By Jill Suttie, Greater Good Magazine

Couples who embrace their own “microculture”—pet names, inside jokes, and rituals—may be happier and more satisfied with their relationship.

Do you have a pet name for your partner? I do, and many people I know do, too. Calling your loved one by a special nickname imbued with meaning—like “Bunny,” “Lumba,” or “Buncakes”—communicates in shorthand your unique connection and relational history.

Using pet names is just one example of what some researchers refer to as “microculture”—a combination of shared language, rituals, stories, histories, and more that evolve between small groups of people in close relationships and help sustain them. Maya Rossignac-Milon of Barcelona’s IESE Business School and her research collaborators are looking into how microculture could play a role in the very smallest of groups, romantic couples, and whether it holds clues to how these relationships thrive over time.

“People experience this commonly, and our initial research suggests that it’s super pervasive,” says Rossignac-Milon. “We are basically proposing that attraction and, more importantly, relationship satisfaction is something that’s created together in the moment.”

What microculture means for relationships

While much relationship research focuses on how individual traits (like extraversion, emotional expressiveness, or attachment style) affect relationship dynamics, Rossignac-Milon and her colleagues suggest that the development of microculture also plays an important part in couple formation, happiness, and relationship satisfaction.

“Two people can be quite different from each other, but, with microculture, they’re building something together that didn’t exist before their relationship, that’s totally unique to the two of them,” says Rossignac-Milon. “And it’s that process of cocreation that can be really powerful.”

When people fall in love, they start merging their identities in certain ways and expanding their sense of self to include the other person. Creating a special microculture, consisting of inside jokes, pet names, repeated stories, and more, is one way couples cement their special connection.

What does this look like in practice? Rossignac-Milon says there are three core factors that move everyday interactions into the realm of microculture:

  • Mutuality: Something experienced and understood by both members—for example, a special word or phrase you use to signal that you need to talk, like “Let’s jaw.”
  • Idiosyncrasy: Something unique to the two of you and not just part of a larger cultural system—for example, giving each other daisies instead of red roses on Valentine’s Day.
  • Self-referentiality: Something that speaks to your relationship history and unique connection—for example, deciding “Because the Night” is “your song” because it was playing the first time you danced together.

All three of these should be present for something to be part of your microculture. Consider this example. Every year, some friends of mine celebrate “the miracle of the tent,” a playful reference to the moment their platonic friendship turned unexpectedly romantic. Imbued with humor and meaning, this idiosyncratic holiday is part of their microculture, reinforcing their unique bond over time.

Shared origin stories are a common way that couples create microculture, helping to sustain their relationship. When they reminisce about turning points in their relationship and share their story with others, it can increase relationship satisfaction, research suggests. Couples who initiate nostalgic recollections of past shared experiences feel closer to their partners and are more committed. Perhaps that’s why my husband Don and I like to prompt people to share their origin story when meeting them for the first time. (Not to mention, they often ask us to return the favor—a win-win!)

Inside jokes can also express a couple’s microculture. For example, Don once bought me a t-shirt that he promised to wear with the words, “You’re right, dear,” printed on the front. I immediately got the joke—a humorous acknowledgment of times he’d insisted he was right about something when he wasn’t. Now it’s become a much-used catchphrase for admitting our mistakes. (He needs to say it more often than I do, of course).

Relationship rituals can also be part of your unique microculture if they are symbolically meaningful (and not just routine). Bringing coffee to your wife in bed on a silver tray might be your tongue-in-cheek way of acknowledging that she’s not a morning person and needs princess pampering. Or eating at the same Italian restaurant the first Friday of every month might be a nod to how you fell in love there over a plate of spaghetti. These small rituals communicate shared history and meaning, helping couples feel part of something special.

My colleague Katherine and her husband Brian developed a shorthand for recognizing moments when their dual-career family feels stretched thin. If either one needs to work late, instead of expressing frustration or being passive-aggressive, the other one says, “Thank you for doing that for our family.” This acknowledges that, while each of them would prefer to be relaxing with their kids and spouse, duty calls, and they’re doing the best they can to manage their work demands.

The unexpectedly deep roots of microcultures

Shared language, stories, and rituals are often the most visible aspects of microculture, says Rossignac-Milon. But, just like macrocultures, microcultures also involve a shared sense of identity, morality, and reality.

Romantic partners tend to form identities as a couple that are distinct from their individual identities and serve to strengthen their relationship. For example, they may consider themselves to be “cat people” or a “power couple.” When partners are clear about their identity as a couple, it’s tied to higher levels of commitment.

Having a shared moral code (shared values and norms) is also part of a couple’s microculture. This might include rules like never working on Sundays, requiring both people to apologize after a conflict, or being sexually exclusive on weekends only. If broken, these norms may elicit anger, hurt, or the need to repair; so, the extent to which they are agreed upon and easily managed strengthens a couple’s well-being.

A shared sense of reality supports couples in their relationship, too. In a study run by Rossignac-Milon and her colleagues, they found that couples who perceive an overlap in how they view the world with their partner feel less uncertainty and more meaning in life than if they think their partner diverges from their worldview. When experiments manipulate a couple’s sense of agreement on their perceptions to signal disagreement, the researchers found, couples will try to compensate by leaning more heavily on shared microcultural references, as if to repair the rift in their shared reality.

“People really care about this experience, and when it’s threatened, they want to protect their sense of, ‘No, we do have our own shared culture that we’ve developed together,’” says Rossignac-Milon.

While aspects of microculture within couples have mostly been described theoretically by drawing on past research, Rossignac-Milon and her colleagues have begun to research the overall concept more empirically, too.

In a currently unpublished study, she and her collaborators asked couples from diverse backgrounds to list three examples of each potential element of their microculture—from shared language to shared reality. Then, the couples kept daily diaries for two weeks, where they reported any references to their microculture that day and their feelings about their relationship. The researchers found that couples were happier with their relationship on days when their microculture was referenced more than usual. Also, looking at patterns across couples, those who referenced their microculture more were more satisfied with and committed to their relationship than those who referenced it less.

“People who tend to have more microculture and use it more are happier in their relationships and are more connected to and committed to their partners across the board,” says Rossignac-Milon.

The possible dark side of microculture

Though microculture may help couples feel more connected and committed, there can be dark sides to the phenomenon, too, says Rossignac-Milon. Just like how some macrocultural norms and behaviors can make groups more insular or encourage shared false beliefs, microcultures can sometimes become problematic.

For example, sharing perceptions or beliefs with your partner may increase your certainty in your viewpoint and boost your convictions, perhaps in a way that isolates you from others, says Rossignac-Milon. Similarly, you can sometimes reinforce unhealthy behaviors, like encouraging each other to smoke if you identify as a couple that smokes together, health risks be damned.

A more extreme example might be how microculture can develop into a shared psychosis or support abusive relationships, says Rossignac-Milon.

“If the rituals and norms that people establish together are toxic to begin with or have power dynamics that are fostering inequality and an asymmetry in the relationship, that can be dangerous,” she says. This suggests that couples should pay attention to any darker aspects of microculture that could have these nefarious effects.

How to use microculture in a positive way

On the plus side, knowing the importance of microculture in romantic relationships can help people make dating more productive, says Rossignac-Milon. Instead of just looking for “Mr. or Ms. Right”—someone who checks off your boxes in terms of traits you want in a partner—pay attention to what’s created between you when spending time together. That playful banter or those surprising connections are part of what makes people feel like they click.

“Microculture is all about the experience of interacting and creating inside jokes and ways of using words that you have together and matter so much,” says Rossignac-Milon. “Letting yourself lean into that and using that as a diagnostic cue could be one important signal of compatibility that people are not always attending to.”

To encourage more of that special connection, she suggests taking small risks and not just saying what you think is expected of you. Those little idiosyncrasies or moments of vulnerability can serve to attract someone to you more than what’s on their resume.

“Put yourself out there and use a funny word or do something that’s a little bit different from what others might do,” she suggests. “Those are the things that can easily turn into inside jokes and microculture that you can reference back to.”

Couples in ongoing relationships can also benefit from paying attention to their microculture, she adds. It’s sometimes more natural to do that early on in a relationship and then neglect it over time. But continuing to reference your microculture and building on it is a way of keeping your relationship strong.

“The more that people can keep growing their microculture, the more they can continue to reap those relational benefits,” says Rossignac-Milon.

To nurture your microculture, it’s helpful to keep a spirit of joint creativity alive in your relationship and to introduce new experiences, inside jokes, rituals, and more. Otherwise, they can get old and stop having the same beneficial effect—similar to the way jokes can get stale and less funny over time, says Rossignac-Milon.

On the other hand, there’s no need to put pressure on yourself, either, she says. Building rapport through microculture is something that anyone can do, regardless of who you are.

“Jointly riffing, this kind of playful cocreation, may be something that some people are naturally good at, but it’s also a skill that can be developed by anyone, as long as they’re coming into it with spontaneity and a willingness to be a little bit vulnerable.”

Keywords; relationships, psychology