Rituals In Intimate Relationships
There is a scene in the Talmud that I find myself returning to more often than almost anything else I have encountered in the literature on relationships. Two scholars are discussing the obligations of the Sabbath, and one makes an observation about the blessing over the wine, the Kiddush. The important thing, he suggests, isn't really the wine. The wine is simply the vehicle. What matters is the act of sanctification.
I have always found that idea rather beautiful. You take something completely ordinary—wine, made from fermented grapes—and through words, attention and ritual you declare that this moment is different from all the other moments around it. You stop. You notice. You say, in effect: this matters.
I think about this whenever I try to explain why rituals matter in intimate relationships. I don't mean that lighting a candle, sharing a meal or taking a walk together has some magical power in itself. The importance lies in what the gesture represents. Sanctification is really an act of deliberate attention. We take something that could easily become ordinary through familiarity and consciously remind ourselves that it isn't.
And perhaps this is something we are particularly bad at doing with the people closest to us.
The Māori Tradition of Hongi
Human cultures have developed countless rituals for maintaining and strengthening relationships. Marriage ceremonies differ enormously across cultures, but beneath those differences lies a remarkably similar idea: two people make a commitment and other people witness it. Cultures have also created seasonal, weekly and daily practices through which families and couples acknowledge their connection to one another.
The Māori tradition of hongi is a wonderful example. Two people press their noses and foreheads together, symbolically sharing breath. It is an extraordinarily simple physical gesture, yet it acknowledges something profound: we are present to each other; we recognize each other.
Consider also the Hindu tradition of Karva Chauth, during which married women traditionally fast from sunrise until moonrise before breaking the fast after seeing their husband. Whatever we may think about the tradition from a modern perspective, what interests me is the underlying mechanism. Hunger, waiting, moonrise and the physical presence of another person are woven together to make the relationship momentarily different from ordinary daily life.
These rituals aren't simply decorative traditions. They do something.
Psychologically, one thing they do is create what researchers sometimes describe as temporal landmarks—points that interrupt the otherwise continuous flow of life. Most of us don't remember an ordinary Tuesday three years ago. We remember birthdays, weddings, departures, reunions and significant conversations. We remember beginnings and endings.
Rituals deliberately create these landmarks.
A couple who makes something special of their anniversary isn't simply celebrating another year. They are creating another marker in the history of their relationship. Later, particularly during difficult periods, those markers can become reminders that the relationship has a history, continuity and intention behind it.
Ritual also protects attention.
This may be more important now than it has ever been. Modern life is remarkably good at fragmenting our attention. Phones vibrate. Emails arrive. Work follows us home. There is always something else that apparently requires an immediate response.
The Sabbath is interesting in this respect. It recognizes something very practical about human beings: the things we claim are important will not necessarily receive our attention simply because we believe they are important. Rest doesn't just happen. Neither does genuine presence. We have to make room for them.
The same is true of relationships.
A relationship without any protected moments of genuine, phone-free, agenda-free attention isn't necessarily an unhappy one. But it is being asked to compete continuously with everything else in modern life. Ritual gives the relationship some structural support.
Rituals Engage the Body as Well as the Mind
There is another aspect of ritual that mystical traditions have understood particularly well: rituals involve the body.
The Tantric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism have long emphasized that spiritual experience doesn't take place exclusively inside the intellect. We experience the world physically as well as mentally, and relationships are no different.
Cooking together, walking together, sharing food, washing another person's hands or feet, lighting a candle, pouring a drink—these are physical acts. When they are performed deliberately and repeatedly, they acquire associations and memories of their own.
The practice of Puja provides an interesting example. Traditionally it involves making offerings—perhaps food, flowers, light or incense—to a deity. Some contemporary couples have borrowed something of the underlying principle without necessarily adopting the religious practice itself: approaching another person with deliberate gratitude and attention.
There is something important in that idea.
If you repeatedly treat somebody as worthy of your attention, generosity and curiosity, you begin to establish a habit of seeing them that way.
And this doesn't require elaborate ceremonies.
In fact, I suspect the best relationship rituals are usually quite ordinary.
It might simply be morning coffee. Fifteen minutes sitting together before work, with the phones somewhere else and neither person doing anything except being present. Nothing dramatic happens. Nobody needs to have a profound conversation. But those fifteen minutes have been marked out from the rest of the day.
In a small way, they have been sanctified.
The Sufi tradition sometimes speaks of the beloved as a window through which something greater can be glimpsed. I don't think this needs to be understood as romantic idealization. In fact, I think it suggests almost the opposite.
Long relationships make it very easy to stop actually seeing the person in front of us. We begin seeing our accumulated idea of them instead. We know what they are going to say. We know what they like. We know what annoys them. Familiarity becomes a kind of shorthand, and eventually the shorthand can replace curiosity.
Ritual interrupts that process.
It says: look again.
So begin with one ritual.
Make it small enough that you will actually continue doing it. Light a candle when you sit down to dinner. Take one walk every week during which neither of you brings out a phone. Have coffee together on Sunday morning. Ask one genuine question at the end of the day.
And perhaps don't ask, "How was your day?" We all know how easily that becomes automatic.
Ask instead: "What surprised you today?"
Or: "What happened today that you haven't told anyone about?"
Or even: "What did you feel today that you weren't expecting to feel?"
The point isn't the particular question, candle, meal or walk. The point is the decision behind it.
You are saying to another person: amid everything else competing for my attention, I am deliberately making room for you.
The ancient traditions understood something that is very easy to forget. A relationship isn't simply the background against which the rest of life happens. For many of us, it is one of the central projects of our lives.
Perhaps we should occasionally treat it that way.