Routine! how can I avoid routine in my relationship? I often find myself talking to myself by telling myself “I have to find something not to be too “plan-plan”, so that my guy does not get bored in our relationship, so that I do not get bored, not to enter into a relationship where routine eats us”. And I realized a few weeks ago that these kinds of thoughts were completely toxic. What if we gave routine a place of choice! a place of pledge!

I’m afraid of routine

Yes the other can wake up one day, being royally shit, and it is not our responsibility, yes there are days when clearly by dint of eating the same dish every day, we have less desire. And YES it’s routine. I love the routine. And I’ll explain to you why it’s so precious. We all have these moments of questioning, of doubts “and if we get tired one day”: by dint of living together, by dint of making love with the same person, by dint of falling asleep together, … I thought for a long time and realized how precious these moments of routines are. Intimacy. True privacy. The one where you are in the canap’, jogging, and where you are YOU, entirely facing the other. When you take your shower and blow your nose, piss the door open, disgusted because of a hangover, when you are in a bad mood and the other person will still have to accept you with your bad mood. The “not sexy, glam side of a relationship that lasts”. And then all those times when you are punctured, and where the other must ensure x2 to make food, housekeeping, take care of the children … all those times when you say to yourself “but wait where my sex appeal went, the girl who wanted to party, who was always in a good mood, positive and always a little prepared even during a good gastro”. Several solutions:

• She has barred herself on another planet since the arrival of covid in 2020, after spending 2 months in lockdown, She is making more effort! or very little because the whole world has proven that we are all the same, if we do not have to go to work and we are at home with Bidul and the children.
• I’m 35 years old, period
• it’s the baby routine! learn to kiffer the routine.
• hey what do you believe Beyonce, Kim K, Shakira, Jenifer Lopez, Caroline Receveur… Even Victoria Bekham! They are like you. They also do super plan plan stuff and sometimes their guys get royally shit with them. And then under the duvet a good missionary of families for the 100 em time it is also super good. No need to be Beyonce at the Stade de France to be well together.
• It is maturity my beautiful: I am no longer in the image, in the desire to please at all costs, you take me as I am (this one is good)

Well come on we stop making him a bad reputation to this good old girlfriend “the routine”!

What if it was in our routines that we felt most alive and loved

Life goes fast, the temptation is sharp. Life invites us to a perpetual thirst for new, creativity. everyday life is despised, routine kills love says we say, it’s a real punchline. Where we are all victims. I’m tired of these songs, movies or big proverbs that make the relationship suffer, and that limit us all in small boxes: it’s like this, or like that, no flexibility in our small narrow brains. While many of these “phrases” came out of the mouths of authors, rappers, singers, actors who played “roles” for their work. And you’re not tired of playing a role? What if we nuanced the routine. Stop the frustration of saying “we’re routine, it’s routine…and sometimes worse to even be afraid.

Society provokes all this: you have to live from the extraordinary. Our favorite icons remind us of this on instagram… all this confuses us from our deep anchorages, from our quiet little life. It hurts to say “I’m in a boring, routine relationship” and it hurts to hear it too. Even to think so. What do we do to let ourselves be carried away by the message of society that pronounces the always more, the always different. We forget the treasure of our routine, from day to day, the lace of everyday life. We must listen to these moments of routines that reassure, that are alive. Who are WE.

The sound of my guy blowing his nose in the shower. I could recognize him among many. Oh yes that’s for sure, he’s there, present, in his shower, and even if I’m in the next room, he’s with me. We are intimate. he wasn’t doing that at the very beginning. And then this way he kisses me when he goes to work at 6am while I’m still sleeping, finally half asleep. Why half, because his alarm clock rings at 5:20 am and he makes a lot of noise in the morning: the sound of cups of coffee, he drops at least 2/3 stuff in the corridor, he forgets something in the room and finally he slams the door when leaving and it is only 6:02. It’s us too. It’s his signature and it’s become part of the couple we’re building together. And then there are those moments of delicious routine. Like when it slips under the duvet and I’ve already been sleeping for 1H. That he wakes me up (yes still his legendary delicacy), that he took the time to take his shower just before going to sleep and that his skin is all soft and fresh. In winter it’s different it annoys me a little, but I take the opportunity to stick my feet against him and in a few seconds I’m fine. How I love these moments, and he doesn’t admit it but he loves them too. Our habits, our rituals, our banal life… it is our humanity. Our tacit dances organized from sunrise to bedtime, our ways of preparing for dinner, returning from work, leaving, taking care… all these moments melt us. Tirelessly draw our lives. Gestures 100 times lived, words repeated and heard, these visions 100 times seen. It’s lace. It’s beautiful the routine. All these repetitions whisper to me that I am connected, surrounded, loved and above all ALIVE! Long live the banal, it’s so relaxing. The extraordinary of our lives is a treasure but I promise you that our habits are just as much. Let’s not throw anything away: from our washing socks, to the bowl that must be lowered. let’s embrace everything. Let’s celebrate, too, our routines. Boredom, repetition, the common, the human, the banal. It’s a whole part of our lives. This is our life. Let us learn to honor them, to appreciate the intimate.

Obviously you have to vibrate with the new, the exploration, to get out of your comfort zone, the unexpected, to risk the unknown, to sparkle … let us also invite change. the new that fractures our routines and makes us rethink the couple, the life to 2, in family, to several even. Yes! let us invite the extraordinary. Each destabilization is important to our development and evolution. Let us be flexible and different, let us no longer be afraid to try what some people point out. But! But let’s love our mundane too. Both are so nourishing and necessary. Let’s adjust in all these moments.

What a luxury to be yourself, without playing a role, to be together. In our intimacy as a couple. Because we must also admit it and I am not the only one here, to have already experienced a heartache. And I’m not talking about widows/widowers, bereaved. But it is this PUTIN OF DAILY LIFE that is missing the most when the other is no longer at our side. It is not the extraordinary of our evenings, holidays, meetings … who returns in the lack of the other when he is gone. It is the banal, of the unique intimacy, of the singularity of the other. Everyday life. My new Dutch friend, who is only 32 years old, lost her fiancé in 2019 to a heart attack. She does not make any noise this death there. A few weeks ago, my friend gave me a very specific tree leaf. When she offered it to me, she told me that it was one of the trees that adorned the future house they wanted to buy to start their family and make their lives. And every time he saw this tree, he would pick up a leaf to bring back to it. As a promise of a future for two. From a habit of waking up every day in front of this tree they loved. That day when she handed me this sheet and explained her story to me she added “you see at the end, I was fed up, I didn’t know where to fuck these leaves, and today I pray to be able to pick them up every day, because it’s him, it’s us, it makes him alive. And offering him to important people in my life allows me to pass on the love he gave me.” Obviously I chialed directly. Because it’s one of the best gifts I’ve been given in several years. I slipped it preciously into a small transparent envelope, and it is in my wallet. Why my wallet? Because my grandmother kept herself, in her wallet, a whole bunch of charms: photos of us, small pebbles that were offered to her…. obviously, it annoyed him because his wallet was full to bursting. But it was us, it was our routine. And I miss her my grandma. So yes my, wallet has a hard time closing because it contains juul’s sheet, the ID photo of June (my guy’s daughter), a friend’s little piece of rose quartz, my 2012 press card. all those little things that make up my routine and that I cherish so much. And I will never complain because my wallet does not close.

Our broken couples, our grandparents, those who left too tot … it is when we miss these little moments of routine that we realize that routine is a treasure.

• My grandpa clearing his throat in the morning
• mom’s way of drinking her coffee
• dad who cures his nose in the car
• my best friend who often forgets to hunt
• my ex who liked to make love with the tv turn on
• my sister who always whistles the same song when she doesn’t know what to do (we still don’t know what the song is)
• the noisy but odorless prout of my friend
• my guy and his way just him to spread the laundry
• the spicy smell of my grandpa, which disgusted me as a child, today I will pay to smell it just once

The list is long of these ordinary testimonies but so powerful, gentle, reassuring, loving. Our ordinary lives. Let’s love our habits, our routines. Let’s like to kiss each other the same way for 2 years, 10 years, 15 years. Invite your presence entirely into this good old missionary. Know how to appreciate the sound of your partner’s morning pee. Long live the routine, long live the banal. Because that’s all that we’ll miss if one day it’s no longer there. I wish you to live full of routines.

If you want to go further, to finally dare to be you, live the life you want and turn your limiting thoughts into freedom. Join us at the next yoga and self-awakening retreat at Acacia-La Ciotat House. From 6 to 9 October https://elsareloveution.systeme.io/retraite-26b2633d

If you want to find out:

https://www.marabout.com/auteur/june-pla/ rediscover your partner in a fulfilling sexuality

https://www.estherperel.com podcast and documentation for better relationships