Love doesn’t come easy. There’s the squirming between delayed texts, the question of which gifts aren’t cliché, and home cooking operations that swelter you silly under pressure and oven burns. Yep, there’s a lot of work that goes into building a lasting relationship…
Sort of like the gym, no? It’s not a stretch to see the love for looking after your body and the need to care for someone else as equally heady instincts. And when exercise and attraction collide, your shared pheromones can probably be detected 10 miles away. For couples who work out together, there are plenty of benefits to a relationship beyond mighty abdominals lying side by side:
Pushing for pleasure
Ambition can be a powerful ingredient to romance, stirring the love soup with promises of goals and personal development. This can take many forms – separate careers, hobbies, travel plans, or the sweat-tinged pleasure of benching an extra 30kg at your local fitness temple.
It’s common knowledge that a gym buddy helps someone transcend their limits, like Adrian and Rocky swapping roles every 10 minutes. Now imagine that mixed with the tonic of salivating over your beau’s biceps or midriff as they power through a personal best. You’ll feel ecstatic in each other’s company, giving mutual support and ravenous gazes that’ll spur both of you on.
Clearing the daily cobwebs
Staying at home every free minute of the evening, crumpled in an armchair with your lover absently scrolling through a tablet 6 feet away, is enough to deaden the fiercest sparks of courtship. If the idea of ‘routine’ involves making a meal, bedding down at 10.30 and checking each other’s sock drawers for crossover, you’re in danger of slipping into boredom without realising it.
However, if you worship at the altar of exercise, there’ll always be new transmutations to sample. Taking various running routes after work, or shaking up your cardio routine with the odd bit of yoga or Pilates, keeps your schedule alive in more ways than one. You’ll look forward to having that sacred 30 minutes or so with just you, them, and a roomful of mirrors.
Fixing your wounds
Okay, so workout-mad couples probably see the jealousy in their fellow gym bunnies, who’re thinking, “Damn, what a picturesque twosome, standing like a couple of gods. That’s real love, right there!” They’re right, aren’t they, because it’s practically impossible to be mad at anyone you’re exercising with.
Aside from the general feeling that you’re putting the physical compatibility of other couples to shame, you’ll get a proper endorphin rush for your efforts, ridding whatever tension could be between you. Every match argues now and then, but what better catalyst for saying sorry than getting one of you to hold a punch bag, whilst the other knocks it to oblivion?
Sculpting a lean body means cutting out the bad stuff, and relishing what we’re naturally good at. Sounds a lot like true romance, if you ask us. FreeAndSingle always has its figurative doors open to supermen and wonder women looking to find their opposite number. Sign up for an account today, and get to work on the greatest regime of your life – impressing a solid date time and again!