So how is the routine shaken up? How is the rut left in the dust? We’d like to offer one simple and humble suggestion that, even with just once or bi-weekly application, can turn the weekday doldrums on its head. We’re talking about taking a class that won’t only help you reshape your mind or body, but reshape your experiences as a couple. Here are three such classes.

Tennis Lessons

What’s great about embracing tennis as a couple is that it comes with a few options. First, being in a couple means you’ll always having someone to play tennis with. Second, you can also play as a couple against other couples.

Tennis is great because it’s a great multi-tasker: you get out of the house, you get exercise, and in playing tennis with your significant other you can compete for who’s dinner preference wins out. You can take a tennis class with a large group of people, take private lessons once a week, or simply start playing tennis yourselves if you’re already experienced.

Cooking Classes

Granted, broaching the subject of cooking classes might require a little sensitivity on your part if your significant other is a little sensitive about their cooking skills. But if cooking is a passion that both of you share, there’s no reason you can’t spice up the routine with actual, erm, spice. Like the tennis lessons, these classes will have other benefits: you won’t have to go out so much to eat when you’re good at cooking for yourselves, and you can save money on food because you’re preparing all of your own ingredients.

Painting

If your passions tend less toward the practical and more toward the mentally challenging, then an art class like painting might be more up your alley. Painting is an activity that both of you can enjoy at the same time, but also separately should the need ever arise. Doing it at home can make for a relaxing and quiet evening, or you can make it a social event by taking classes. What you get out of it will depend on what both of you are willing to put into it.

Making it Happen

Of course, none of these classes are going to be worth anything to you if you don’t take full advantage of them and actually follow through with each of your lessons. An important thing to remember is that these classes don’t only have the benefit of spicing up your regular routine, but will positively affect other areas of your life. Consider, for example, the added benefits of regular exercise with tennis – or the ability to cook more of your own food after taking a cooking class.

Ultimately, it will be on both of you to follow through with the classes. Make each one count!

But how do you do that? Wouldn’t truly optimizing your profile take hours, even days, for you to get “just right”? Not exactly. Let’s take a look at how you can improve your Kupple profile in just a few minutes with a quick review and even quicker tweaks.

Give the Profile a Quick Read

First, you’ll want to visit your existing profile. Give it a quick read. What do you notice about it? Is it too long? Too short? Does it tell too much about you as a couple, or is too little about you revealed? You should strive for a reasonable balance between these extremes, and often times that’s not possible without you revisiting your Kupple profile with a fresh eye. Heck, you can even get started by clicking over to your Kupple profile right now. Go ahead. We’ll wait.

If you notice any glaring mistakes – from spelling errors to personal information you want to cut out – go ahead and take a few seconds to correct those. This quick read might not change everything right away, but it’s a great way to start.

Don’t Write a Novel

While it’s important that you’re willing to share information about yourselves as a couple at some point, there’s no reason you have to dump everything on the fine folks at Kupple.com all at once. If you want to write a novel, go ahead and open that word processing file – just try to leave the novel out of your online profiles.

Why? It’s a quick way to guarantee that someone who was otherwise interested in your profile will simply skip it because there’s too much to read. It’s just basic human nature.

Keep It Simple and Secure

The opposite of writing a novel, of course, is to keep it simple. We recommend that you do share a few things about yourself in order to avoid a “blank” profile here at Kupple – but it’s also important that you not share any key facts about yourselves that you also wouldn’t tell to someone you’d just met. Yes, we want you to interact with other couples here at Kupple.com, but you should exercise the same precautions as you would meeting any other couple. Share some nice details, but keep the secrets to yourselves.

Complete the Darn Thing

Even if you’re not writing a novel here, be sure to complete the profile to give a well-balanced view of you as a couple. It will really help inspire you to recognize some more traits about yourselves that you might not have even though of, and this comprehensive view of you as a couple will be more interesting to others than the basic facts.

But Facebook shouldn’t be all about seriousness, either; it should be about fun and staying in touch with the ones you love. In particular, it should enrich your lives as a couple, even if just to some small degree. So keep in mind that you should watch out for these potential Facebook couple “slip-ups” as you grow together in your relationship:

Focusing Too Much on the Relationship Status. We all know that the “relationship status” is very important to many couples. In fact, some people even designate certain types of relationships only as being official when they’re “Facebook official,” meaning that the two of you list each other in a relationship on Facebook.

Why the emphasis on Facebook status? Is it really relevant to the way you interact in person? There’s no substitute to the joy you get when someone else reciprocates your feelings of love. The joy shouldn’t come from a Facebook status achievement. And don’t let yourself get twisted up in feelings of jealousy or resentment, either, if your partner’s Facebook status is not the same as yours – at least initially.

Leaving Your Facebook Open for Others to See. We share a lot of private information via Facebook, and yet many people simply choose that their computers “stay logged in” when they’re using the site. This leaves them vulnerable to friendly and not-so-friendly hackings. Not only can people post fake statuses and make fake messages, but they can get intimate details of your love life that you might not want them to see.

So if you and your significant other are sharing a lot of information on Facebook privately, it’s your responsibility to keep that information private. After all, your girlfriend shouldn’t have to worry that your brothers, for example, will know all the details that she’s sending you. You owe it to one another to be discreet.

Living Through Facebook Rather Than, Well, Life. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-real problem in today’s society: people simply live vicariously through Facebook, giving themselves the illusion of a greater social circle than they really have. If most of your couplehood is lived out on Facebook, then with the exception of long-distance relationships, there’s a chance that it’s not on as strong of ground as you might think. Life is meant to be experienced, not “Facebooked.” Use Facebook as a supplement to a great life and not a replacement.

When used right, Facebook is a powerful, fun, and even addictive tool for enjoying social interaction on the web. But it’s such a powerful tool that it’s tempting to use it in the wrong ways. Don’t let your bad Facebooking ruin a good relationship.

Then there are the homebodies: those couples among us who understand that your physical location really doesn’t have to be a handicap on the fun you have. Heck, having fun at home can feel just as good as getting out of the house. Sound impossible? Not to the people at Kupple.com! And here’s how we like to advise couples to have fun at home, especially during the winter months when you don’t feel like opening the door.

Step Out of Your Regular Routine

We’re going to go out on a limb and guess that your regular weekday routine is not exactly enthralling. After all, who can maintain that much intensity on a regular basis? Instead, for most people, the weekday routine is all about relaxing, getting through the day, and ultimately feeling recharged for the next day.

Well, if you’re going to break out of this routine, you’ve got to step outside it and see how it feels. A family game night, for example, is a common break out of the normal routine that people like to enjoy – and you don’t even have to make it a regular habit; you just have to enjoy it once or twice.

Getting Everybody Involved

One of the main challenges of having fun at home is having fun with other people. If you’re in a couple, for example, you know that you’re not really going to have much fun unless the both of you are on board. That’s just part of human nature, and the nature of relationships. So how do you get in alignment with your significant other when they’re unwilling to budge?

First, you can try experimenting with an activity yourself. Let’s say your partner isn’t hip to the idea of playing an interactive dancing game on your Wii. All the convincing and persuading you do doesn’t make them see things your way. So instead, you decide to try it out yourself, and, wouldn’t you know it, you’re having fun! Suddenly you’re both playing. Be willing to lead by example when it comes to fun.

Treat Yourselves

Another way to unburden yourself of your home responsibilities is to treat yourself. Order delivery pizza so there’s no cooking to do. Order Chinese. Order something, just so that you have a fun night all spent at home to look forward to! You’d be amazed at how a small gesture like this can really change your mindset and get you in the mood to enjoy yourselves at home.

And if you’re keeping it simple with a movie at home, then try spicing it up with movie theater-style popcorn and even a box of Raisinettes. Fun is all about the attitude you have in life. If you can’t have fun, what does that say about your attitude?

As anyone who’s been in a long-distance relationship knows, they’re not easy. You get a few of the perks of being in a relationship, sure, except the actual presence and company of the person you love. In short, they can feel like torture. While video-conferencing software like Skype might help, the truth is that there’s no program short of a Star Trek-style teleportation device that will ever make long-distance relationships feel like the real thing.

But at Kupple.com, those types of odds aren’t enough to intimidate us. And we hope you feel the same. So here’s how to make the “LDR” work in the modern world.

See each other as much as possible. Seriously, it will help. In fact, when you count down to the next meeting the two of you will have in person, it can feel like counting down towards Christmas. Admittedly, this will be difficult. Airfare alone will mean you have to shell out big bucks just to get a glimpse of your significant other with your own eyes. But if the both of you focus on making plans to see each other, you’ll experience a lot of the joy that comes with it just by looking forward to it. That can’t be bad.

Don’t let the string get too loose.  What “string”? Consider it a metaphorical string, a sign of the “pull” you both feel for each other. If you let your relationship get too loose and too relaxed, you run the risk of drifting apart psychologically. If you can accept the fact that the distance between you both does not dictate the quality of your relationship, this should be no problem. But if you start letting the distance dictate how you both feel each other – and how “far” you feel from each other – then there are potential problems ahead.

Don’t let jealousy get in the way. When you’re far from each other, it’s easy to feel jealous. You might feel jealous of their friends, the people that get to spend more time with them. You might feel jealous even of their pets! But if you start feeling jealous, you lay the seeds for other harmful feelings that can manifest themselves and ultimately increase the tension between the two of you. And if there’s too much tension on the metaphorical string in your relationship, you know that it can snap.

Ultimately, the people who are most in control of whether or not you have a successful long distance relationship are you and your significant other. But if you’re determined not to let the circumstances of your relationship dictate the success of that relationship, you stand a solid chance of making it through the tough times until you can reunite. And in the end, all the work will be worth it.

The problem is, many people don’t even realize when their careers are getting in the way. Women who are too career-minded will say “he just can’t handle a woman who makes more than him.” Men who are too career-minded will similarly place the blame on his partner. But what if you’re the problem?

If you think your career might be getting of the way of great things in your personal life, it’s time to check for the signs.

Sign #1: You can’t put your phone down at home. Sure, there sometimes legitimate reasons to take your home with you. Doctors who are on call need to be able to go to work at a moment’s notice, for example. But if you otherwise have trouble distinguishing home time from work time, then you’re going to create stress to the people around you. No one likes feeling like they’re not worthy of your full attention, after all. And while your significant other might not feel jealous of your job, they still might feel that something’s not quite right. So try it tonight: turn off the phone until you wake up. See how easy that was?

Sign #2: You start hearing complaints. If you trust your significant other and know they’re not prone to complaints or temper tantrums, and they start complaining…well, you might be the one with the problem. So take a good look at yourself and how you’ve been living your life if you start hearing complaints from someone you trust – you may just be surprised at what you see.

Sign #3: You miss “the big stuff.” If you’re unable to make certain commitments as a couple because your job demands are in the stratosphere, then you’re forgetting that the reason to work in the first place is to provide yourself a comfortable living. How can you have a living if you don’t have a life? Sure, your ambition and work goals should be a part of your life and should be important. But not at the expense of spending time with the people you love. Don’t miss big events – weddings, funerals, etc. – in the name of work.

Sign #4: You can’t enjoy the weekend. It’s one thing to decompress after a tough day’s work and start feeling social for the weekend again. But if you can’t enjoy a weekend entirely because of work, you might have a problem. Sure, sometimes you’ll have to work weekends – that’s part of life. But if you can’t enjoy a free weekend when you have it, that’s not life.

The good news is that you can start trying a few small strategies to ensure that your work life is no longer interfering with your personal life. Turn the phone off at night. Relax on the weekends. And spend more time with the ones you love.

Here’s a secret few in the self-help industry are willing to tell you: personal growth is hard. It’s even harder when you’re in a relationship and both of you need to grow on some level. And yet many of us don’t even realize how we may be fault when it comes to jealousy. We think that our jealous feelings are a result of what the other person is doing, or something that’s out of our own control.

At Kupple.com, we not only want to help couples to stay together, but to improve. That’s why we’ve put together this little primer on the issue of jealousy, and why it can sometimes seem like relationship poison.

But first: why avoid jealousy?

After all, isn’t a little jealousy healthy, like having a little bit of red wine at the end of the night – but not too much? Those jealous feelings help you know that you still have feelings for your loved one, that there’s a degree of passion in the relationship.

This is true, to a certain extent. Jealous feelings are normal; if you want to be with someone, it follows that you don’t want them to be with anyone else. But you’d be amazed at how quickly these brief feelings can become destructive in your relationship.

For example, consider what jealousy makes us do. We often grow paranoid when we’re jealous, anxiously asking our partners questions about where they’ve been, the nature of their friendship with someone else – and no answer ever satisfies someone who’s jealous.

It might even push us further. When we’re too jealous, we might start arguments and tighten our grip on our loved one – only making them resent us more and more as they feel pressured to behave a certain way. Ultimately, it eats away at the relationship.

Okay, so you’re sold on the fact that jealousy usually leads to more bad things than good. So how can these feelings be avoided?

·Have a strict no-jealousy policy. Sure, even if you have those feelings once in a while, you have to have the self-discipline to let your significant other live their own life once in a while. This means having a strict policy over yourself rather than maintaining a strict policy over them. It’s far healthier for the relationship.

·Make sure you’re both on the same level of commitment. It can get incredibly awkward when one person feels jealous of the other…meanwhile, the other person doesn’t even feel committed to that person. Jealousy in this case is totally unwarranted. So make sure that you’ve both committed to each other in some way before you decide to feel jealous. If you find yourself jealous over someone you’re not even in a relationship, you know you need to get a hold of yourself.

It’s okay to tell your spouse about your feelings of jealousy – as long as you don’t drag them down by turning these feelings into complaints. Communicate openly, relax more, and resist the urge to control your loved one. It will make for a healthier, happier relationship – and life.

We at Kupple.com will be the first to point out that having a strong, committed relationship has some major advantages. There’s no substitute for the support and love you get from someone you truly have chemistry with.

But forget all that for a moment. Instead, let’s take a little while and think about some of the fringe benefits of being a part of a couple. For example: restaurants.

Yes, restaurants. Being single, you may never feel inclined to go out to a restaurant unless you can find another group to latch on to. But when you’re in a relationship, you have a group almost always ready to go out to eat. And it doesn’t hurt enjoying great food without having to cook it yourself, either.

But that’s not all. Let’s have a little fun and explore the idea a little further:

Advantage #1: Easier seating. Going to the restaurant with your extended family can mean a long wait as the hostess tries to wrestle up a table that can seat ten. But when you go to a restaurant as a couple, you only need take up a two-seat table; oftentimes, a restaurant may even be able to make room for you to sit down. And because you require less work for the hostess, you’re likelier to get seated more quickly.

Sure, you can make it more difficult by requesting a table with a great view, but if you go to the restaurant with no expectations, you’ll often find the table in the corner is just as enjoyable.

Advantage #2: You can go anywhere and feel comfortable. When you go to a restaurant solo, you often have to eat at the bar in order not to feel like you’re taking up too much space, or simply so you can order a few cocktails and feel less self-conscious about being at a restaurant alone. But when you go as a couple, your restaurant options are unlimited. You’ll rarely have to wait at the bar, and you’ll never have to push together tables as you would if you were a party of 10. Want to try that swanky new place downtown? Go ahead – after all, what better place for a date than a restaurant? And speaking of dates…

Advantage #3: Amping up the chemistry. Sure, going to a casual dinner to any old restaurant probably isn’t going to ignite a flame within your loins. But take your significant other to a place with a little bit more ambiance and you’ll find it impossible not to ramp up the chemistry between the two of you. In fact, you may even find that the restaurant does most of the work. Although many people go to a restaurant for good food and good service, you can actually get more out of the dining experience when you’re trying to increase the volume on the romance.

Going out to eat every day is probably not easy on the budget. But going out once or twice a month is not only healthy, it’s almost downright required for most couples. So get the most bang for your buck by taking full advantage of the experience.

We’ve all been in that situation. Extra weight. The third wheel. The fifth wheel. Odd man (or woman) out. It’s not fun when you’re single, and while it’s not quite as painful for you when you’re part of a couple, it can still be difficult to continue seeing your single friends when you’re living the life of a couple.

We at Kupple.com not only recognize the value of socializing with other couples, we’re all about it. But we can’t ignore the single friends in your life, and they’re not necessarily destined to always be single either. You need to value all of your friends – at the exclusion of no one. Here’s how to keep them comfortable around you even when you’re in a couple…and ultimately how to keep those single friends in your life.

Let’s start out by listing a couple of things that you don’t want to do when you’re in a couple and hanging out with single friends:

· Don’t try to fix them up. This is okay if you legitimately have someone that they should meet – someone you would have introduced to your single friend whether you were single yourself or not. But if you keep trying to throw a partner at your single friend, they’ll start to get the feeling that they aren’t viewed as “complete” in your eyes unless they have a significant other.

· Don’t focus on the issue. Along that same vein, don’t focus on the issue at all. If a single friend wants to join you for a nice dinner and instead is asked constantly about finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend, how welcome do you think they’ll feel? They’ll likely think that their own single friends are a better bet for a good time.

Now let’s focus on the positive: proactive things you can do in order to put your single friends at ease, just like the good old days:

· Be yourself. When you’re dating someone new and you introduce them to one of your old single friends, it can be a difficult social balance to maintain. So just relax and be yourself, the way you’d always be. If your single friends get the feeling that you’ve somehow “changed,” then they’ll probably want to stop hanging around you so much.

· Keep it casual. Inviting a single friend over to a formal event can make them feel a little self-conscious. Yet if you, as a couple, enjoy hanging out with your single friends in a more casual setting – say, after-hour drinks or watching the game on Sunday – you’ll put a lot less pressure on them to be on their social game since they are, after all, riding solo.

Ultimately, “dealing” with your single friends when you’re dating shouldn’t feel like you’re “dealing” with them at all. You should stay yourself, stay relaxed and ultimately enjoy each others’ company. It’s when you allow any insecurities to make their way into your interactions that something feels wrong – and it’s not because they’re jealous. It may, in fact, be because you don’t know how to deal with it yourself.

There’s nothing like spending time together as a couple – at least, not when it’s sunny outside. But going out for a winter weekend can be a little more daunting of a task when it’s freezing outside and your car will barely start.

Even so, that’s no reason to keep Kupple.com readers from enjoying the company of their significant others and having fun even when the winter season rolls around. And, heck, the idea of a warm blanket and hot chocolate in front of the fire is just about one of most darned romantic ideas we can think of. Having a fun winter weekend is a goal worth fighting for.  Here are five ideas to get your fire burnin’.

1. Indoor waterparks. We know, we know – to those of you in southern states, the idea of an indoor waterpark sounds as foreign as driving on the other side of the road. But these do indeed exist in the northern states because, heck, why can’t fun waterslides be enjoyed the entirety of the year? Oftentimes these waterparks come attached to hotels and – voila – winter weekend achieved. Just make sure that you remember to find the swimsuit you ditched months ago.

2. The ski trip. If you live close to a ski lodge, it’s time to think about some nice winter activities that don’t involve plopping yourself in front of the TV with a blanket to keep you company. Sure, the ski trip also involves some degree of athletic challenge, but all you need to do is sign up for a lesson or two to hit those slopes. And, really, are you going to let one wipeout or two ruin your whole weekend?

3. The cabin getaway. Granted, not every one of us has an uncle or a parent who owns a cabin that could easily lend it to us for the weekend, but there’s also a magical concept known as “renting.” And it’s worth it, because there’s nothing quite as bonding like being in the same cabin in the winter, when it’s just the two of you against the elements. Bring along some movies and get lost in each other’s’ company for a while.

4. The round-trip flight. Sometimes, winter wears on you until you finally say “uncle!” That’s when you know it’s time for a round-trip flight to somewhere warm for the weekend. Of course, this will necessarily require a larger investment upfront, but the feeling of truly “getting away” is well worth it.

5. The epic movie night. Heck, it’s winter. Sometimes you don’t feel like getting away at all – you just feel like staying put, comfy inside your blanket, and moving nowhere the entire night. That’s what epic movie night is all about. We’re not talking about just one movie, or even two – have three long ones ready for the whole weekend until you’ve had all the hot chocolate your stomach will take. Sometimes enjoying the life you already have will make for the fondest winter memories of all.