Use the Power of Less to Keep Love Alive

Source: Photo courtesy of Joshua Coleman on Unsplash

Keeping the spark in your relationship is like keeping your house from looking like a walk-in sty.

During the COVID lockdown, my floor and surfaces began to collect random objects–stuff I’d put down “for a minute” (but apparently left there for all eternity).

Normally, I use a motivational trick to tidy up: making myself pick up, put away, and/or clean 50 things. When I hit the 50 mark, I feel good, having achieved my goal.

But like many people, I was pretty bummed out by the tragedies of the pandemic. A goal of 50 things to pick up seemed like 5,000 things, and I stayed firmly planted on the couch.

My house increasingly looked like one of those “after” shots in the wake of a tornado or a ransacking. This made for two conflicting desires: really wanting it to be tidier and totally demotivating me from doing anything to get it that way.

Then I remembered a concept from organizational psychologist Karl Weick: “small wins.” This is a way to respond to huge, overwhelming social problems through small, meaningful actions we can take. As I wrote in my “science-help” book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence,”

When a problem is vast—GLOBAL HUNGER!!—we are overwhelmed and feel we can’t possibly make a difference, which stops us from doing anything at all. Weick explains that we can overcome this effect by “changing the scale of the problem”—breaking it down into manageable chunks and taking on some tiny part of it. For example, if we address global hunger by bringing a sandwich to a homeless guy, we immediately make a difference, see it right then and there in our own little world, and feel good. And feeling good—feeling we’ve accomplished something—motivates us to go accomplish more.

Considering this, I changed my number of items I’d pick up and put away from 50 to 10. Ten didn’t seem so overwhelming. I could do 10. And I did. And doing 10 and getting things a little cleaner–a “small win”–motivated me to do another 10 and another 10, and now my house looks more like a home than an interior-decorated junkyard.

This "small wins" concept ties into our romantic lives, because we tend to believe worthwhile romantic gestures are grand gestures: “Here, m’lady, it only took me 30 years and my left leg, but I got you the Holy Grail!”

The sense that the sweeping gestures are the ones that count can keep us from showing our partners they’re loved. This is actually best accomplished through tiny regular gestures, and when I say "regular," I mean all day, throughout the day.

If we just consider what our partners really want–to feel seen, paid attention to, cared for, and adored–we can put out the rather minor effort to do the little things that make them feel that way: the little things that say, “thinking of you,” “respect your opinion,” “care about you.”

A few examples:

When you know your partner is dog-tired, get up and get their their tea, their glasses, or whatever item seems to them to require some Lawrence of Arabia-style trek, even though it's just a few yards across the house.

Tell your partner how his or her example motivated you to stick to your exercise, keep going on a tough project, or think more rationally on an emotional issue.

Express gratitude to your partner for sweet things they do for you at home that reflect that they're thinking about your comfort and well-being. Underlying this is paying attention to the ways they pay attention to you. It’s a really beautiful little back and forth you can do for each other.

And, finally, one from “Shannon,” one of my blog commenters: “I love it when my husband sends me a text during his busy days just to let me know he's thinking about me.”

Relationships, like housekeeping, take work—but within this, less really is more. Remembering the power of the regular “less” can help you keep your love alive in a way occasional extravagant romantic gestures just can’t match.

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