Wife Recommends Low-Effort Date Night Idea For Couples Who Communicate Almost Exclusively Through Memes & Experts Agree
StockPhotoDirectors | Shutterstock It can be hard to come up with unique and not overdone date nights to have with your partner, especially if you don't spend much time talking to each other but communicate almost exclusively through memes.
You might think that's odd, but it's really not. Dr. Rosanna Guadagno, a social psychologist at Stanford University, told Refinery29, "One of the ways that you can tell when a relationship is getting stronger — especially as time passes and you spend more time together — is you start developing all sorts of inside jokes that mean something to the two of you. A meme is effectively a visual version of this. It's less intentional, but I think it serves that same psychological function of reinforcing the couple as a unit and having these shared ideas, shared perceptions, shared jokes, and shared experiences.”
That doesn't mean couples can forego date night, however. One wife had a rather wholesome and low-effort idea for couples who enjoy being able to spend one-on-one time together while also sharing a laugh. In a video posted to Instagram, Sarah Beth Sutter encouraged couples to utilize memes more in their date nights, especially if you and your significant other already enjoy sending them to each other on a daily basis.
A wife shared an expert-approved, low-effort date-night idea for couples who communicate almost exclusively through memes.
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In Sutter's video, she and her husband were snuggled up quite cozily on the couch in their living room. But what made it an ultimate date night was that, instead of watching a movie or TV show, they had put up memes on their TV to watch together.
"This is your sign to NOT send reels to your spouse. Instead... SAVE them in a collection, then watch them together on the TV each weekend!" Sutter wrote. "Highly recommend! It’s way more fun than just sending them to each other! You could even do this as an at-home date night!"
Couples who send memes to each other usually feel higher satisfaction together.
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One study found that couples who send memes to each other out of enjoyment were positively associated with relationship satisfaction. Participants reported sharing memes most frequently in their closest relationships.
Results from the study demonstrated that the sharing of memes plays a meaningful role in many close relationships, and that the role of memes in relationships is partially a function of the humor orientation of the individual and the humor-related goals of the meme sharing. Basically, couples who can share laughter over a joke usually end up staying together longer.
Experts agree that couples should be spending more time laughing together.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, came up with a plan to produce shared laughter in the lab, to measure experimentally how it might impact a relationship with a stranger. Results showed that, across the different videos, the amount of shared laughter had consistent effects on the participants’ sense of similarity to the video partner—and that this, in turn, increased how much participants liked their partner and wanted to affiliate with them.
"For people who are laughing together, shared laughter signals that they see the world in the same way, and it momentarily boosts their sense of connection," explained social psychologist Sara Algoe, co-author of the study with Laura Kurtz. "Perceived similarity ends up being an important part of the story of relationships."
She continued, "Even if laughing on your own might have positive social outcomes, there is a missed opportunity, because laughing at the same time as someone else might be particularly potent—and influential in relationships."
So, the next time that you and your significant other are trying to figure out what to do for a casual date night, there might actually be more benefits to just sitting on the couch and watching some shared memes together. Especially at a time when things are quite expensive outside the house, it's nice to find something inside that won't break the bank either.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
