If you are meeting someone for the first time or you’ve been a couple for so long that you could accurately describe the sides of your teeth facing your tongue, making an effort to feel close – beyond just having sex and spending time around each other – is kind of what the novel is about.
Below are some strategies for achieving communion that don’t involve a specialized card game with instructions like, “If you were a student on your first day at Hogwarts…” (I can’t finish that) or involve mapping out your attachment styles. If this is what makes you feel loved by someone? Okay, go ahead. Otherwise: here’s what’s worked well for me and the people I’ve been lucky enough to know better.
1. Get to know each other’s comedy lodestars.
Tell each other the five movies, memories, people, comics, books or whatever it is which, throughout his life, better defined his sense of humor. Then she watches, reads, or sees the ones her partner tells her about in her free time and talks about it later. (Unless it’s more fun to do it with them, whatever!) A woman I loved was interested, very specifically, in the second season of SNL. A newer super fox in my life told me that one of her favorites is an episode of Ramie which deals with sex and racial and religious identity post-9/11. Mine includes achewood, Pninand Chris Farley. Nothing is funnier to my hottest friend than DW (yes, from Arthur). Ask them to tell you why this is so funny to them – really try to understand what makes the person you love laugh. (Ideally, you can make them laugh more often yourself — totally falling over with tears streaming down both your faces is a classic way of “bonding,” as I know you’ll agree.)
2. Place a chocolate bar in your purse or coat pocket.
Make it their favorite (so for me, I’d discover a Take 5 bar nestled next to my beat-up laptop) or something esoteric that they’d never pick out for themselves, like whatever says “limited edition” at the bottom of the purchase: coconut Pocky, a blueberry muffin-flavored Kit Kat bar, weird Haribo creatures.
3. Ask what their first memory is and share yours.
Yes, of course dreams count. Resist the urge to make it mean something about you or them. Just listen and keep it in your head like they do in theirs.
4. If you live together, take on a task that is traditionally “theirs” from time to time.
Even though they generally enjoy or enjoy doing it, almost no one wants to cook, vacuum, make the bed or take care of cat hygiene issues. all The Time.
5. Prepare them a simple but semi-refined dinner when they are having a really busy or bad day.
Don’t make too much of it; the point is, it’s a quiet way to show that you have their back and will make sure to enrich their world when their world is grinding them with its fearsome jaws. Choose something easy that still reminds you of the existence of elegance, like chicken with artichokes and lemon or eggplant fat.
6. Discover how to balance the effort you put in.
Massive caveat to the two points above: If you’re overly burdened with household chores or your partner’s chores, don’t do either of the last two things below. any circumstances. Instead, read and internalize Silvia Federici’s book Revolution at Point Zero, Then, have cocktails or ice cream on the rooftop with your partner and discuss a more equitable approach to dealing with practical shit. Getting this on a fairer path will do wonders for your happiness and, secondarily, your relationship. From them “not knowing how to wash clothes“It will only become another abyss between you. It’s not easy to course correct, but you have to: otherwise you’ll never feel fully respected.
7. Remember as much as you can when they tell you about their life outside of you.
This one is the most important, perhaps – the most basic, but something people overlook all the time. Listen carefully for the details: why they got into big trouble at their eighth birthday party (and not just so you can make a private joke about it before they cut the cake at 34). How their grandfather was their mother’s father. What are your favorite fabrics; what they look for in a lampshade; the names of everyone in your high school friend group.
I know I’m up a tree for someone when I’m so fascinated by them that I only half-jokingly wish I could write their biography; I know they like me when they keep an eye on me too. I get emotional when I receive a message from my Heart’s Truest Desire that quotes, in a funny way, but never at my expense, some fragment of mine that they hid from a casual conversation. Focus on the big-world details of who someone is. This is one of the Three Great Pillars of love: trying to understand each other to the point that each one feels, not watched, but watched. As well as having breakfast together and listening to 1960s pop music that is like a wave in your heart.
8. Witness the minutiae of your partner’s day.
Rachel I was told about this concept a few years ago, and since then I’ve been thinking about it and putting it into practice: ask and be interested in the sandwich they ate for lunch. The mission they are executing. What they saw on the way to work. It’s kind of sacred to take the little things seriously – to indicate to someone that these component parts of life are special because they are elemental to from them life and know what their day is like as it unfolds around them.
9. When your partner recommends something everyone is interested in (and it seems halfway decent), read it, watch it, or listen to it.
I keep a list in my Notes app, collecting radio shows, movies, soap operas, clothing brands, and other living decor items, etc., that my friends, including my partners, have told me are great. And then I actually take this thing and talk about it with whoever gave the go-ahead. In addition to it being a gift to receive someone else’s good taste, now you at least lightly associate each other with something they love, plus you have something new to talk about (that’s not just, like, “How was your day?” — a good question, as described above, but discussing ideas is also very good).
10. Align in efforts to serve something greater than yourself.
Side by side phone bank. Learn how to prepare some easy-to-prepare meals, then join your local community dining effort (you can ask local libraries, houses of worship, shelters, and mutual aid groups where to find a place that might be helpful to you) . Go to a protest together. Gild your lives with a shared purpose; discover how to offer it for the well-being of other people. It’s always good to reconfirm—or discover in a new way—that your partner has integrity.
11. Ask for advice.
About work, of course, or some or other complicated scenario you are facing. This allows them to get a better sense of what’s worrying you and how you handle things, and reveals more about your values and general approach to a certain part of life. Also, as always confuses me, people often love helping as much as they love being helped. It’s a kindness to let them know you trust them enough to try.
12. Sleep in their clothes.
Dream about their smell on you. Or wear something from them during the day – most hats fit most heads, even if your body size is actually different.
13. Visit your hometown.
If you’re very new as a couple or they hate it there, ask them to describe the weather and food at the restaurant they frequented most, the local plants, and whether they could make reckless crossings without any problems. Look for their first address on Google Maps. You want to be able to imagine where they were when they were young, but ideally you want to walk through the photo too. The ultimate idea is to be able to ask them how they think growing up there contributed to who they are now and more fully understand and visualize their answer.
14. Take photos of them doing something they love or among the people they spend the most time with.
It’s great to have photos of the two of you together, but also let them know how you see them when they’re happy and maintain that.
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