.

Flawed, imperfect human but real. When you shift from fixing her to accepting her just the way she is, that's when love starts to feel possible again. That's when everything starts to soften and joy. That's where it begins to grow again.

Embracing Pleasure in Marriage

Now let's talk about pleasure because most men think of pleasure as something optional, something extra, something you get to enjoy.

Once the to-do list is done and everything's in order, but in a marriage, pleasure is not optional. It's not a bonus feature, it's a lifeline. Let me explain exactly what I mean and what it means for your marriage.

If you've been treating pleasure in your marriage, like a luxury, something you'll get around to eventually, you're probably already feeling the cost, the tension, the boredom, the distance, because without pleasure, a marriage starts to feel like a business.

You divide the tasks, manage the household, coordinate the logistics, check in about the kid's schedule, and by the end of the day. You're not partners, you're coworkers, and it's not because you don't love each other. It's because somewhere along the way you stopped making space for joy. You started doing what had to be done and only what had to be done.

You got efficient, productive, responsible, and in doing that, you became robotic. Now, here's the kicker. When you deprioritize pleasure yours and hers, you don't just kill the fun, you kill the connection, and that slowly starts to kill your marriage because pleasure isn't just about sex or fun nights out, it's about aliveness.

It's about being connected to what feels good, what brings energy, what stirs the soul. And that's not just personal. It's relational. Pleasure is a marker of intimacy. Just like cholesterol or blood pressure are markers of your heart health.

It tells you something important that you're connected to yourself, connected to each other, and connected to the present moment. Without it, you start to drift. And now this next part is important too because yes, pleasure lives in the relationship, but it also lives in each of you individually. It's not just about what you do together.

It's about how alive and connected you each feel in your own body, in your own life. And when one or both of you stops making space for that, the relationship starts to flat. Here's what that looks like in real life. Maybe she wants to go out to dinner with friends, but you get resentful about watching the kids, so you try to make her feel guilty about it, or you want to go for a run, but you convince yourself it's selfish to take that time.

Or you both start skipping the things that bring you joy, rest, movement, creativity, connection, and then wonder why the marriage feels dull. Here's what I'm getting at. Her pleasure is good for your marriage and so is yours. You being connected to your body, your hobbies, your people is not selfish.

That's nourishment, that's self-care. And so is this. You sitting on the porch with her doing nothing, laughing at something silly. Your kid said, sharing a story that has no purpose other than joy. That's the good stuff. That's what keeps the fire burning. You want intimacy, you want desire. You want lightness to return to your home, then you have to make space for pleasure.

Not when everything is fixed, not when the kids are grown. Now, and I don't mean fake manufactured pleasure, the curated Instagram worthy highlight, real kind. I'm talking about the grounded kind, the kind that says, I'm allowed to feel good. We're allowed to enjoy each other. This relationship is more than just tasks.

And when you reclaim that space, you stop just surviving marriage and you start living it, and that's where joy gets to breathe Again. I wanna end this episode with this question. What separates immature love from mature love? And here's what I would say, it's not how in sync you are. It's not how often you have sex.

It's not how few fights you have or how polished you sound in front of friends. It's how much room your love can hold. For the mess, the flaws, the imperfection, and the humanity of both of you. That's mature love and most of us didn't learn that growing up. We learned love as performance, as control, as reward.

If you behave, I'll love you. If you meet my expectations, I'll stay connected, but real grounded, grownup love, it sounds more like this. I don't love you because you're perfect. I love you because I choose to. I see the things that irritate me. I see the parts that don't change, and I'm not going anywhere.

That kind of love creates a home. It doesn't mean you never ask for more. It doesn't mean you settle for disconnection, but it means you're not waiting for the mess to disappear before you show up with love. That's where a lot of men get stuck. They think once they get more emotionally skilled, more self-regulated, more confident, then they'll enjoy the marriage.

Or once she's more calm, more open, more affectionate, then they'll feel good again. But Joy doesn't come later. It comes now or not at all. And the most beautiful thing is this. The moment you stop resisting the imperfection, you start enjoying what's right in front of you. You stop trying to scrub the window and just sit down and look out.

You let the smudges be there and you say the view is still good. That's emotional maturity, and that's the kind of love your wife and your marriage needs from you most. If you wanna work on this in your marriage this week, don't just think about it. Do something.

Practical Steps for Joy and Acceptance

Here are three moves to help you start practicing joy, pleasure, and mature love right now.

One notice, one moment of joy and let it count. It could be small, a shared laugh, a look across a room, a warm touch, a quiet moment on the couch. Don't skip over it because things aren't perfect. Let it matter. Let yourself feel it and let her know you appreciate it. Two, choose one imperfection to accept on purpose.

What's something about your wife you've been silently trying to control or change her Timing, her tone, her clutter. Instead of criticizing or withdrawing this time, pause. Breathe and say to yourself, she's not perfect and I love her anyway. Feel the difference that makes in your body. Three. Make room for pleasure together or alone.

Ask her, what's one thing this week that would feel good for you to do just for you and support it without letting resentment creep in? Then ask yourself the same question and give yourself permission to follow through her joy and your joy. Are not in competition. They're part of the same ecosystem. If you wanna take this deeper, here are some prompts to sit with.

Answer these questions. Where have I been waiting for perfection before allowing myself to enjoy my marriage? What small pleasures have I been withholding from myself or from us? What's one part of my wife I've tried to fix when she really just needed to be loved? What would change if I accepted more and controlled less?

Conclusion: See the Beauty, Even Through the Smudges

To wrap this one up. You don't need to wait for the house to be clean, the budget to be perfect, the connection to be effortless or your wife to change. Joy doesn't come after everything gets better. Joy is what helps everything get better. You're allowed to feel good. You're allowed to love her as she is.

You're allowed to enjoy this marriage, even if it's not where you hoped it would be yet, because the truth is, it's not about wiping the glass until it's spotless. It's about seeing the beauty even through the smudges if this kind of work is resonating with you.

This is exactly the kind of practice we focus on inside Better Husband Academy. It's not a course full of tips and tricks. It's a place to do the real work of showing up relationally week after week with structure coaching and support. If that's something you need, visit better husband academy.com and join us there.

Thanks for being here today. Thanks for caring enough about your marriage to do the real work. If something in this episode, hit home. Take a moment, sit with it, and then take one small step towards Joy this week. I'll be back next week with more. Until then, stay steady, stay grounded, stay open, and keep showing up.

I'm Angelo Santiago. You're listening to Better Husband, and I'll see you on the next one.