Marriage Isn’t Hard Work; It’s Mostly Play
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Feb 8
- 6 min read
When relationships become all maintenance and no delight, something essential goes missing. This reflection explores how play restores the ease that love needs to endure.
The Blog Article Follows this Invitation!
In the lead-up to our Feb 15 Valentine's Weekend Event, I've been dropping a series of SMC articles about finding, maintaining, and developing whole-hearted relationships. This week, I add to that series an article on the centrality of play in a successful marriage.
It occurs to me that this may be your last chance to secure a couple of tickets to hear the amazing Lynn O'Brien perform before she takes her talents to the West Coast. I have heard a rumor that my wife, Dr. Lisa, may join the main speaker on stage to share insights gleaned from her marriage with Dr. Tom. And I can't wait to share my own research with you in this lively forum with great food, drinks, as well as a one-of-a-kind, elegant/charming venue. - Dr. Tom
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Marriage Isn’t Hard Work; It’s Mostly Play
Last week, just before the heavens took a big white dump on Saint Louis, Lisa and I decided that we’d scurry out for the final day of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s exhibit of Anselm Kiefer’s works. As fortune would have it, we stumbled into a newly formed tour led by an official Anselm Kiefer expert! At one point, my wife’s pseudo-humorous husband noticed a caption over a huge abstract of a waterway, “All rivers lead to the sea.” To a Disney dad, this famous phrase surfaced an obvious question that caused my arm to raise. “Did the Disney movie, ‘Finding Nemo,’ take its signature phrase from this Anselm Kiefer piece, or did Anselm Kiefer swipe this portrait’s phrase from ‘Finding Nemo?’” Rather than the laughter I was expecting, my question was greeted with a kind of monastic silence that accompanies dramatic faux pas like loud flatulence during a papal audience. Tail tucked, I meandered away to give Lisa the space to disassociate herself from the central Illinois born and bred hayseed that somehow managed to ride in on the bottom of her shoe.
Despite my antics, Lisa and I both agreed that we don’t take nearly enough advantage of what our adopted city of St. Louis has to offer. It’s not like I didn’t know that playful adventures and marital happiness tend to go hand-in-hand. Somehow, we’ve managed to get out of the habit of pushing ourselves out the door for play opportunities in our own backyard. This year, I’m thinking of asking Lisa to tithe some time with me to make play our Lenten practice.
Play Is Serious Business
In a well-researched article, Nina Li Coomes’s fundamental finding was contained in the title of her work, “Marriage Isn’t Hard Work; It’s Serious Play.” Dovetailing with Coomes’s work, Jancee Dunn outlined some fun suggestions to operationalize the serious work of play taken from her own playful marriage. It took me a bunch of years of clinical practice to apply these insights to my distressed couples in therapy. I guess it didn’t occur to me to apply what I was doing in my own marriage to my clients’ snagged marriages.
What I Learned About Play in My Own Marriage
From the beginning, Lisa and I had a knack for play. When the kids were little, if I fell asleep at a pool, their mom would always see to it that I woke up with pretty pink toenails, painted by primary school pedicurists. One year, during my church’s Holy Thursday foot washing service, I forgot about my fancy, fancy feet. My kids didn’t. I can still remember their stifled laughs.
Throughout our thirty-plus years, one of my very favorite things is to make up random pieces of trivia to sell to my wife. Even now, my trusting spouse will tend to believe me, which transforms a so-so conversation into a playground. The game is to keep adding more and more “facts” to the original whopper to see how far I can take it before Lisa lays down the BS card. For her part, Lisa’s innate warmth and sweetness provide a kind of cover for her witty sarcasm. Not many know this about her, but she has a fastball that can make your knees buckle with laughter, but not before you’ve absorbed some hilarious insult with more than just a grain of truth in it.
What I Learned from Counseling Couples for Thirty-Plus Years
If you are in a couple’s situation that’s been in need of therapy for quite some time, it may be that the playful little stories I just served up come your way with a side order of sadness. It may be that you’ve forgotten that you and your spouse were once very playful and funny. Chances are, you haven’t lost that capacity; it’s just that you're both missing the context of ease and relaxation you once enjoyed with one another.
People come to marital therapy snagged up, usually carrying the scars of many years of deferred maintenance. As a young therapist, I’d barge into these little ecosystems of pain wanting to alleviate their suffering as quickly as I could. Problem is, that can’t work. Over time, I began to learn to expect a widening chasm of distance between distressed couples that took years to form. I began to see that shrinking that distance was job number one. It’s nearly impossible to problem-solve with a stranger. I learned the hard way that if it’s a choice between teaching a couple how to deliver an “I-centered statement,” or to learn how to play with each other again, I’ll take what’s behind door number two every time. Put another way: there’s an inverse relationship between play and work in a marriage. There will always be some work to do in a close relationship. But if there ever was a truism, this is it: “The more abundant the play in a marriage, the lighter and less frequent the work.” Maybe I’ll engrave that and hang it as a plaque in my office? Maybe I’ll try to live that at home with more intention?
A Lenten Idea for You and Your Spouse, Whether or Not You’re Catholic
Make a list of all the things your city, and/or community, has to offer for fun. Once a week, for forty days, select something from that list, and force yourselves out the door to participate in that activity. Try to pick things that are brand new and make you both feel a little bit nervous. If you want the same-old-same-old, do the same old stuff. If you want to freshen things up and get a little younger in the process, try something brand new, e.g., art classes, movie discussion groups, dance lessons, dance club, a lecture series, cooking classes, comparative ice cream tastings all around your town with a standardized rating system. Publish the results somewhere.
If You Are Single
Find a friend, or friends, to accomplish your own Lenten play schedule of once-a-week brand new activities.
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
What struck you in this article? Did anything cause dissonance?
What do you remember about what play looked like in your family (or families) of origin? Based upon those memories, try to summarize the primary messages you internalized about play. What impact has that had on you, either positively or negatively?
If you are part of a couple, divide your relationship history into epochs, or eras. List the things the two of you did for fun in each of those eras. Is any of that replicable in the current time zone with just a little editing?
If you are single, create a similar timeline divided into epochs or eras. List the things you did for fun in each of those eras. Is any of that replicable in the current time zone with a little editing?
If you are part of a couple, separately, list on a piece of paper your top five experiences of play with your spouse. Once you are both finished, discuss. (1) See if you can both step back into those experiences and remember forgotten elements. (2) See if this inspires any future plans to replicate some part of one of those experiences.
The Wisdom literature of the Jewish scriptures (Christian Old Testament) describes God as playing in creation. The Islamic mystic, Rumi, imagines God desiring to play with you and me. Does your imagination allow you to imagine creation and the Creative Force that way?
Footnote: The title of the current article was taken almost word-for-word from Nina Li Coomes’s article, “Marriage Isn’t Hard Work; It’s Serious Play.” (The Atlantic, March 24, ’23).
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
Comments