Create a Messaging Channel With Your Partner Where You Can’t Talk About Household Chores or Your Kids
In a long-term, shared relationship, there sometimes comes a point where your first reaction to receiving a message or email from a partner goes from sweet dizziness to WHAT NOW. Your online messaging channels become a live list of schedule confirmations and daily task reminders – essential but highly unromantic.
When you add children, these lines of communication become even more utilitarian. “Don’t forget to bring Leo a sweater today.” – Did you receive the Willow vaccination report? “Hey, what’s that purple in Riley’s navel?”
I have nothing against casual relationships – I believe that being able to play Words with Friends with your partner while sitting in the toilet on opposite sides of the house is a sign of a solid foundation. But when your communication boils down to all things and not to the person you love and to whom you dedicated yourself, that’s when the flags start to go up.
I really liked this idea from the psychotherapist and sexologist Esther Perel, who emphasizes that eroticism requires “active participation and willful intention.” In a recent episode of the Dear Sugar podcast, she mentions that she often gives couples the task of creating a separate email address or messaging channel where they are not allowed to discuss household chores. The channel should be a space “where they can only talk to each other as partners, like lovers, and where they really talk to each other from this place, which is exactly what people do when they look after each other,” says Perel … Can they fill the space with internal jokes, funny links, selfies, sexy stuff, or anything else that says I like you rather than what your arrival time is?
As Perel explains on his blog , this feeling of arousal comes for a reason. Instead, she said, “it requires you to differentiate between pragmatism and pleasure and create a space in which a sense of intrigue and curiosity can arise.” Couples should “develop rituals to prevent neglect,” she adds. In addition to creating a separate messaging channel (if you usually text each other all day, maybe you can use WhatsApp or Google Hangouts for “funny” things), you can also make it a habit to kiss your partner when you get home, or put all devices away every night at 21:00.
These types of rituals, Perel writes, help you “transition from your roles as parents / business partners / friends to your roles as lovers.” And when you train your brain to shift gears, you can rediscover what has been lacking since life began.