Episode 7: Play for Couples: Why it Matters & How to Create It

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Is play just for kids or is it also for adults? Why does it matter? What the heck does play have to do with couples?

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And if it does matter and if it's important for couples, how the heck do you bring play into your relationship?

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Let's explore all of that in this episode.

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Before we get to that, I wanna invite you to take the What's Your Play Personality quiz to discover your play type for your relationship so you can create a deeper connection and add fun back into your date nights.

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You can sign up at playdateforcouples.com/quiz. Now let's chat all about play.

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I love play so much. I was a teacher in my pre-business life and I was involved in educational leadership after teaching for many years.

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I taught kids in early learning and elementary school as we call it here in Canada. Our focus in early learning was learning through play.

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I started out with a teacher directed approach using themes and centers and then later shifted into a child led emergent curriculum approach where the children's interests guided the planning.

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But either way, the focus was play.

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Play for kids is their whole vibe. It's their entire being and it's everything to them. Like everything to them is about play. Through play,

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they learn. They develop social skills, communication skills,

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grow in problem solving abilities, develop fine and gross motor skills, discover interests, learn concepts and more.

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Plus, they just have fun. As we grow into adulthood though, we can get so serious, right?

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Our responsibilities increase, our busyness increases and we can lose the play, fun and playfulness that we had earlier in life.

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And there can be obstacles that get in the way. For example, you might feel like you have no time for playing

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or for just having fun because of that busyness and because of all the responsibilities.

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That also shows another obstacle, which is that you may not think that play is important.

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You might not even think about play because in society we tend to think that play is just for kids.

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You might not realize how you can bring play into your relationship. Like what would that even look like to do that?

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You may think, "This is stupid" when it comes to play because you have so many more important things to do

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or because it feels silly to you. If you do play and take time to just have fun when there's so much other stuff to do, you may feel guilty for not doing all those other more important things.

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Or you might feel embarrassed for enjoying play because it's often perceived as childish in society.

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But, as I shared in episode four, so check that out if you haven't, but as I shared there, many couples are bored.

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One way that you're bored is that you're bored with each other. When your relationship was new, everything felt fun, fresh and exciting.

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You had lots to learn about each other. Now that you've been together for many years

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and life kind of took over with all its busyness, you're feeling a little bored with each other. You feel like you know each other well already.

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The routines of life have settled in. To take that a little further, you're bored with your conversations.

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You feel like you don't have a lot to talk about anymore and the topics of your conversations are usually the daily logistics types of things

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like who's picking up milk on the way home. You're also bored with life with the same-old, same-old. Routine has settled in with date nights if they happen at all.

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It has also settled in with intimacy and with life in general. You kind of roll your eyes when you think about having a date night.

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You're exhausted and it feels so much easier to just veg on the couch in front of Netflix again. You're also bored because you're not connected through the little things each day.

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These little connection points can make a huge difference and add little sparks in ways that only take a few seconds or a few minutes,

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but if you're not doing them, you don't get those sparks to add a little fun and excitement into the boredom.

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You're bored with ideas for date nights because dinner out or activities that take time and money become the norm.

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You don't really have many other ideas for a date night, so you default to dinner. When they feel routine or boring,

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it can be easy to let them go when other things take priority in your busy life. But play in adulthood can counteract that boredom.

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It can bring fun and playfulness back into your life, your relationship and your date nights.

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Stuart Brown said, "We're designed to be lifelong players, built to benefit from play at any age.

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Lifelong play is central to our continued wellbeing, adaptation and social cohesiveness."

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So let's talk a little bit more about the benefits of play.

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Interestingly, play creates connection and I call it connection through play,

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just like learning through play with kids. It helps us get on the same page together as partners.

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It helps us feel closer and feel like we're actually each other's person. And it therefore improves relationship satisfaction

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and impacts how we view our relationship. There's tons of other benefits as well.

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So here's a long list and it's not even complete. It brings pleasure into our lives. It energizes us.

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It can reduce stress and take us out of that heaviness of all the responsibilities.

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It promotes social relationships and improves communication and even conflict resolution.

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It stimulates creativity. It lets us express ourselves freely.

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It creates special, memorable moments. In fact,

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couples have reported in some studies that the things they remember the most about their relationship, the things that stand out to them,

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are those playful moments.

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It also makes you feel more fulfilled and happier. It's simply just fun.

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It brings newness into the routine and the boredom and that novelty, that newness, is really key.

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It can boost productivity. We can continue to learn new things through play in adulthood depending on the kind of play that we engage in.

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For example, art, reading, right? Books contain all kinds of things that we can learn.

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It keeps us youthful. And it can even promote good health and prevent certain health decline.

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George Bernard Shaw said, "We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."

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I think it's clear that play is not just for kids. It's for adults too. And I think it's clear that play is important.

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Just as important as all the responsibilities that we prioritize.

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So, how the heck do we add play in when we are so busy already and when there's so much going on that we need to take care of every day?

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Let's start with what play and playfulness even are because I think this is gonna make a big difference to shift your thinking about it.

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So play is usually described as an activity that's purposeless and done for its own sake.

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And I actually disagree with the purposelessness thing because to me, there is a purpose.

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The purpose is simply fun, connection and enjoyment and that's legitimate.

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Play is also described as an activity that focuses on the process of the activity rather than some end goal of doing it

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and as an activity that's enjoyable or fun and potentially not serious.

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Also, it's described as an activity that is intrinsically motivated or chosen voluntarily, as an activity where you lose your sense of time and you're just present in the moment,

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as an activity that requires a suspension of self-consciousness - so just letting your guard down. And as some people say, an activity that's highly interactive.

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And what I say there is that it's highly engaging, not necessarily interactive, but it's engaging for you.

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But the key factor in all of that is really enjoyment and fun. So that's what the key factor is for play.

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Playfulness has been defined as a tendency to engage in play. So in other words, to engage in activities for enjoyment and fun and likely becoming engrossed in the activity in the moment.

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And it's also defined as a tendency or predisposition to view situations in a way that provides enjoyment and fun.

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And I like that last part because to me, playfulness is an attitude

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or a lens that you choose to view life through and it can be infused into everything you do, into anything you do. And it can be the foundation of everything

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just like in childhood. I love this quote: "See the world through the eyes of your inner child,

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the eyes that sparkle in awe and amazement as they see love, magic and mystery in the most ordinary things."

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That's from someone named Hannah Soheil and I may not be pronouncing that correctly. So how can we bring more play and more playfulness into our relationships?

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The first way is that it's important to reframe the typical obstacles that I spoke about before.

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So play does not need to take a ton of time. You can bring in little moments that only take a few seconds or a few minutes.

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An attitude of playfulness can be brought into anything, anytime. As we've seen, play is in fact important for so many reasons.

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It has so many benefits. And as we've seen, it's not just for kids.

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If it feels silly, you may simply need to discover what feels good to you based on your play type and I'll talk more about that later.

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If you feel guilty, it may help to reframe how you look at play and view it as something productive in itself because it can result in so many beneficial things

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including, interestingly, boosting your productivity for other activities.

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Mostly because it boosts your energy and your emotions, right, and your outlook.

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If you feel embarrassed because of societal perceptions, try using different words to describe play, right? Like you could call it leisure recreation, a hobby, creative pursuits

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and also think about the fact that there's a difference between childish and childlike.

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Childish is kind of a negative thing, right? Immature. Childlike is just capturing that wonder and curiosity, fun and playfulness of a child.

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And lastly, expand your ideas in terms of how you can bring play into your relationship. So let's take a look at that in a little bit more depth now.

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So that leads into the second way that you can bring play into your relationship and that's to create playful moments of connection or emotional intimacy.

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For example, create a six second hug or kiss moment every morning. Leave fun notes for your partner from time to time.

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Send your partner a flirty text in the middle of the day, right? Super simple and super quick.

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The next way is to infuse play and playfulness into your date nights. For example, play any kind of game together.

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Make a fort in your living room and read together inside the fort. Solve a cold case file together and I'm actually gonna be sharing about my experience with that with my partner in an upcoming episode.

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The fourth way to bring play and playfulness into your relationship is to bring it into your physical intimacy.

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For example, take a sensual bath together, have a night of exploration of different types of touch, paint each other's bodies with something.

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So for example, chocolate if you want to eat it off, or really anything if you want to take a shower together afterward.

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The fifth way is to come and join the Couples Playhouse, where we talk all about play types and bring playfulness into connection moments and date nights.

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So you can join the community at playdatesforcouples.com/playhouse and the link will be in the show notes as well.

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And in that community are lots of resources as well as the community discussion space itself.

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I'd also love to invite you to get started by taking the What's Your Play Personality quiz to discover your play type for play dates or date nights

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because knowing your play type can help you add that spark back into your relationship and give you ideas that feel fun to you.

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You can do that at playdateforcouples.com/quiz and that link will also be in the show notes.

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And I'm gonna be sharing more about play types in the next episode, so watch for that.

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And follow the show so you don't miss any upcoming episodes to help you create an awesome relationship with your partner.

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Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next one.