Feb. 20, 2022: I found this in my old physical news articles:
Feb. 1, 2019 "Relationship FUNdamentals": Today I found this article by Tamar Satov in the Edmonton Journal:
Trivial Pursuit, Star Wars edition, will always have a place in my heart.
The game was the first Father’s Day gift I bought for my husband when our son was just a few months old. It may be an understatement to say that I married a huge Star Wars fan, so when several weeks went by and we still hadn’t taken it out of the box, he was getting antsy.
“Are we ever going to play my new game?” he would wonder aloud. He had a point — we hadn’t been spending much quality time together; sleep deprivation and our new responsibilities seemed to crowd out everything else.
So we sat down then and there on the living room floor and set up the board, beers in hand, asking each other questions about the minutiae of Star Wars lore, laughing in a way that we hadn’t since becoming parents.
This kind of lighthearted connection is crucial to any couple’s relationship, but it can easily fall by the wayside when kids enter the picture, says Ashley Howe, a couples and family therapist.
“For parents, it often becomes all about function — about keeping the kids alive and healthy,” she says. Busy lives crammed with work, school, playdates and chores can lead to monotonous routines with little room for parent-only fun. Or worse, it can leave you feeling disconnected from your partner.
If you’re looking for a way to rediscover the fun this Valentine’s Day — and all year long — we’ve got a few suggestions to take you beyond the run-of-the-mill date night.
1 See them in a new light
Parents who spend most of their together time at home can easily fall into the trap of envisioning their partner as that guy/girl in the track pants and stained T-shirt. “It helps to be reminded how your partner is seen out in the external world,” says Howe.
If you have the opportunity, sit in on a presentation your partner is giving, or listen in on a sales call, she suggests.
“Look at them through a different lens — watch the way they walk into the room, how they interact with others.” Some couples take this playful attitude a step farther; Anna Toth, a registered marriage and family therapist, recalls a couple who, as frequent business travellers, decided to meet up in a city and pretend they were strangers having an affair.
2 Learn something new together
Boredom can kill relationships, says Howe. To keep things interesting, try picking up a new skill with your sweetie by taking a wine-tasting course, learning a different language or anything new to both of you.
For Debra Scott and her husband, Brad, Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes fit the bill. They get a sitter once a week so they can go to a class together, but they also trade off one additional night a week where they each go solo. “It has lightened our moods a lot, in general,” says Scott. “You connect more with your partner when you’re not so caught up in the day-to-day.”
The slight unease of being pushed outside your regular routine is sure to bring you closer, says Howe.
“Learning something new uses the same part of the brain that kickstarts arousal,” she says. “It does so much for recharging relationships.”
3 Laugh down memory lane
It’s great to tell each other fun stories about your relationship, says Toth. You can recall your first date, your wedding or, as Jenn Wright, mom to Liam, four, and Caitlyn, two, suggests, that crazy anecdote that always makes you bust a gut. “We often reminisce about something funny that happened to us in our early days of dating or marriage — something that really makes us laugh out loud,” she says.
Like the one Valentine’s Day she and her husband, Steve, went for a long drive after dinner and ended up going through what they called “X-Files fog” in a town they’d never heard of. Good times.
If you’re stuck in the present, put on some of the old tunes from when you first met, says Sherry Theriault, a mom of two kids (15 months and three years). “It brings back so many memories that you can’t help but laugh.”
4 Take a cue from your kids
Challenge your honey to a game of cards, Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit to lighten the mood. Play video games like Rock Band, if that’s what turns your crank.
And if you don’t know what fun activities your partner might enjoy, don’t be afraid to put the question out there.
“When we’ve been together for a while, we often think we know everything about our partner,” says Toth. But you may have no idea that your spouse was once a hula hoop fanatic or a Donkey Kong master. Ask ’em what fun things they used to do,” advises Toth.
“We play like kids whenever we get the chance,” says mom Carla Ala-Kantti. “Water-gun fights, playground equipment, bikes, skateboards — nothing is off-limits.” If you’re more of a dancing fool, follow Jason Graham’s lead and try a few impromptu moves with your partner, as he does with his wife, Stephanie White.
“A good song pops onto the radio and we almost absent-mindedly start moving closer together and getting down. Usually one of us has a spatula or a rake in our hands — doesn’t matter, we just can’t stop the boogie.”
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"Making it work": Today I found this article by Kristina Virro in the Edmonton Journal:
There’s a misconception that going to couples counselling means your relationship is in a really, really bad place.
It was Mark and Lindsay’s* first time in couples counselling, and I could tell. They were overly eager to engage in small talk for as long as possible, but their voices trembled ever so slightly as they talked about the weather.
“First time?” I asked. They nodded, sullenly.
Mark and Lindsay were in their late 20s and had been married for about a year, which had been a surprisingly stressful experience for Lindsay.
“I always blamed my anxiety on something else,” she said. “But then I realized it might be coming from our very relationship.” The small talk ended there.
Mark was desperate to keep his marriage together, but he also seemed to know it might be unsalvageable — which is something I see a lot in my practice. In these cases, one partner has been asking the other to come to counselling for months, or even years, but until the relationship is really endangered, they don’t think counselling is necessary.
When I started working with couples two years ago, I quickly learned that relationship issues don’t discriminate. Whether I was working with 20-year-olds or 70-year-olds, heterosexual or same-sex couples, the monogamous or polyamorous, similar issues kept showing up.
And with them came questions I repeatedly had for myself, too:
how do people who lovingly share wedding vows get to a place of such disdain, resentment or withdrawal?
And am I bound to repeat the same disintegrating patterns in my own romantic life?
It was through answering these very questions that I was able to uncover some crucial tips on how to maintain a healthy relationship. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Listen to what your partner says (like, actually listen): My first few sessions with Mark and Lindsay were filled with timid “I don’t knows” that made it hard to conduct the session.
Eventually, however, Lindsay made a difficult admission: “There were so many instances where I told you why I felt unhappy, Mark, yet you never seemed to hear me.”
After a moment of silence that was heavy with sadness, her husband replied, “I guess I just didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
I see this a lot: someone continually says something is bothering them while their partner thinks it’s “not a big deal.” When we feel like our needs are continually brushed aside, it becomes all too easy to feel like we’re in an unsupportive relationship where our partner just “doesn’t care.”
And so begins the journey down Resentment Road. And in fact, a month into therapy, Lindsay said she wanted a divorce.
When your partner tells you something, listen. Whether it’s some minor story about a topic you couldn’t care less about, or a significant concern about their career, do your best to give them your undivided attention — even if that means forcing yourself to listen.
That work email can wait and so can the laundry, because making your partner feel heard is a feeling that lasts.
Speak up: In my work with Anne and Mary*, a couple in their mid 30s, Anne expressed that she felt invisible and neglected when Mary failed to ask how her day was. “Doesn’t she want to know? Doesn’t she care?” she’d ask rhetorically.
This is when I utter one of the most commonly-used phrases in couples counselling: “I’d love if you could ask Mary that rather than asking me.”
Many of us are so afraid of conflict, or so stripped of quality time with our loved ones, that we forget to tell them what we need. I started practising this habit myself. I might tell my partner,
“I need to vent about something but I just need you to listen rather than give me advice, OK?”
Remember, it’s impossible for someone to be helpful when they have no idea what “helpful” means to you.
Be teammates, not adversaries: I have a sneaking suspicion that the culture of competitiveness that plagues our country’s workforce has seeped into our relationships.
Just as one might feel the need to prove themselves to a boss, couples seem fixated on who’s more tired, stressed or overwhelmed in their relationship. Instead of leaning on the person we’ve chosen to be our partner, we often use them as a yardstick for our own exhaustion.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, instead of competing about whose life is harder, we work with our partner to make things better together?
For me, I’ve consciously learned to listen empathetically when my partner says he’s tired, rather than allowing the defensive part of me to start arguing about why my day was worse.
I’ve realized that competitiveness encourages distance rather than closeness.
Go to therapy sooner than later: I so desperately wish people didn’t see couples counselling as a signal that their relationship is headed for the rocks, because that is simply not the case.
Couples counselling isn’t just about talking through what’s going wrong; it also offers a beautiful opportunity to check in with your partner in a safe space where you have each other’s undivided attention.
It gives you the chance to discuss what’s going right in the relationship, and celebrate the awesome parts of it, too.
My eagerness to debunk therapy’s bad rap is precisely why I gave my clients Courtney and Michael* the advice I did as we wrapped up our 10th and final session together.
A couple in their 30s, they had been working on improving their communication skills so they could avoid explosive anger during difficult conversations.
“Come back when you’ve caught a cold,” I said. Confused, they asked what I meant.
“Couples therapy is like going to the doctor,” I said. “It’s not very useful to go when you’ve been bed-ridden for days and are on the tail end of your sickness. You want to catch the bug early on.”
I added: “When you feel like your relationship may have caught a cold, that’s when I want to hear from you again.”
*All names have been changed
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