409 - Can a Ritual Save Your Relationship?
Rituals combat anxiety
Humans thrive on stability and predictability, but when our relationships fall into repetition and complacency, it can be unhealthy for us. We simultaneously love both stability and novelty, and in our relationships and our lives, we want to feel safe.
Rituals are one of the ways we can enhance and benefit our relationships, as they tend to reduce anxiety and increase overall quality of our lives and our connections. Many performers, actors, and athletes have shared over the years the different rituals they take part in before big events, and quite a bit of research also supports that rituals help reduce anxiety. They also help us feel closer to others, can combat uncertainty, and help us cope with loss.
Regarding rituals:
They can be as common as having a set day/night for dates, eating dinner together, or celebrating important dates together.
They do not have to include major, life-affecting changes.
Some examples according to the Gottman Institute are:
Eat meals together without screens. Even though it may not be possible every day, incorporate meals without phones or the TV into your routine.
Have a 30-minute check-in every day. Take turns actively listening and having conversation about the day.
Exercise together. Schedule weekly or routine walks, hikes, etc. Encourage each other to take care of themselves. Try new classes or activities.
Share a daily 6-second kiss. Hand-holding, cuddling, and other physical intimacy can help increase oxytocin production and deepen feelings of connection.
Regular dating. Go on frequent dates, tell each other jokes, watch funny movies, and make a point to share experiences with each other.
If you need to, some ways to make a ritual more meaningful are:
First, just think of it as a ritual or tradition. The mental shift makes a difference.
Have set movements or words involved.
Give it some kind of symbolic meaning.
Feel free to change things over time to suit you; don’t force yourselves into a ritual that doesn’t feel right for you.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about relationship rituals. There's this interesting balance that happens in relationships. On the one hand, as humans, we love, novelty, and it can be unhealthy when our relationships fall into a rut, and just seeing the same day-after-day, but on the other hand, we crave stability and predictability in our lives, and our relationships can be scary and anxiety-producing.
Today, we're going to look at how rituals can be a benefit to your relationship, as a way to enjoy novelty, as well as stability in your relationships. We're also going to look at some of the research and ways that you can incorporate more rituals into your relationship, and even your solo life in the most beneficial way to your health and wellbeing.
Emily: Yay. Rituals, wow. I know that this is a thing that the two of you, that I've witnessed the two of you doing a lot.
Jase: Oh, really?
Emily: Yes, I think so. When I've been staying with you in Japan, I just see little seemingly ritualistic things that are really quite sweet, and lovely to witness-
Dedeker: Oh. Like what?
Emily: -even though I try not to scare or whatever. Yes, I don't know. You do check in with each other a lot. The whole-- I know, I've heard of the six-second kiss thing, or even the embrace thing that the two of you do. Yes, that's really sweet. Things like that. They're nice.
Dedeker: Oh, that's nice.
Emily: I'm not always sure if they're rituals, but some of them seem a little bit more thoughtful, and like you're really choosing to do them for one another.
Dedeker: That's nice to hear. I feel like we've been ritualistically poking at each other, while you've been here.
Emily: Well, you do that as well, but that's par for the course. That's all right.
Jase: Yes. I also wanted to say, by the way, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there. It's a good time to be thinking about some rituals and things. Because when it comes down to it, Valentine's Day, in a way, is also a ritual. It's this thing that a lot of people do every year. For some people, it's this annoying holiday that they hate, but for others, it's like, "Hey, you know what? This is an excuse to have a day that we do a ritual. We can do the same thing every year. Maybe if we watch--,"
Emily: Yes. Do you two have something?
Jase: We don't really have a Valentine's ritual that I know.
Dedeker: We try to do something with all of my partners, historically. You should try to do something to honor such a day. I know that. I know some people don't put-
Emily: On the same Valentines.
Dedeker: -any stock in Valentine's Day, and that's totally fine, but I like to, I always think it's fun to just do a little something. Why not?
Jase: Yes. It's funny, actually, that you mentioned the thing about Dedeker and I having rituals, because, of course, while I was researching this episode, was thinking a lot about like, "What do we do? What things do we have? Oh, yes, we've got some things." I was also thinking about how my brother has mentioned to us a few times now about some random things that we've shared with him. He's like, "You guys come up with a lot of games."
Dedeker: Oh, you're right. You're right, I forgot him saying that.
Jase: Yes. They're just random things. We started reading the Sunday comics to each other.
Emily: Oh, that's cute.
Jase: We would read them, so you don't get to look at it. The other person just has to paint a word picture, try to describe to you the comic, and they're often terrible. I don't know if you've looked at the Sunday comics in a while, but they're really terrible.
Emily: Oh, really?
Dedeker: Oh, they're awful.
Emily: Written poorly or illustrated poorly?
Dedeker: Written poorly, not funny. It's just bad writing.
Jase: Not funny.
Emily: Real bad?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: That's a good thing to do then, wow.
Jase: We made a thing, but it was a little bit like a ritual. It's like, "Okay, yes, on Sunday, we would get the Sunday paper so that we could do this, and we'd have our coffee or tea or whatever, and it was this, like, we're going to stay in our pajamas until after we've done this." We would often have bagels with lox or whatever along with it. We did make it a ritual without really setting out to do that, but it has been something that's really nice. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to do it in a little while, but we can pick that up when we go back home.
Emily: Yes. That's lovely. Wow. So many different rituals too. I know, for myself, when I'm thinking about what a ritual is, sometimes rituals are just simply like doing a thing in the morning that gets your day going. I always, basically, every single morning take a walk, and that's the very first thing that I do when I get up.
Jase: Yes, that's a great example.
Emily: Yes. Sometimes that includes listening to a podcast or music, or just at times I've done it without listening to anything, and those are sometimes the best times when you're alone with your thoughts, and seeing the beauty of the Los Angeles streets.
Dedeker: Stunning beauty.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Which, yes, really, just stunning really. Yes, that can be a really nice ritual for oneself. I know relationship rituals are great, but also, it's good to do things for yourself as well.
Dedeker: I think, often, if you're just to talk to a rando on the stunningly beautiful Los Angeles streets about what they think of when they think of relationship rituals, I think socially, we're more likely to think of something like a wedding ceremony, an anniversary, maybe something like Valentine's Day, I don't know, or like a engagement ritual of some kind, right? I think we tend to think of these more formal rituals.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. What was fun about looking into this episode is that, there's actually a lot of research on rituals. I was looking for some stuff originally about marriage, and looking at, well, if you're someone who's not going to get married, or you don't want to feel like, "My relationship is only real, if other people are validating it through this public ceremony," is there something else that could replace that? Is there still a benefit to that ritual, or is there not?
In looking into it, there's actually not a ton of research about that, but I did find a lot of research on either personal rituals, or community rituals, or rituals within relationships, like the ones we've been talking about. Things like ways to combat uncertainty and anxiety. Things that certain communities will do when they're about to do something dangerous, and I found that people in more dangerous jobs, like deep-sea fishing, or stuff like that, tend to be more superstitious, and have more rituals around that.
One of the psychological explanations for that is, not that these people are more prone to superstition necessarily, but that rituals actually help us fight anxiety. You're going to be attracted to more of those, if you're in a situation that warrants more calming from fear and anxiety and uncertainty.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Yes. I guess the first thing that comes to mind for me is, all the centuries and centuries of history from around the world of different birth rituals.
Emily: Yes, that's a great one.
Dedeker: Birth rituals, like when someone is pregnant, during the pregnancy, as well as heading into childbirth, everything from something that's more religious or more spiritual, or even to the simple of like, "Oh, yes, if you put a knife under the bed, that helps with the pain." All kinds or what rituals we need to incorporate the minute the baby comes out.
We learned about from reading the Bible, like salt the baby, which is so weird. All kinds of these weird things, again, in this very high-risky, dangerous, especially, before we had modern medicine. That was the first thing that I thought of.
Jase: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. That we've developed these things over time as a way to cope with it.
Dedeker: Of course, in this day and age, when we're thinking about heading into a situation that's uncertain, or that's anxiety-producing, it's not always life and death situations like deep-sea fishing, or having a baby, or something like that, but I think we can think of so many performers or athletes that talk about the rituals that they undertake before performing, or getting on the court, or whatever.
I know Beyoncé has talked about doing a group prayer with her team before going on stage. The tennis player, Rafael Nadal, is known for having 19 different rituals that he does-
Emily: That's a lot.
Dedeker: -before and during his matches. I know all of us have experience doing live theater, and I think it's a really common thing to do some kind of rituals with the other actors in your show, like certain chants or warmups that you do, or movements that you do together to get yourself pumped up. It's not just the life and death anxiety situations, where we turn toward ritual to try to help with that.
Jase: Yes. The thing I thought was cool about this research too is that, it's been done in so many different countries, and all sorts of different cultures from all parts of the world. This is not even something-- So many times we have to give this caveat of, "Well, but this has only really been studied in people in western societies that are mostly White and college students." No, this has been done so many times in so many parts of the world, which is very cool.
The study that I did want to share with you today, I just loved the setup of this study. This is a 2016 study by Alison Wood Brooks and Colleagues called Don't stop believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety. For this study, they wanted to look at the effect of rituals on reducing anxiety.
What they did is, they had participants come into a room, and they were told once they were there, "Okay, the thing you're going to do is you're going to sing Don't Stop Believin' by Journey in front of a stranger, and you're going to be scored on how accurate you are, and you could potentially earn up to an extra $5 for this study, if you're more accurate."
Emily: That would freak everyone out. I think of almost everyone, unless you just are so game to sing at any point.
Dedeker: Oh, I just closed the Journey Musical on Broadway. Perfect timing.
Emily: I know. Even I, and that's a hard freaking song and I would probably be like, "Ah, do I have to sing that song?" Okay.
Jase: Yes. The people came in and they told them, "That's what you're going to be doing." Then, they divided them into two groups. They were randomly assigned to two groups. One was the control group, and in the control group they were told, "This is what you're going to do. Just wait a second, and then we'll have you go in," and they have them wait for a minute.
Then, they would bring them into the room, and they would do the performance. The performance was actually like with a Wii, and they would hand them a Wii microphone with a karaoke game in it. That's what did the scoring of how "accurate" they were, was what the Wii game thought that they were.
Dedeker: It's like all the researchers looked to each other like, "Wait, I don't know how to score accuracy of somebody"
Emily: Yes, no. We had like a Beatles game that came with a microphone and the drum set, and all of that, and it did the same thing. It was scoring accuracy based on how close in pitch, I guess you were.
Jase: Yes. This was a little karaoke game, so they weren't also playing guitars and drums, but just singing into the mic. Then, afterward, they had them fill out a survey evaluating how anxious they were, how nervous were they going into it, how did they feel that they did? Then, also, getting their score of how well did you actually do in accuracy.
The control group did that. They just waited a minute and then went in and did it, and then filled out the survey. Then, the ritual group, they gave them written instructions of what they needed to do, and then they went in and sang. That took a minute for them to do it. They had that same gap of time of one minute between when they told them what they're going to do, and then when they went and did it.
The only difference was just sitting and waiting versus doing a ritual. The ritual was this, here's the instructions. Draw a picture of how you're feeling right now. "Sprinkle salt on your drawing, count up to five out loud, crinkle up your paper, throw your paper in the trash." That's this little ritual. They didn't even call it a ritual. The paper just gave them the instructions of what they need to do, and then they went in and did the thing.
What they found was that, the participants who did the ritual had less anxiety. Everyone was anxious about it, but the people who did the ritual, reported significantly less anxiety than the ones who just sat there and waited, and not only that, but they actually scored higher on the accuracy.
Emily: That's strange to me. Yes. Interesting.
Jase: Yes. Somehow, that also helped them to score better. Then, they did a second study, where it's basically the same thing, but in the second one, they also monitored their heart rate for the whole time. They saw everyone's heart rates shoot up when they were told that they were going to sing, Don't Stop Believin' in front of a stranger. Everyone's heart rates go up.
They found that the group that did the rituals, their heart rate decreased more, which isn't necessarily a measure of anxiety, but shows amount of arousal. The fact that that did normalize more physiologically than the people who just sat and waited. In this one, they also had a third group, where they were told to try to calm themselves down during that minute before they sang, but they found the group that tried to calm, and the group that waited, had no significant difference between each other-
Emily: Oh, interesting.
Jase: -but the group that did the ritual, did have that same significant difference and the better scores.
Dedeker: Wow. How interesting. It's all about the salt, right?
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Is that what they determined? That was the magic.
Emily: It feels like--
Jase: Science says that sprinkling salt on paper will make you a better singer. There's your headline for your clickbait article.
Dedeker: That's good.
Emily: It just feels like this silly thing that you're doing, maybe allowed you to go outside of yourself a little bit, and into doing something else. It puts you outside of your mind, and out of your body a bit, and has you doing something as opposed to just staying internalized and freaking out. I don't know.
Dedeker: Yes, so I wonder though, and maybe there's other studies that have tried to look into this, or maybe this is like the continuation of this particular study is it's-- The task they gave them was very ritually-seeming, right? We incorporate the salt, it involves an image of yourself, like you're crinkling it up and you're putting it in the trash, right?
Emily: Oh, I see.
Dedeker: There's a lot of symbolism around what you're doing with like your feelings of anxiety or whatever. I do wonder if, in another experiment, they gave that same group a task to do, but that didn't seem very symbolically ritualistic. If it was just--
Jase: If it was math problems.
Dedeker: . Yes, exactly. Do these math problems. Draw a picture of a dog in 30 seconds, and then go, if we would have the same result, or if it is about, it feels like I am symbolically doing something, and that helps me process and integrate the anxiety.
Jase: Yes, that's a good question, because so much of-- At least, rituals that have been around for a long time are also tied into some kind of religious belief, or some sort of cultural belief, and so we can have that meaning attached to it through those things. Yes, you're right. This is interesting, where it is very easy for you to then attach, "Oh, look, I'm taking that feeling and I'm salting it, and then throwing it away." "Oh, yes. Wow. That maybe there's something there or maybe not. That's a great question.
Dedeker: To extrapolate from this, maybe we're not performing in our relationships in the same way that we would be performing, Journey's songs for strangers, but our relationships are an area, where we can experience anxiety and uncertainty all the freaking time.
Emily: Yes, definitely.
Jase: I've actually been thinking about us before recording this podcast, that maybe developing some rituals that we could do might help.
Emily: We've tried doing that from time-to-time. You've been like, "Okay. Yes, let's do something fun real quick, to get us pumped up and excited for this." I think Dedeker and I are less excited to do that, but maybe we should try. We should have a couple weeks, where we create a ritual, and really try to do it for a while. I think that's a good idea.
Jase: There's been some other research as well that's talked about rituals being particularly helpful in relationship anxiety too. That is definitely something to experiment with and look into, whether that's for yourself or something with your partner.
Emily: Definitely. Now, rituals on the other side, and not as fun, but I think still extremely important. Rituals can really help us cope with things like loss. This can be loss of a loved one, or knowing that loss is coming. For example, if you have an ailing parent, or somebody with an illness or something along those lines, rituals can really help us in a variety of ways with that as well.
Most of the existing research out there is discussing rituals that happen before a death, especially, with elder care and cancer care, or about rituals to help people recover after a death. I think of the funerals that I've been to, and how ritualistic so many of them are, especially, across cultures, they can be very specific to the culture that is holding the funeral, so I think that's very specific as well.
Without going into all of the specific studies, the overall theme is that having a ritual, rather it's a private one, such as visiting a grave site every year, or a group one, such as going to a memorial service or a funeral, it correlates with more positive outcomes, in terms of wellbeing. It's really there to help you connect the loss to your memories, as well as your current life, and that can offer an acceptable way to express emotions.
I think it's important for us to express emotions around loss, and rituals can really help us do that, especially, if we get into situations like a funeral or a memorial service, or getting to go to a gravesite every year. Those are very acceptable ways, I think, to outwardly express loss and challenge and emotion in that way. Also, this is an interesting one that you pointed out, Jase, because there are some situations that may not be deemed as socially acceptable forms of grieving for loss, or expressing emotions around loss.
Some examples that show up in academic writings are grieving after things like an abortion or miscarriage, and both of those things, and society generally encourages people to keep quiet about that, and you may have thoughts on that, but I think a lot of people will want to not talk about it outwardly as much, but I think it can be important to have rituals around that because those are really intense emotions that potentially come up around things like miscarriage, or abortion even.
Also, something that you pointed out, Jase, was that men often aren't expected to grieve, and can be neglected during things like miscarriage, for example, most people might be going to the person who had the miscarriage, as opposed to a spouse, or the person involved, but who didn't actually have the miscarriage. Things like rituals can be really helpful there as well.
You might have things like ceremonies or symbols, something to carry, or to have with you, that can allow you to express those emotions, and to have something to hold on to that feels ritualistic as well.
Dedeker: Yes, and I think that this can be effective in so many more situations. I think, socially, we're like, "Okay, yes, funeral, death, like that makes sense to have some rituals around that to try to get some closure," but I'm also thinking, I know, sometimes a lot of the things that we've talked about on our podcast, involve reminding people like, for instance, a friendship breakup we covered a few weeks ago.
It's like, that is a loss, that is a loss to be grieved, and it's okay to find some ritual around that to help you to move past it, and help you to integrate it. Dealing with a breakup, I think we do understand socially, yes, people are going to be bummed out, but we don't necessarily encourage people to really lean into ritual, other than the ritual of like, go out and get drunk, and hook up with somebody, and help you that you feel better, or go complain to your friends about the person.
It could even be things like loss of a pet, or moving to a new city, like having to say goodbye to a city, moving for a job or things like that. I think there are so many things where we can invite in ritual to help with that, instead of just blazing through, as it were, which I do think our culture often encourages us to do.
Emily: To buck up.
Jase: Yes, just power through. It's funny when you mentioned that, it just reminded me of a ritual that you and I have done, Dedeker, which is, after we watch the Marie Kondo's show on Netflix, where she would always do that thing, when she would first come in where she'd say, "Okay, first, we're going to thank your house." She would do her-- She would kneel down and thank the house with the person whose house she's helping to clean up.
We started doing that when we would travel, usually, not so much when we were settling in, although sometimes we do that, but often when we're leaving, we would have this moment of walking through the place to do our mindfulness walk. Instead of an idiot check, we do mindfulness. You're looking around, just making sure I'm not forgetting anything, but also thanking the place.
It's just there's a little bit of ritual to it. Again, we never quite framed it that way, but there is, I guess, evidence to suggest that that might help that transition to feel a little less jarring. Because even though we love traveling, it is still stressful. Changing your whole life situation is stressful. I really liked the idea of incorporating that type of just, I guess, like appreciative rituals, or grieving rituals into more things like those, losing a job, or a breakup, or any number of things to say, "Yes, let's have these rituals for ourselves, or for our friends, or for our partners when they're going through those situations," because there actually is a lot of evidence to suggest that that's helpful.
Something worth pointing out with a lot of this research is that, a recurring theme was also that, while a lot of cultures have these rituals that are tied to religion, the studies, all the ones that I found, show that whether it's religious or not, has no bearing on how effective it is, so that aspect of belief does not seem to be a significant part of helping people to feel better, and to process things. It's just the ritual itself actually.
We're going to go on to talk about rituals that we can do to help us feel closer to our partners, as well as some suggestions about some rituals that you could try in your own lives, but before we do that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show. If you appreciate getting this information for free in your podcast listening machines every week, we love doing this show, and we love being able to put this out there to everyone for free.
The way that we do that is by having some ads on our show, and by having our Patreon, so please take a moment to check those out. If any of it seems interesting, give it a go. It does directly support our show, so thank you so much.
Dedeker: Something we need to talk about here is, also the fact that there's an element to ritual, where I think there's like another layer that gets added in when we're doing a ritual with other people. There's definitely value to doing solo rituals, but there's evidence that doing things together with other people helps us feel closer and more connected to them. We see this, like I mentioned earlier in pre-show rituals of actors, or even if you look at crowd chants at sports game, or other team-building exercises, there is something to that.
Emily: Can I share? I was in a show I a couple of months ago, and right before, we were about to go out for places, we would all hold each other's hands in a big circle, and we would look at the person next to us, and like go around in the circle, and say, "I will hold you up during the show," essentially, it was very sweet.
Dedeker: Oh.
Emily: It just to say like, "If you fuck up on stage, I'll hold you up. Okay, like, "Don't fuck up at all, I'll be there if you do," but in a nicer way, it was very sweet actually. It definitely got me choked up every time, so it was cool.
Dedeker: Oh, I like that.
Jase: I love that it has built into it, that the kind of the meaning that it has, that it's not just for doing a thing, but also we're giving it meaning, because I'm literally just saying what the meaning of the thing, so that's cool, that's really neat.
Emily: Yes, that was lovely.
Jase: When it comes to romantic relationships, there's also been quite a bit of research on rituals that couples do within relationships, like the ones we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, and showing that those do correlate with higher relationship satisfaction, and overall happiness. The one that we're going to look at today comes from a 2019 study by Garcia, Radha, Cesar and Norton, who published a paper of four different studies, we're just going to be talking about three of them, but they published this from the Harvard Business School, looking at relationship rituals specifically.
Study number one, is just about the positive effects of relationship rituals. As I said, there are many, many other studies showing very similar things, but just to give you a sense of how this might work. In the first study, this was just a survey that people filled out online, they gave a definition of a ritual, and this is their definition, they said, "It is an activity that you make sure to do together, every so often, is repeated over time, and is something that you do, because it has symbolic meaning for you." That was their definition they gave, and this was in the context of your romantic relationships.
Then, in the survey, they asked people, do you have something like this in your relationship based on this definition? Then, they went on to fill out questions about how highly they identify with 20 different emotions from the Geneva Emotion Wheel, as well as some questions about relationship satisfaction. In this, one thing they found was that, the most common type of ritual was a date or a leisure activity, so 63% of the people that said they did have a ritual, it was some kind of a date, like we watch a movie once a month, or every week, or we go out on a date on a somewhat regular basis.
The next most common was some kind of affection or intimate ritual. That was 13% of the respondents, which is something like we snuggle before bed every night, or we do-- One was we do three kisses every time we're saying goodbye. They always come in threes.
Emily: That's good.
Jase: The six-second kiss that Emily mentioned before, it could be another version of that. That's the breakdown and then the others were things that were more around like household chores or other sorts of things, but those were the two big ones were mostly leisure or dates, and then some kind of intimacy or affection. Then, the two things that they found from this, one, is that of those 20 different emotions on the emotion wheel, that having a ritual correlated with people scoring higher on all of the positive emotions from that emotion wheel, but interestingly, it did not make the negative emotions score any lower, it seemed to not really affect those.
It's like they still experience just as much negative emotion as the people who didn't have the rituals, but specifically more of the positive emotions. That was interesting, as well as just greater relationship satisfaction in general.
Emily: The second study was about agreeing on rituals. It was similar to the first study, except that they surveyed both people in a relationship in various couples. They were able to see whether both people agreed on having a ritual or not, and they found that the positive effects for both people was higher, if they both agreed that they had a ritual compared to not having one, or disagreeing about having one. I think that would be really interesting.
Somebody says, "Yes, we have a ritual every week," and somebody else is like, "No, we should be doing this more," or, "We don't do it on a regular basis enough," or something along those lines. I think that's a really good thing to ask your partner, and to get clear with them is, "Hey, I have heard because I listened to this great episode on the Multiamory Podcast, that having a ritual is really important, so let's figure out, A, if we have one already and to continue doing that, and B, if we can find even more things to do that are going to be ritualistic for us." There's some evidence out there from this that it's worthwhile to establish the ritual together, so that you both know what it is.
Dedeker: In study number three, they made this distinction between rituals versus routines. Again, similar format to the study, except that they asked participants to describe one ritual and one routine that was in their relationships, and this is how they defined these. Again, they define a relationship ritual as an activity that you make sure that you do together every so often.
It's repeated over time, and it's something that you do because it has symbolic meaning for you, versus a relationship routine is an activity that you do together every so often. It's repeated over time, but it's something that you do because it's a habit, or it's a task that needs to be completed. Now, I really appreciate them making this distinction because I think about this a lot with my clients.
Often, when I'm first working with, usually, couples in particular, I will often ask them about the rituals they have in their relationship. Rituals around sex, or around date time, or around recharge time or whatever. I don't want to make anyone feel bad, but so many people will sit there in silence, and then we'll be like, "Well, we tend to watch Netflix together," and now I'm not trashing anyone who sits and watches Netflix with their partner, consumed plenty of Netflix in all of my relationships. Still do to this day, but I do think that falls into routine.
For a lot of people, it's our special Netflix night. For a lot of people, this is a habit. I totally get it. I think we all need couch Netflix time together. I think that's a very valuable time to have in the relationship, but I do think it's a little bit different from a ritual, and can be even in subtle ways, because I think it's even slightly different from, "Oh, Wednesday night is our movie night, or Wednesday night is our documentary night," even that's a little bit different from just, "Oh, yes. We tend to come home from work and then watch Netflix."
Emily: Something that you and I have talked about recently, Dedeker, is consumption versus putting something of meaning out into the world. I'm not saying that every ritual needs to do that, or to be a project like Carrie Jenkins talked about on our episode recently with them, but I think having a ritual in a way with a partner that also produces something, and is giving back in a way, can be really beneficial. I think having both, something just with the two of you, but also--
Dedeker: Like a creative or a generative ritual, possibly.
Emily: Sure. Yes, I love that idea. For example, my mom and I, usually, every single year when I was in college and in high school, we would on Thanksgiving, make sure to go to a food bank and help out at a food bank every single year, and that was just a ritual that we did, and it was cool, and it was something that we both looked forward to every year.
Something like that. We have a ritual of doing this podcast. It is more than that now, but I think, I don't know, if there is some way that you can contribute and give back to, I think that that would be a really cool, meaningful ritual to have.
Dedeker: Well, it sounds like it's tying meaning to it.
Emily: Meaning in any way that matters to the two of you.
Dedeker: I don't know if reading the Sunday comics has given anything back to anybody.
Emily: That's fine. I'm not saying that it has to, but I like the idea of giving back in some way if you can. If you have the time and the means and the energy to do so, that is really a special potential to do with your partner as well.
Dedeker: Again, to bring it back to this particular study, so they found that the people who had rituals, reported rituals as opposed to routines, did report higher relationship satisfaction. They also reported feeling more invested, and being more committed to the relationship. Now, another piece of this is that, these people also reported having fewer relationship alternatives, which is, this is a thing that shows up a lot in, I think, very mononormative relationship research.
Basically, saying that what supports commitment and monogamy is, people perceiving that they don't have any better options sometimes, which that's its own whole other questionable aspect of the way that we measure commitment in relation, or in research on relationships, but in contrast with routines, when people reported on routines, they found that they didn't necessarily find significant increases in any aspect, except for in the level of investment in the relationship.
When people had routines together, they still felt a level of investment, which makes sense if you're thinking about, "Yes, we have the routine of where we both go to pick up the kid after work," or we have the whole divide and conquer bath time routine, where I clean up from dinner, while you're getting the kid in the bath, or whatever, like that kind of thing where there's a task that we need to get done. I guess that makes sense. That would still generate that sense of investment in the relationship.
Jase: I'm thinking of, there have been times where, Dedeker, you and I have had a weekly cleaning day. It's like, "Okay, this is our day. We're going to divide up which rooms, and we're going to clean today, just so we get it all done in one day," but it never felt special symbolic meaning or ritual. It was like, "No, we just got to get this done."
Emily: I think that's probably where you--
Dedeker: Not with that attitude.
Jase: Maybe if we gave it ritual, it would be more fun and maybe more beneficial.
Emily: I like the idea of having things that are not necessarily just task-oriented, because that feels a little bit more routine to me, whereas a ritual is important in a different way. Maybe more fun, or maybe more, I don't know, romantic or something along those lines.
Jase: Now, how can we apply this in our lives? I think we've already teased some of that when we've come up just in real time on this episode of how we should start doing this, or that, or the other thing, but basically, how can we apply this? First takeaway from this is that, rituals show up in a lot of different ways, that they don't have to be something super formal. They don't have to be something that takes a long time.
They don't have to involve other people, but they also could involve other people. This could be something as common as having a set day for date nights. It could be just eating dinner together. If maybe that's a ritual of, whatever we've got going on, maybe we do separate stuff for lunch, but we're always going to have dinner together in our house, whoever's home, we have dinner together, or maybe it's always giving a kiss before someone leaves, or it's always sending a good night text or whatever it is.
Having something small or something that's bigger, for anniversaries or birthdays, things like that, that it can show up in all sorts of different ways. You can be creative, and find these all around in your life. That they don't always have to include major life changes. To have a ritual in your life, you don't need to get married, and then have commitment ceremonies every year.
You instead could find all sorts of little things like we're mentioning about, and often those little daily ones can be really valuable, and really powerful for having that feeling of connection, and also that feeling of stability, even if life might be changing a lot, or there might be a lot of unpredictability going on.
Dedeker: The Gottman Institute is very pro-ritual as well in relationship rituals. They have some great examples. Again, this is not an exhaustive list, but just something to get the ball rolling. Things like, we decide we're going to eat dinner together without screens, and so maybe that's not possible every single day, but maybe every Friday we're going to try to have a meal together without a screen or without the TV on in the background, or without my phone, on the table, things like that. Things like checking rituals, those are very pro-radar, right? Where even if it's like a monthly ritual to check in on your relationships, still a good ritual, or you could do some daily check-ins.
I know a ritual my sister introduced me to when she had just gotten married, and I think was really reading up on all of these like very pro-support your marriage kind of rituals was the, when my partner comes home from work, or when I come home from work, we actually do prioritize putting on pause whatever it is we're doing, and literally sitting with each other for 10 minutes, talk about their day, or at the very least, I'm going to make an effort to actually greet my partner when they come back.
I'm going to take an effort to actually say, "Goodbye" to my partner, when they leave hug them, kiss them, whatever it is. Speaking of kissing, we've talked about this six-second kiss as well, and I was totally skeptical the first time I heard it, but I swear by it now that, yes, if you are someone who enjoys kissing your partner, if that's a part of your relationship, make yourself actually kissed for six seconds.
Now, chances are, if you're still in the like the NRE makey-outey phase, this isn't hard, but maybe when you've been together for a much longer period of time, and you're less in that NRE makey-outey phase, you forget, and maybe your kisses are just like more pecks and stuff like that, but what the six-second does, is it actually gives your brain time to like register what's going on, to feel what's going on, and then to start producing like all those chemicals, right? All those like really good-feeling chemicals, the oxytocin production, and the dopamine, and it helps deepen those feelings of connection, so it's--
Emily: It's almost like in your head, both of you at the same time.
Dedeker: I didn't my head.
Emily: It is like start the timer now.
Dedeker: You feel it out. It doesn't have to be a precise science exactly.
Jase: In my experience, once you get past like second two or three, you're like, "Oh, okay, cool. Let's hang out here for a little bit, we'll go 10 seconds."
Emily: I got it?
Dedeker: Yes, but it is just like holding steady just for a little bit longer, to just like let your nervous system wake up around it, and to be like, "Oh, yes, right. I do. This is really enjoyable. This is really nice."
Jase: Yes, I love the way that the Gottman is described it, when we first read about this, they were like, "It doesn't have to be a super deep intense kiss, but if you had family members around, they should feel a little bit uncomfortable watching."
Emily: Got it.
Jase: I'm just like, "Okay."
Emily: I like that. I like that distinction.
Dedeker: Just a little bit.
Jase: Just a little bit uncomfortable.
Dedeker: Another one is having a regular date night. We covered this topic in depth. If you go to Multiamory Episode 247, Why your relationship needs a date night? That's where we dove into the research about that, and just a quick spoiler, good news being that, if you are a parent, you get the same benefits from just a monthly date night, as non-parents get from a weekly date night, so same effect on relationship satisfaction.
No excuses about not having time for a weekly date night. If you can make a monthly date night happen, even that is going to have really good positive effects on your relationship.
Emily: You might be thinking, "I maybe have a ritual, but I'm not exactly sure how ritually it is," and there are ways to make it more ritually. First, just think of that thing as a ritual or a tradition, and that mental shift will make a difference, and have some maybe set movements or words involved, throw some salt on a thing, I don't know.
Dedeker: Throw some salt at your partner's face.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Maybe it's putting on a certain clothing item, or like I mentioned with reading the newspaper, it's like we intentionally stay in our pajamas. That came up because I would usually get up and get dressed pretty early in the morning, and Dedeker was like, "You're always dressed. Now, I'm in my pajamas and you're dressed and we're like disconnected." You didn't say that, but that's how I received it. I was like, "Okay, cool." On that day, I will wait to get dressed until after we've read the comics too.
Emily: No, that's really nice. That's symbolic dress involved.
Dedeker: I like to think about that often also with date night in an established relationship. If you think about when you're getting ready for a date, when it's like a first date, or you're single, or you're dating around or whatever, how you go through a ritual, right? You're like, "I'm going to take a shower, I'm going to shave, I'm going to do my makeup. I'm going to do my hair. I'm going to pick up my clothes. I'm going to put on music that I like. I'm going to make sure that I smell okay, I'm going to--," like we do these things and usually, that takes time.
Usually, we allow ourselves at least a little bit of time to get ready, and even though that's not super formal, and maybe there's not any salt involved for you, that still creates this arc that you go through, and you can do the same thing even in established relationship, right? It's just like, give yourself time, that it's not quite the same as like, "Okay, date night. Great. Let's just like roll onto the couch and watch Netflix." You can recreate that same thing.
Emily: Yes, absolutely Honestly, your rituals may change over time like you will, and you may find eventually, like, "Hey, I don't like doing this as much as I used to. Let's change something else," because we often associate rituals with being something that doesn't change for a really long period of time, but, that Don't Stop Believing studies showed us that even a brand new ritual has really serious effects, and can help you and, can help your relationship in a variety of ways.
Don't force yourselves into a ritual that doesn't feel right for you. Just let it be fun, have a great time. It's Valentine's Day, like, find something new and exciting for you and your partner, something that inspires you to be creative and feel closer to each other.
Jase: Maybe it's even like, you come up with a secret handshake.
Dedeker: Love that.
Jase: Yes, any number of things. I think this is a really fun opportunity to get creative, and I'm really excited to see if people can share some cool relationship rituals that they have. On our Instagram Stories, we're going to post our question of the week, which is, do you have a relationship ritual? That's an activity that you repeatedly do with a partner that has symbolic meaning?