Music can enhance our physiological arousal and can make our partners more sexually attractive (especially male partners, see Marin et al., 2017). If you don't have the time or energy to plan an exciting activity, turn up the music. This can be as simple as dancing in your living room rather than sitting on the sofa. For example, research by Aron and colleagues (2000) shows that when couples engage in novel activities (especially exciting activities), they also report enhanced relationship quality. Those of us in long-term relationships sometimes fall into familiar routines, so a break from the routine can enhance our relationships. Grote and Clark (2001) point out that although we are almost always aware of our own contributions to the relationship (I always notice when I do the laundry), we may not always be aware of our partner's contributions. Changing our perceptions may be warranted as well. Changing our perceptions is the easiest way to improve our relationships: It involves only changing our thoughts, not our behaviors. To remedy that situation, we can change what we put into the relationship, what we get out of the relationship, or merely our perception of it. Adams suggests that when we feel like we are incurring most of the costs and reaping fewer rewards we feel less satisfied with our relationships. Adams theorized that our relationship satisfaction is determined by our perceptions of the rewards we get from a relationship as well as the costs we dedicate to a relationship and our investment in that relationship. The anecdote above is related to equity theory, which was developed by John Stacey Adams in 1965.
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