Boredom With Family Life Is Crisis That’s Solvable, Psychologists Say

No, it doesn’t flatten you like a divorce or a death in the family.

But boredom with family life is an insidious problem--and ignoring it can have some pretty unpleasant consequences.

In terms of basic survival--having food, shelter and good health--”it’s not very important,” according to Milton Schwebel, professor emeritus of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “But in terms of the happiness and pleasure of the family, and good will in the family, (boredom) really can create havoc.”

Typically, family members will begin to avoid one another, following pursuits that put even more distance between them.

Alienated people often create “family defense mechanisms--people love each other, they want to be together but are having trouble when they’re together. They get angry, irritable and they find a way of being apart,” Schwebel said. For example, a parent might become overly involved in work or fitness.

“The other bad consequence is that kids become irritable and fight, and then the parents get involved and the parents get irritable, and they start fighting,” Schwebel said.

Such a situation is bad enough to be considered a crisis by Schwebel and four other Schwebels. Three psychologists and two educators, together they wrote “A Guide to a Happier Family: Overcoming the Anger, Frustration and Boredom that Destroy Family Life” (Jeremy P. Tarcher, $17.95).

Certain people are particularly prey to boredom, Schwebel said.

“Some people are raised to believe having fun is not the right thing,” he said. “They were never allowed to build fun into life--life has to be harried, life has to be hard work, life has to be serving others but not having fun yourself.

“They have an inability to accept fun and be playful and loving, although it’s perfectly healthy and normal and good, for children as well.”

Other families are disorganized. They want to do things together but don’t plan. When the weekend arrives, the children go off to their own activities while the parents are still trying to figure out what to do.

Couples who once truly enjoyed time together often seem in later married life hopelessly tied to routine. Schwebel advises them to figure out when they stopped having fun--often when the first baby arrived, or when professional demands began to take precedence--and work on what they used to have.

In all cases, the bored will have to get to work.

Prepare a list of possible activities--let it run into hundreds of suggestions, Schwebel said.

“There’s an extraordinarily long list of activities one could engage in, whether it’s bird-watching, going to museums, hearing music, playing music, painting, hiking, or whether it’s stamp collecting or learning to use a camera, or collecting restaurants, if you will,” he said. “The list is so long, unless two people are consciously or unconsciously determined not to find something in common, it’s very difficult not to find something that will strike some degree of interest in the two of them.”

Narrow the list down to five or 10, taking children’s interests into account. You have an advantage if the children in your family are young--they can be brought up to be interested in the activity, Schwebel said.

But don’t choose competitive activities, he said. Couples who decide to play against each other in tennis are not going to have heartwarming moments on the court.

Get into the habit of having fun. Whatever you decide on, stick with it and do it weekly, he said.

If it doesn’t work, you may have more trouble than you think.

“If people go through the long process of selecting an interest and are not getting fun out of it, I think they have to wonder whether the problem is their choice or the difficulty they have spending time together. If it’s the latter, I think they have to look into that,” he said.