When was the last time you and your partner laughed or fooled around? When the two of us swung on a swing, walked in the rain around the city at night? If you can’t remember, then you can use an impressive injection of gaiety and mischief. Marriage expert John Gottman says it’s simple: Couples who play together stay together.
When you started dating, you probably spared no time for jokes, surprises, and funny antics. Each date was a new, exciting adventure. “You built relationships and love on the foundation of the game. And there is no reason to stop doing this when you dive into a “serious” or long-term relationship,” says the master of family psychology John Gottman in the new book “8 Important Dates”.
The game is pleasant, fun, frivolous. And … it is for this reason that we often push it to the end of the list of more important household chores — boring, monotonous, but mandatory. It is not surprising that over time, the family begins to be perceived by us as a routine, as a heavy burden that we have to bear on our shoulders.
Sharing Fun and Games Creates Trust, Intimacy and Deep Connection
To change this attitude, pleasures that are interesting to both, whether it is a game of tennis or lectures on the history of cinema, must be thought out and planned in advance. According to the Marriage and Family Research Center, the correlation between a couple’s pleasure and happiness is high and revealing. The more you invest in pleasure, friendship, and caring for your partner, the happier your relationship becomes over time.
Having fun and playing together (two, no phone, no kids!) builds trust, intimacy, and a deep connection. Whether you’re paragliding, hiking, or playing a board game, you share a common goal, collaborate, and have fun, which strengthens your bond.
Search for compromise
The need for adventure is universal, but we seek novelty in many ways. And you can not say that one is worse or better than the other. Some people are more tolerant of danger, needing more extreme or even dangerous adventures to get the same levels of dopamine that others get from less extreme.
If you and your partner have different ideas about what counts as fun and adventure, that’s okay. Explore areas where you are similar, find out where you differ, and look for common ground.
Anything can be an adventure, as long as it pushes a person out of their comfort zone.
For some couples, it’s an adventure to take a cooking class if they’ve never cooked in their lives. Or take up painting, if the only thing they have painted in their entire lives is “stick, stick, cucumber.” An adventure doesn’t have to be on a distant mountaintop or be life-threatening. Seeking adventure means, in essence, striving for the new and the unusual.
Anything can be an adventure, as long as it pushes a person out of his comfort zone, filling him with dopamine delight.
For pleasure
From the list of games and entertainment for two, compiled by John Gottman, we have selected 30. Mark the top three among them or come up with your own. Let them be the starting point for your many years of joint adventures. So you can:
- Go on a hike or a long walk together to a place where both would like to visit.
- Play a board or card game together.
- Choose and test a new video game together.
- Prepare a dish together according to a new recipe; you can invite your friends to taste it.
- Play balls.
- Start learning a new language together (at least a couple of expressions).
- To portray a foreign accent in speech, doing … yes, anything!
- Go biking and rent a tandem.
- Learn a new sport together (e.g. rock climbing) or go on a boat trip/kayaking trip.
- Go to improvisation, acting, singing or tango courses together.
- Read together a collection of poems by a new poet for you.
- Attend a live music concert.
- Buy tickets to your favorite sporting events and cheer for the participants together.
•Book a spa treatment and enjoy a hot tub or sauna together
- Play different instruments together.
- Play spy in the mall or on a walk around the city.
- Go on a tour and tasting wine, beer, chocolate or ice cream.
- Tell each other stories about the most embarrassing or funny episodes of your life.
- Jump on a trampoline.
- Go to a panda park or other theme park.
- Play together in the water: swim, water ski, surf, yacht.
- Plan an unusual date: meet somewhere, pretend that you see each other for the first time. Flirt and try to seduce each other.
- Draw together — in watercolor, pencils or oils.
- Go to a master class in some handicrafts related to sewing, making crafts, woodworking or on a potter’s wheel.
- Throw an impromptu party and invite everyone who can come to it.
- Learn couples massage.
- Write each other a love letter with your left hand (if one of you is left-handed, then with your right hand).
- Go to cooking classes.
- Jump from the bungee.
- Do something you’ve always wanted to do but were afraid to try.
Read more in John Gottman’s 8 Important Dates. How to create relationships for life” (Audrey, Eksmo, 2019).
About the Expert: John Gottman is a family therapist, director of the Relationship Research Institute (RRI), and author of several best-selling books on couple relationships.