Advancing and Expanding the day with your partner for a fun and quick date night idea – Love Vitamins for Relationships
Have you ever been in a situation when you ask your partner about their day and all you get in response is “it’s been the same” or “fine”. How about if we tell you that you can gamify this mundane question of “how was your day honey” to make it more fun. It’s an activity we call “Advancing and Expanding” and all it takes to play is 5 minutes with your partner and their attention.
When given a time constraint, an Advancer is someone who likes to rush through the events to get to the end of their story whereas an Expander is someone who is comfortable to dwell in the details and having an incomplete story. Find out whether you are an Advancer, Expander or somewhere in between?
How does this help? It helps build a more meaningful bond between partners and a healthier, every single day. We’ll explain more but let’s first play.
Activity
A fun and gamified way to share among partners more about each other’s day. Here’s how the activity works
🙋♀️ One of the partner is the Storyteller. Your role is to start by sharing more about how you spent the day. When you hear EXPAND, stay on the event you just mentioned and give details. Continue giving details until you hear ADVANCE, after which you move on to the next event of the day. Continue for 2 minutes.
🧟♀️ The other partner is the Listener. With the power to use only two keywords “Advance” and “Expand”. Say EXPAND to have the Storyteller share more details about what they just mentioned. Say ADVANCE to move ahead to the next event of the day.
🔀 Switch roles. Play daily or when needed. Increase time as you see fit.
This game has the most impact when you’ve spent the day away from each other. That makes sure the two stories shared are different and have more room to explore.
Listen to our example in the podcast episode using the links above OR check out the super cute reel on our Instagram account.
Takeaways
- Find a time-bound way to share about your day with your partner while sharing the responsibility of storytelling
- Find opportunities in your day to savor the small moments that can easily slip away
- Give your partner the control to be curious and learn more about your day – encouraging them to use the keyword Expand to dive into more details
Inspiration
Our activity was inspired by an Improv exercise, which is used to explore environments in more details. You can learn more about the Advance and Expand from this improwiki link.