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...

I LOVE THIS! The tension... 😂

The year my exh and I broke up was very difficult so I took the kids (11 and 14) to Corfu for a holiday. We went on a cruise and our abiding memory is of a full of himself guy going, "Albania? Eeh, that's never Albania. Nowt like it." In a very Yorkshire accent. It cracked us up as it was definitely Albania. It helped us bond as a wee group of three. So we say it all the time when we are going somewhere different and still crack up

Every year we try and catch a really snowy day and we make stew and watch ‘the hateful eight’ (set during a big blizzard if you haven’t seen it) and eat the stew during the scene where the characters are eating stew. I sit in my big armchair which has reindeer skins on it as it reminds me of the armchair in the film. It’s like being part of the film. I can’t remember why this started.

Similarly we have ‘twin peaks night’ where you bake cherry pie, and have it with ‘damn fine coffee’ while watching the show.

We call all spiders ‘Roy Hobbs’ so if we see a spider we’ll say ‘Roy Hobbs is in the bath again’. I think that came from a daily mash article about spiders and it said ‘spider, Roy Hobbs, told us…’

We call rabbits ‘loaves’ and no one knows what we’re talking about. We have two rabbits so it will go, ‘I’m just going to feed the loaves’ ‘we need to buy food for the loaves while we are out’ or It spiralled into replacing the word ‘love’ in songs with ‘loaf’ so ‘crazy little thing called loaf’ or ‘loaf in an elevator’ (just makes me picture a rabbit in a lift.

DH and I sing songs to the dog with his name in them. We also (along with DD25 who lives at home) use a teenage boy type voice to be "the voice of the dog" re things we think he's thinking... and hold full conversations with each other and "him".

DH and I have lots of songs with deliberately changed lyrics which we remain very amused by and sing often .. eg Gloria (Flash Dance) is "Glory Hole" (it never gets old for us!)

DH and I see how many languages/accents we can use in one sentence.

it started because he once accidentally ordered dinner in 3 different languages and I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. I can’t speak anything other than English so I just try out different accents.

Will go RTFT now but this morning DH and I were trying to get a battery out of a packet at about 6am and I turned to him and asked him why these things are so ‘flinging flanging hard to open?’ We’re clearly of a same vintage!

Ex husband and I had loads, but many of the traits have now been passed on to my DS. A couple that come to mind are:

When we go for a supermarket shop we hiss sing to the psst psst heartbeat sound from War of the Worlds - "weee-ooo, wuh-ooo, big shop, big shop"

If we get offered, or offer one another a dessert we look at each other and say "poooooo-ding" like the David Walliams character, Vulva, from Spaced.

Ooh right, thread read, here’s my other contributions:

If one of us says a passive sentence without naming a person eg yesterday’s was me saying ‘there’s been a drop out in the Tory leadership race’ the other one MUST respond ‘But for who, Kris Kamara?’ and then we do the whole bit…

We’ve been playing a game of Yellow Car for over a decade

We’ve also been playing The Game since 2012 (sorry to anyone also playing 😔)

If we see a man with a shirt off first to say ‘Hello bambinos’ wins

Since the children have arrived it’s got worse. We spend a lot of time trying to Dance Mode each other.

Oh and one I love - this is a bit outing but fuck it - neither of us know why, but late DFil and DMil had a thing when, if someone mentions the moon, you have to put on an exaggerated West Country accent and say ‘Never mind the moon!’. DH has no idea why it became a thing but they would have started it in the mid 70s. DH and I now do it (and DFil departed this earth before I met DH!). These things can course down the generations if they’re strong ☺️

You lot (and your relationships) are brilliant.

I LOVE what a bunch of dorks we all are 😂

my husband died in April of this year, and it is those silly couplism’s that I miss the most. This is a bitter sweet post to read. We had lots and lots, but one that never leaves my head is Thursday bin night, ready for Friday morning, when he would come in from work shouting “bins, bins, bins etc” and we would all scout around the house collecting bins ready for taking out. Frequently I would answer the phone to him on Thursday evenings and he would shout bins, bins and then put the phone down😆. What a lovely thread ❤️

Ah, @Completelydonechick I'm so, so sorry you've gone through that this year.

Will be thinking of you and your husband and the bins tomorrow evening 😊

We have "good moaning" and "poo-dang" in fake French accents too! I'm remembering more as I read. We pronounce a lot of English words in fake foreign accents tbh!

Oh thank you for sharing this. It’s really brave of you. Xxxx

What a lovely thread.

When DH is in need of a shave I call him beardface. He responds with an angry "it's beard facé (scrubs reference).

My genitals have also been renamed as "my covers" as he was trying it on one day and pulled the duver off of me and my first reaction was to shout "oi, get off my covers"!

Husband and I often randomly start shouting at each other in a scouse accent (we live, and were born, in Hertfordshire).. reminiscent of Thomas from MAFS UK a year or so ago. The pitch and the volume rising as we go.. "You're dragging my name through the mud!". Then suddenly return to our southern accents.

This made me laugh......me too; I know there ARE things, but can't name them.

We communicate through blinks in the company of others. For example, if someone says something we find totally outrageous we’ll blink quickly at each other, if one of us is tired/bored then it’s a slow blink, if it’s an awkward moment then we do wide eyes and blink quickly, if we’re calling bullshit on something someone’s said then it’s a squinty blink…. I’m surprised nobody around us has cottoned onto it yet and called us out for bizarrely blinking across at each other, but either they haven’t noticed or think we’re too weird to address it with us.

Oh us too!

Also, and this is as a direct result of 9/11 (ironic given today's date) we have a strict rule that we never part or go to sleep without saying I love you so that if anything should happen, that will be our last memory of the other.

You are Kamala Harris and I claim my £5

What a brilliant thread.

The PP who says "Good moaning" reminded me that we say "Moan then" when we're ready to go somewhere.

It started after DS aged about 8 went to Edinburgh for a few days with his best friend to stay at his friend's very lovely granny's house. When she was ready to take them out she'd say " 'mon then" for "C'mon then" but in her accent "mon" sounded like "moan".

DS had a great time but came home having been a bit puzzled at the moan thening. We all say it now.

Whenever one of us opens the fridge and takes out the cheese, the terrier appears like a ninja, she knows it's the cheese... Therefore we must sing the cheese tax song, and duly pay said tax. The other one is patting the other on the head and saying "that'll do pig, that'll do" whenever we've finished up a hard task... It's been a bit ridiculous lately as we've been fencing off some fields, so sore heads but done with affection and appreciation 😂

This may be a bit obscure except to film buffs, but whenever my OH and I see the shop Pull&Bear, my husband says,
‘They don’t call her Pullin’ Bear for nothing’, a saucy quote from the film ‘ Little Big Man’.
It is totally daft but makes us laugh every
time and that’s ‘the glory of love’

My husband says 'eyeballs to entrails, my dear' if I do something he thinks is cute. It's a buffy reference said by Spike when Dru asks if he loves her.

Don’t need to be in a couple me and my sis randomly quote mighty boosh phrases to each other or if it’s me, my sis and wee bro it’s usually movie quotes or badly dancing to our fave songs to make each other laugh