I don’t think I was ever playful in any relationship, romantic or not. But I thought being playful was like being mocking, teasing, sarcastic, and saying smart ass things – I’m a pro at all of these, but these don’t seem playful to me anymore, and they’re starting to feel more like jaded, cynical, and mean spirited (even if I’m not intending to be mean at all).
I want to be playful, I’m 36 – how do you stay playful in your life?
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My husband and I are really playful in our marriage – we’ll put on accents and sass each other over made up slights, or we’ll roleplay as random people in an argument, sometimes he’ll come “kidnap” me to take me to the bedroom or vice versa, we get into tickle fights and wrestling matches that sometimes turn into sex, sometimes he’ll come to me while I’m cooking or doing dishes and grab my arms and pretend he’s ‘puppeting me’ through the motions, he’s obsessed with pretending he needs to stick his finger into my belly button and there’s a lot of laughter as I try to get away, etc. Lots of options outside of being play mean to each other.
We are playful sometimes with cheesy compliments. A police siren goes by, and one of us will say “oh no! The hotness police are coming to arrest you for being too hot!”
In my relationship, I feel like there’s types of mocking and some are okay, some aren’t.
We tease each other about some stuff regularly but it’s not mean spirited, not about serious stuff or things we’re sensitive to, etc.. For us, there’s clearly an undercurrent of “I find this endearing about you”, not “haha you’re a big dumb idiot for that”.
I feel like this is really individual to each person and each couple because everyone has different senses of humor, things they’re sensitive about, etc..
I like harmless pranks. Like when my ex and I would golf together and he left his wedge behind on a green I’d put it in my bag until the next hole when he is like “where’s my wedge?!” and I’m like oh my gosh did you leave it?! As I’m practicing swinging with his.
I generally go with things that imply someone is naughty or not completely proper as a safe kind of ‘tease’. As far as “mocking” goes, my general sense is that if it’s something they’ve made fun of themselves for in the past, it’s usually safe to do that as well (unless you happen to know they’re actually insecure about it but resort to self-deprecation as a coping mechanism).
Another thing is it’s often not okay to do it in front of other people too much. Even I get self-conscious about inside jokes that might draw judgement from people who don’t know the context and generally anything that makes someone uncomfortably self-conscious is a no go.
You can say playful, teasing, smart ass things that have positive instead of negative connotations. That’s really important for me, because they negative ones can really hurt me.
I have a really hard time with negative teasing, but my partner is a huge teaser, so we made an effort to make our teasing is more positive. Like, he’ll tease me that I’m trying to fatten him up so he’ll never leave, with the implication being that 1. I love him and 2. I cook well and 3. i take such good care of him he could never leave. And I will tease back that I have no need to entrap him like that because I’ve already stolen his heart. Implication being, I know he loves me and feel secure with him. I think physical touch is really important to go along with this kind of teasing because it reinforces the closeness. And you have to add drama to the delivery, toss your arms around, sigh and collapse onto the couch, make it an obvious silly little show.
And physical touch is a good for being playful too, the occasional butt smack…sometimes I wear an oversized shirt with no bra and will wrap my arms around him for a hug before abruptly putting my shirt over his head and motor boating him. Pretending to go doggy style on him when he bends over to get something out of the freezer. Demanding kisses in silly ways. (honestly, we do this often, almost like bird calls)
Also, just mimicking when someone is doing something silly. My partner will sometimes start doing Mortal Kombat stances in the kitchen. When he does, I’ll do them back, And then we play fight attempting to poke each other’s bellybuttons kungfu style.
My husband and I are both like this so we had to learn over time what is okay to mock about and what isn’t. Let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy road. But each time something was made in jest that hurt the other person, the hurt party would say why that hurt and put up a boundary.
Four years on and we rarely ever have to say that one stung a bit. But both of us had to be on the same page and both of us do it to each other. It is not mean, it’s not one sided, it’s always light hearted. Not everyone can roll like that and that’s ok.