3 Questions To Ask Before Sweating With Your Spouse!

I hear a lot of people mention (especially right after New Years) that a great way to lose weight, get healthy and strengthen your relationships is to exercise with your significant other. For the longest time I felt like an epic failure because my husband and I just never really got into the grove of working out together. If you've also felt this way despair not! Here are some ways to judge if including your mate in your next trip to the gym is the right choice for you:

1. Do you have the same goals? If you and your special someone have the same fitness goals then simultaneous sweating probably works for you. However, if you're goal is to get more flexible while your better half's goal is to build strength then maybe it would be better to just go your separate ways during your daily sweat sessions.

2. Do you enjoy the same activities? My husband plays basketball. My parents put me in non-ball related sports like swimming and running for a reason. I honestly couldn't catch, bounce, hit or kick a ball if my life depended on it. While watching these kinds of sports can be fun, participating in them is a different story. And the same works in reverse. On an occasion during my lets-workout-together-days I decided to take my husband to a yoga class, but quickly regretted it when he let out a loud "no way!" during the first sun salutation. It's just not his thing and he doesn't want or really need to be a yogi.

3. When do you both plan on working out? For the longest time I was used to working out first thing in the morning, while my husband played pick up basketball in the evenings. Whenever one of us would try to change our schedule to do something with the other we would both end up annoyed and agitated. While we are both on the same schedule now, we don't force it. We are both committed to our fitness and respect the others choice to go when most convenient for them. In the end, our relationship is a little more harmonious because we got to do a little something for ourselves.

I hope this helps all those suffering women out there wondering "AGH what is wrong with US?!" If you are one of the lucky few who works out with the hubs, kudos. But for the rest of you, don't sweat it...literally!