What are Marital Rituals?

Rituals are social interactions that are repeated, coordinated, and significant. This is the classical, anthropological definition going back to van Gennep’s work in 1908. Rituals can be everyday interactions, or they could be once a year, but they’re repeated. They’re also coordinated. You have to know what is expected of you in a ritual; you can’t have a meal ritual together if you don’t know when to show up for it, and you can’t dance together if you don’t know what kind of dance you are going to do. You’re not going to have much of a sexual life if you don’t end up in the same space at the same time. Rituals are not only repeated and coordinated, they are significant. A ritual is something that has positive emotional meaning to both parties.
This matter of significance is what distinguishes a ritual from a routine. A marriage routine is something that you do over and over in a coordinated way, but that does not have much emotional meaning. You can have dinner together as a couple every night, while one of you watches television and the other reads the paper. This is probably a routine because it lacks emotional significance. Of course, one couple’s routine might be another’s ritual. I have a friend who is very busy, as is her husband (their kids are grown). She told me about the mundane activity she and her husband do every Saturday that helps her feel close to him: they do errands. For them, this is a ritual of connection. You see, if they did their shopping efficiently, they would divide up, right? Rituals are not efficient; they are about connection. So my friend and her husband do errands together and talk along the way. I bash TV all the time, but I know a couple who, when they watch a favorite TV show, sometimes take turns giving each other a shoulder rub, with one sitting on the floor and the other on the couch.
Almost anything can be turned into a ritual of connection, if the focus is on the relationship. Some couples check in with each other by phone a couple of times a day. It’s only a ritual, though, if both of them know it’s a connection time. If just one person likes to call and the other person says, "Yep, yep, busy, busy, I’ll talk to you later," this is not a ritual, because it is not coordinated--and it’s probably not emotionally significant either. In fact, the demand-withdrawal cycle ruins rituals; both people have to be into it.
I divide marriage rituals into rituals of connection, rituals of intimacy, and rituals of community. Examples of a connection rituals include good-byes in the morning, greetings in the evening, and going out for coffee and conversation. I talked to a woman who said she and her husband always say "I love you" when they part in the morning, because they never know that they will see each other again. Working in the garden together can be a connection ritual. I’ll have more to say later about greeting rituals.
Intimacy rituals include dates where you’re going out to have some special time together, patterns of sexual intimacy, and special occasions such as anniversaries or Valentine’s Day. By the way, I think anniversaries are the least intentionally celebrated ritual in the American family. You ask most people about their anniversaries, and they respond sheepishly that they don’t do much for it. Anniversaries they tend to occur on days like Tuesday, most of the rest of the world doesn’t know about it, and there are kid events to go to. But anniversaries are really the birthday of our marriage, and we tend to let them go without much ritual.
Community rituals are couple activities where the partners give and receive support in their larger world, such as joint involvement in a religious community, neighborhood activities, joint friendship activities, and joint community action. I have become aware recently through an initiative I have been working on, called Family Life 1st (FamilyLife1st.org), that faith communities tend to offer opportunities and committee involvement mainly for individuals, not for couples. Few couples seem to have a couple identity as members of their faith community. Why not have couples who co-chair activities, for example? Faith communities create rituals of community for couples only at the time of the wedding, then drop them, unless someone in the family plans a community rituals 25 or 50 years later. It’s shameful, really, how little the ritual life of most faith communities has touched the life trajectory of marriage beyond the launching stage.
Rituals have been an invisible and neglected area of marriage, even if our own field. We have tended to focus on communication skills and conflict skills, which of course are crucial, but my view is that often it’s the rituals of connection and intimacy and community that provide the foundation upon which we build when we try to engage conflict management skills. To switch metaphors, the rituals put the water in the well, the water we drawn on during times of conflict and struggle.