What odd-but-lovely habits / rituals do you and your DP have?

[whatsinmypockets]

Inspired by a chat I had with a friend last night – she mentioned that she and her DP turn on 80s power ballads whenever they have to do house chores they don't enjoy, so they can play air guitar / sing into the antibac spray / throw armfuls of laundry in the air dramatically / hold the bathroom bin above their heads triumphantly while they get things done. Makes the job more fun and they get to feel connected.

It made me smile so much – and made me think of how DP and I, whenever we do something very mundane but do it well (like unpack the online shop delivery quickly or get eyedrops into the dog successfully) will put on overenthusiastic American accents and compliment one another like sports commentators: "Did you see the SPEED of that?" "This man is a true CHAMPION" "Ladies and gentlemen, I think we just witnessed history being made" "I've never seen talent like it"...

I love how couples often develop these weird little rituals that are totally unique to that specific relationship...

Given there's (understandably) so much "something's wrong with my relationship" on MN, I'd love to read some more examples of things like this - what do you and your DP do that's a quirk of your relationship?

Doesn't have to be as 'significant' as my friend and her power ballads – might just be a sweet how-we-make-coffee-in-the-morning routine or a specific way you hold hands...

Seeing how many Friends references can be shoehorned into a situation.

This morning, for example, our normally bottomless pit of a cat turned his nose up at his expensive breakfast. We turned to each other at the same time and said “You did it Judy, she’s finally full”

@PetrichorSoul that's brilliant 😂

Our while life is a series of us-isms. One from this morning, my husband shouts up the stairs "Poor Jimmy, he was a good man." The cat had left a dead mouse for us and, for reasons now forgotten, we call all mice Jimmy Carmichael and pay respect to each one the moggies slaughter.

😂@PhilosophicalCheeseSandwich I'm dying to know why Jimmy Carmichael!!

I think some of these are especially brilliant when you can't remember their origin stories, though – makes it all the funnier...

Sing together a lot, be it songs, adverts or tv introductions. DS is mystified by the 1980’s references to adverts as we sing along together.

Have some code words, and have some specific film quotes. They mean certain things but are not obvious to others context wise.

Use the mispronounced words that DS made up when he was learning to speak.

DH and I make up bizarre, naïve songs in the style of Sophie and Katya from Stath Lets Flats.

Based on an ignominious tutorial in the 1990s (we have been together since we were undergraduates), we say ‘I liked the bit where it all came together at the end!’ about any novel/film/tv series/film where it manifestly doesn’t. Like Titanic, or Hamlet, or Lost.

This is SO specific - I love it! 😂

I love this lol

There's a song from a video game. And we can't begin any jobs we're doing together until we play this song. I usually say "all rise, for the anthem" and we do this stupid dance to the intro. Then we reach a certain point in the song we both stop and start acting normal like nothing happened and start emptying the dishwasher etc

Speak to each other in the style of the terrible accented police man in 'allo 'allo' we've tried to explain it to the kids but they just think it's not funny at all...

We have an argument in a made up language, with lots of gestures.

I love this thread! My partner and I greet each other with bird noises, he’s grown up with birds and loves them so we send each other videos on instagram. He will say “Chibby chibby chee” and I’ll reply “cookeee cookee” it’s weird af and my 14 year old is understandably mortified by it. His name for me is now just Chib. I love weird rituals in relationships, it’s even funnier trying to explain them to strangers in the internet 😂

I'm deaf and use sign language, and my husband has learned it for me. We now have a lot of 'home' signs, which are similar to 'home' phrases/words that you'd speak. So a lot of the time we make funny signs to each-other that are not actually "real" signs, but only we understand them 😆

We also have car ballads where we blast out songs from the 80's, 90's, and 00's - always cheers us up and we have a blast doing it. We drive to see family a lot and we always say how much we can't wait to spend time with each other in the car! ❤

DP and I have daft little sayings that were always quoting to each other. People think we’re daft😄

My DS (39) and I also have a stream of silly sayings that make no sense to anyone else

I think it’s when you have a close relationship with someone, you sort of “tune in” to each other’s train of thought and these little quirks of speech link you together🤷‍♀️
It’s a nice feeling when you click like this.

We cannot watch the opening credits of Death in Paradise without ska bopping on the sofa.

This is ADORABLE 😂

Love these! And trying to think what we do that's classed as "odd" but I think we're so deeply engrained that we probably think it's all completely normal 😂

Ooh, I thought of another couple!

When we've done something we're particularly proud of, we do a lunge. Hands on hips, intense eye contact, deep lunge.

Also, any time we go through a car wash, DP buys me an ice cream. I told him once that I had fond childhood memories of eating white Magnums in the car with my dad whenever we went through a carwash, and now DP makes sure I re-live it every time.

Every time DH gets out of the shower and I'm still lying in bed he does a little naked bum dance then swirls round and sucks one of my big toes.

It looks weird reading that back but it’s very lovely to me

Please tell me you have those chirpy noises as each other's ringtones...

I've always been a massive Simpsons fan (from watching it as a teen when it first began), and thankfully when I met my now husband he was happy to watch it with me, we now pretty much shoehorn in a Simpsons reference every day sometimes more than once a day, whether it's by repeating a certain scene or singing one of the many songs from different episodes or sending gifs to each other showing something Simpson related (for example we cannot sing the Eurythmics song Sweet Dreams without changing it the Simpson's version) it's a personal thing that never fails to make us both laugh, our daughter who is 20, thinks it is both strange but funny and has now gotten so used to it she doesn't bat an eyelid.

If we are using the remote on the TV and someone else asks you to do something such as go left, up, back etc we always go past the option being requested and then say "oops" and go back the other way too far and say "oops" again for a bit.
If one of us is in the bedroom and the other comes out of the ensuite shower they have to hold the towel up cross wise and do a very (un)sexy dance behind it while singing da duh da duh da duh da duh duh dadadada duh.

Well I’m definitely going to now!