Why Imagination and Play Keep Relationships Exciting

Excitement in a relationship is usually treated as a feeling that shows up uninvited – on a first date, a big trip, an anniversary – and then leaves. When it fades, couples conclude they have simply grown boring together. The research points the other way: excitement is not something that happens to a couple, it is something a couple practises. And the two cheapest tools for practising it are play and imagination, the very things adults are quickest to file away as childish.

That filing-away is a bigger loss than it sounds. When researchers study adult couples, playful partners consistently report more closeness, smoother conflict resolution, and higher satisfaction than their earnest counterparts. Play also works as a safe channel: you can raise a delicate topic – a desire, a grudge, a need – in a lighthearted frame and watch how it lands, without the full weight of a formal conversation. As the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley notes, couples who are playful together have closer, more satisfying relationships.

What play is actually doing

The strongest evidence comes from a 2019 study by René Proyer’s team, which surveyed more than 200 couples and found that “other-directed” playfulness – teasing, nicknames, humour aimed squarely at the partner – predicted higher relationship satisfaction, more admiration, and a more satisfying sex life. But play is not uniformly good. The same research line finds that humour used to wave away a partner’s real frustration can backfire and read as dismissal, while intellectual playfulness travels with a faint streak of partner mistrust. Play earns its keep only when it signals goodwill, which means timing matters as much as frequency.

Imagination is not escapism

Imagination carries the reputation of the weaker twin – pleasant for daydreams, useless against a mortgage. In relationships it does heavy lifting. It lets you treat your partner as someone still becoming rather than a type you have already solved, and it is the engine of desire. Esther Perel has built a career on the observation that long-term safety can smother eroticism because desire needs a little distance, uncertainty, and novelty; her practical guide to introducing role play suggests starting absurdly small – a line, a knock at the door – rather than a costume and script. And if your fantasy life needs material, there is no shame in importing it. Some couples read erotica aloud to each other; others invite a professional companion such as Louisa to play a part neither partner feels confident improvising at home.

How to make it a habit

You do not need a themed weekend or a holiday. Smallness is the point. Cook dinner together as if you were both strangers on a first date. Put on music and dance in the kitchen, badly. Invent backstories for the people you pass on the street. Ask one question you have never asked before – not “how was your day” but “what are you curious about right now?”. None of this requires talent or money. It only requires treating your partner, on purpose, as someone still worth discovering.

Notice what the couples who still feel vivid have in common. It is rarely bigger holidays or grander gifts. It is a private language – inside jokes, nicknames, invented words – that nobody else is admitted to, built one silly moment at a time. Researchers call the result shared meaning; the rest of us call it fun, and it may be the most undervalued investment a long relationship can make. Play is how you keep the person beside you feeling new, even when you know exactly how they take their coffee.