We're just a team now, no longer a couple

You function. That’s the problem.

The handovers work, the appointments are in place, everyone knows what to do. There are no arguments, no unsettled scores, nothing you could complain about. And yet you feel as if you’re living with a colleague you get on well with.

This feeling isn’t a harbinger of a separation. It’s the predictable result of having talked about nothing but organisation for a year.

Why parents who function well are often the empty couples

Couples who argue loudly in this phase are better off in one respect: they’re still talking about themselves.

When everyday life gets tight, the first thing to be cut is whatever has no immediate purpose. In other words, the conversations without a goal. What’s left are the practical ones: Who’s doing pick-up, who’s doing the shopping, who has the appointment tomorrow.

That’s sensible and works brilliantly. And after a year you only know the other person as a function. You know exactly when he’ll be home. You no longer know what’s on his mind right now.

The moment it becomes noticeable usually comes when the child sleeps somewhere else for the first time. Suddenly you have an evening, and nobody knows what to do with it.

The two kinds of conversation

In every relationship there are two kinds of conversation, and they’re not interchangeable.

Organisation. Has a goal, a decision, a result. “Who’s taking him on Friday.” These conversations keep the business running.

Relationship. Has no goal. Nothing gets decided. You learn something about the other person that you didn’t know before. “I’ve been thinking all week about this thing my boss said.”

The second kind is what turns two people into a couple. It isn’t more important than the first. It’s just the one that goes first, because it feels like a luxury.

Almost every woman who tells me “we’re just a team now” hasn’t had the second kind of conversation for months.

The order almost everyone gets wrong

The first reflex is: We need to do more together again. Go out for dinner, to the cinema, a weekend away.

That’s the wrong order, and it’s the reason why so many couples are more disappointed after the well-meant evening than before. Two people who are no longer interested in each other also sit side by side in the restaurant and go home just as much strangers.

The smallest step that works isn’t doing things together. It’s interest. Asking questions. Telling each other things. Wanting to know what the other person feels.

Only once that’s back is going out for dinner worth it. Because then it’s no longer a rescue attempt, just a lovely evening.

What helps

Twenty minutes a day in which you take an interest in each other. This is the most effective and least popular measure I know. Unpopular, because it sounds like a rule.

The rule is simple: in these twenty minutes nothing gets arranged, nothing gets sorted out, nothing gets decided. No appointments, no money, no household, no parenting questions. And it’s not enough to sit next to each other. You ask.

If you can’t think of anything, that’s exactly the information. Start with a question:

“What has been on your mind this week that had nothing to do with us?”

Twenty minutes a day works better than one evening a month, because the evening a month carries too much expectation. Nobody can catch up on a whole year on a Tuesday evening.

A question neither of you has answered yet. Not “how was your day”. But something that has no routine answer. “How do you actually notice that I’m doing well?” Or: “What has changed most for you in the last year?”

Ask more, instead of answering. The most common mistake in these conversations: one person tells something, and the other answers with their own version of it. A second question on the same topic brings more than any story of your own.

Afterwards, do something together that isn’t a project. A walk counts. The tax return doesn’t, even if you’re doing it as a pair. Renovating the flat doesn’t count either, however much of a joint effort it feels like. And as above: afterwards, not before.

Don’t wait for the big evening. The weekend away as a couple is a good thing and doesn’t solve this problem. What it solves is exhaustion. What’s missing here is regularity.

How to tell whether it’s more serious

There’s a difference between “we’ve lost sight of each other” and “I don’t feel anything any more”.

One sign that it’s still the first: you would be curious if you knew what he was thinking right now. You just can’t find him any more among all the organisation.

If the curiosity is gone too, if you’re really not interested, then that’s a different question, and it can’t be answered with twenty minutes a day. Then it’s about whether your connection is temporarily hidden or whether it has stopped.

Both happen. And it doesn’t help to talk the second possibility away if it’s the case.

What I’d like you to take with you

That you function is an achievement, not a weakness. Many couples don’t even manage that.

But functioning doesn’t protect you from drifting apart, it hides it. As long as the handovers work, nobody notices that for months nobody has asked how the other person is actually doing.

Don’t start with an evening. Start with a question.