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You don't need a vacation to break the routine in your relationship
You get home, you eat, a show goes on, one of you scrolls while the other dozes off. Next day, same again. Nobody is doing anything wrong, but a thin layer of dust seems to have settled on the relationship.
Ege, one of the people who started Tomurcuk, put it well when he wrote about what he missed most while they were long distance:
What wears long relationships down is days that all look alike.
That isn't only true of long distance. Couples who share a home end up in the same place, where the days blur together, and usually without noticing.
Comfort and boredom are different things
First, some credit to routine. Knowing when someone gets home, how they take their coffee, how Sunday morning is going to go: that's a kind of safety. The predictability is one of the best parts of a long relationship.
Boredom is something else. It's the point where nothing new happens, where conversations don't get past "how was your day", and where you both assume you already know each other. We tend to stop being curious about the people we love precisely because we're sure we know them. Yet they change a little every year.
Boredom sends its bill later
Researchers have taken this seriously. In a study that followed 123 married couples in the Detroit area for many years, people who said their marriage had become boring in its seventh year were less satisfied with it nine years later (the study). Boredom can feel like a small complaint in the moment. Over time it wears down closeness.
There are experiments that show the flip side. In work published in 2000, psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues brought couples into a lab and gave some of them a new, slightly exciting task: tied together at the wrist and ankle with Velcro, they crawled across a course on their hands and knees, carrying a pillow between them without using their hands, arms or teeth, trying to beat a one-minute clock. Other couples did something slow and dull. The couples who did the odd, slightly ridiculous task together said afterwards that they were more satisfied with their relationship (the study).
Aron explains this with the idea of "self-expansion". We bond more tightly with relationships that help us grow and try new things, and when you experience something new together, a little of that newness rubs off on how you see each other.
You don't need a vacation
That's the good news. You don't have to go ballooning in Cappadocia to break a routine; doing something new and slightly challenging together is enough.
Walking around a part of town you've never been to. Cooking something neither of you has made before, and probably messing it up. A dance class, a board game, a hiking route. Taking turns helps: one of you picks this week, the other next week, and the only rule is that you haven't done it together before.
Conversations are a routine too. Keep asking the same questions and you'll keep getting the same answers. Starting one evening with a new question can open up a side you didn't know of someone you thought you knew. That's what our 40 questions to ask your partner post is for.
How to say you're bored
"I'm bored" doesn't mean "I'm bored of you", but it can easily sound like it. So build the sentence together: "We keep doing the same things lately, want to shake something up?" Put that way, it sounds like an invitation.
Sometimes the boredom comes from life itself: work, exhaustion, the city. The relationship takes the blame because it's the easiest place to see it. Telling the two apart can save you from an unnecessary crisis.
This week's question
One from the Tomurcuk question bank that fits right in: "What new thing did you last try and think 'glad I did'?" If the answer is a dish, make it together this week. If it's a place, put it in the calendar.