Play Together, Stay Together?
On the value of playfulness in romance
Winning life during a grocery trip
A while ago, I saw an interview (can’t find it again, sorry) with a couple that had been married for an insane amount of time — I want to say 65 years.
During the interview, the woman and man, both ancient and wrinkled, acted like teens with a crush. Finishing each other’s sentences, always touching, making inside jokes…
Inevitably, the interviewer asked them how they did it. Strange how these days a healthy long-term relationship seems unusual enough to require a magic ingredient. Only, there is a magic ingredient.
The woman looked at the interviewer from behind thick glasses, a slight smile playing around her lips. Translated from French (thanks, subtitles), she said: “Find someone who makes grocery shopping fun.”
The interviewer laughed. The woman scowled at him and shook her head. “I’m serious. That’s it; that’s the secret.” Her husband simply chuckled in his agreement.
Not that I would know, but I think she has a great point. Most of our lives are mundane. The luxury travels, the peak experiences; those are intermittent flashes that punctuate the normal days and weeks and months. If you find someone who makes those long stretches of normality not only bearable, but fun and fulfilling, congrats, you’ve just won life.
Understanding playfulness with OLIW
Like all great magicians, the lady in the interview keeps the crux of her magic a secret. Fun is pretty vague, after all, and playfulness can mean many things.
Let’s add some science to the magic.
We’ve known for a while that playfulness correlates with relationship satisfaction1, but that doesn’t really tell us much. What do we consider playful in this context? Are some elements of playfulness more/less important in a romantic setting?
Allow me to introduce you to the OLIW model, which is a way to distinguish different elements of adult playfulness. OLIW is the acronym for four basic play components:
Other-directed: use play to ease tense situations and cheer people up.
Lighthearted: an aspect of play that links to a spontaneous, carefree view of life; improv comedy rather than elaborate pranks.
Intellectual: playing with words and ideas, a more cerebral component of playfulness.
Whimsical: a more extravagant play element with a focus on unusual people, situations, or objects.
If we look at playfulness related to romantic satisfaction, studies tend to find that two of these components are important.
Care to guess which ones?
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Hey, no peeking.
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The answer is OI, or other-directedness and intellectual elements of play, with the evidence for the former being the strongest.
Why these components? Observing heterosexual couples2 suggests that other-directedness indicates fascination and engagement with your partner, as well as a future-oriented view of your relationship, a greater sense of affection, and higher sexual satisfaction. Intellectual play elements also appear to indicate fascination with your partner, relationship engagement, and sexual satisfaction, especially from the ‘actor’ point of view, aka the person who initiates the play.
The short version: other-directedness says, “I care about how you feel and I want to try to make you feel good.” Intellectual-styled playfulness says, “I’m fascinated by you and your inner world.”
Let’s talk about…
Sex. Obviously.
Funny how that’s still often a taboo topic, isn’t it? Even in many relationships, unfortunately.
And yet, if we look at the relationship factors that potentially benefit from OI-play elements, we see sexual satisfaction pop up (terrible pun) more than once. Why would play correlate with (on average, which goes for all the above too) higher sexual satisfaction? Some ideas are that it might prevent monotony, and/or that sexual playfulness is the result of trusting your partner, prioritizing each other’s pleasure, feeling comfortable enough to be yourself, and valuing the relationship.
Probably both. Adding a sensual touch of sexual playfulness can ease the tension, encourage communication, and help partners open up to each other. As a result, you might start to feel more comfortable and more likely to engage playfully. A virtuous cycle.
Of course, such physical rapport is not full-grown on day one; it’s a never-ending process of exploration. The first time having sex with someone is (almost) always a bit awkward. Such performance pressure. But what if we prioritize mutual pleasure instead of performance? And what better way to do that than inject a bit of playfulness?
Guys are often told (mostly by other guys, which doesn’t strike me as the most brilliant idea) that a good male partner brings the three P’s to the relationship’s table: provide, protect, and procreate3.
What if we’re missing the fourth P, playfulness, which outplays the outdated others with its other-directed intellectual stimulation?
Thanks for playing along.
I’ve written about the evolution of play and the importance of adult playfulness before.
So far, there’s little research done in same-sex couples on this. The research overall is fairly limited to WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) couples.
Would it surprise you if I had a thing or two to say about that as well?