If you’ve ever caught yourself laughing at a tired old joke between you and your partner, you’re not regressing—you’re demonstrating a neurological and emotional hallmark of secure attachment.

It turns out, stable couples aren’t defined by newness, but by repetition—and how that repetition is infused with meaning (Gottman & Silver, 1999).

These well-worn bits of private humor form what couples therapist John Gottman calls "shared meaning systems."

Weekends are the promised land of adult life: 48-ish hours when you can finally stop pretending that your boss’s “quick question” is anything but a psychic hex.

If you’re partnered, weekends should be when you reconnect with the person you pledged eternal devotion to—or at least agreed to share a Netflix password with.

But many couples spend these golden hours dodging each other in a haze of errands, digital distractions, and existential fatigue.

As a psychologist who studies couples (and lives with one), I can confirm: happy couples aren’t happier because they’re better people. They’ve just hacked the system. Here’s how.

In an age of digital estrangement, where eye contact is rare and “we need to talk” texts inspire panic attacks, couples are rediscovering intimacy in an unlikely place: the glue gun aisle at Michaels.

The Crafternoon—an informal, analog gathering to make something together with your hands—has quietly become a grassroots relationship intervention.

Initially viewed as a post-lockdown comfort behavior, it’s evolved into a non-clinical form of relational co-regulation. And it’s about time couples therapists took notice.