PLAY

PLAY is Catching

This month, I want to explore Panksepp’s emotional system of PLAY with you. At its core, PLAY is relational. Though we don’t have young children in our home anymore, we do have three one-year-old kitten brothers. It’s fascinating how the simplest things (a string, a cardboard box, or a piece of fuzz) can spark energetic outbursts. And when one kitten starts, the brothers instantly join in. It’s infectious. 

This contagion effect works in your marriage. PLAYful engagement draws each of you into reciprocal activity. The best play in marriage is spontaneous, so you need to be flexible for it to occur. You are less likely to be successful in your PLAY efforts if they are too planned. Although a primary goal of PLAY is to experience joy, that does not make all enjoyable activities PLAY. Watching your favorite TV show together might be fun, but it doesn’t include the relational component of healthy PLAY.

Safety Comes Before PLAY

Over the past three months, we have explored three systems that become especially important when relationships feel threatened—PANIC/GRIEF, FEAR, and RAGE. 

PANIC says, “Regain the connection.”

FEAR says, “Protect yourself”

RAGE says, “Push back against the obstacle.”

But when we do the work to soothe and quiet those systems, 

PLAY says, “Come enjoy this with me.” It’s an invitation, much like SEEKING.

The PANIC, FEAR, and RAGE  systems can be normal parts of even a healthy marriage. But threats make relationships rigid. PLAY makes them flexible again. We can choose to regulate those systems enough to create room for PLAY to return. It is difficult to PLAY while you are busy protecting yourself. 

When Marriage Becomes Too Efficient

Our technological, information age drives us into increasingly disconnected silos. This remains true for marriage. Look, we can manage marriage well with all the right “skills.” We keep a family calendar, divide tasks, navigate conflict, stick to a budget, and coordinate kiddos. Our family corporate machinery is efficient. There is no crisis here, but there’s also not much connection. 

Part of the answer to overmanagement is creating enough space for PLAY to emerge. Sometimes that means putting down the technology, loosening the schedule, and leaving room for spontaneity and laughter.

I think the Gottman model for marriage has identified several tools that can help facilitate PLAY. 

• Turning Towards can be playful. Flirting and lighthearted joking about bids can keep connections light and fun. 
• Compliments that directly express appreciation for your partner can communicate value in joyful ways. 
• The Gottmans have often recommended using humor to make repairs during conflict. A carefully timed bit of humor can break the rigid tension of a conflictual moment. 
• Ultimately, the PLAY system is reciprocal, so friendship is at its heart. Good friends PLAY together. 

But be careful here. Don’t fall into the trap of treating PLAY as just another thing to overmanage. If you approach it formulaically, you risk losing connection and even causing hurt. You will know you are in this territory if one person is laughing and the other isn’t. Sarcasm and teasing are salty forms of humor, but too much salt ruins the meal. PLAY requires reciprocity. If only one person is having fun, it probably isn’t PLAY anymore.

Benefits of PLAY

PLAY helps couples stretch into new territory. It allows us to imagine, experiment, try on new roles, take small risks, and not take ourselves quite so seriously. Stress and threat tighten relationships, making interactions more rigid and consequential. PLAY softens those tight spaces, creating room for flexibility, surprise, and recovery from mistakes. PLAY gives a marriage room to bend without breaking.

Creating Space for PLAY

Don’t be tempted to think that scheduling a date night is the way to introduce and maintain play in your marriage. In over 30 years of counseling couples, I have never recommended scheduling a date night because it misses the point. You can put time on a calendar, but you cannot manufacture PLAY. A scheduled date can create room for playfulness, but if it becomes another relationship task to perform, you have missed the point. PLAY is often less about what you’re doing than about the spirit you bring to what you’re already doing.

• It is a husband inviting his wife to dance, with kitchen towels in hand while cleaning.
• It is a wife initiating sexual intimacy in a silly manner.
• It is a girlfriend who whispers a reminder of a shared, funny memory. 
• It is walking in the rain and hiding under trees for cover. 
• It is board games on the dinner table.
• It is laughing about a failed meal or the sheer silliness of overcoming an obstacle together. 

Try to find ways to make room for silliness, uncertainty, and surprise. PLAY often follows.

This blog reminds me of a quote from the great psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. You can find the quote on my website here. I think it is a good way to close.

“How to keep love fresh? The answer is the same as it is for any other activity. To be enjoyable, a relationship must become more complex. To become more complex, the partners must discover new potentialities in themselves and in each other. To discover these, they must invest attention in each other—so that they can learn what thoughts and feelings, what dreams reside in their partners’s mind. This in itself is a never-ending process, a lifetime’s task.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Healthy marriages are not just good at solving problems and repairing conflict. They also know how to PLAY in the middle of all of it.