Relationships in the COVID-era have made us more digitally native. We use tools such as Google Docs, Notion, and Miro in our daily work lives. If you’re anything like me and my partner, who do things with a touch of nostalgia and nerdiness, you can use them in your personal lives too. Here are three great ideas that you can try in your relationship that will be sure to bring your partner to smiles, giggles, and geek tears.
1. Document your journey on a Relationship Journal
During the beginning of our relationship, we created a shared document on Notion that we used to not just journal our memories and discussions together, but also to make plans for the future. This document created a very strong bond that has kept us close to this day. Here are a few fun things we documented.
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The normal stuff we wanted to talk about and plan
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The important dates and milestones in our relationship
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Our travel bucket lists for planning future trips
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Our goals so we could support and hold one another accountable
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Our reading lists so that we can share what each of us is learning
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Our relationship principles and protocols for when things go wrong
Here’s a glimpse of what it all looks like:
This shared document has served as a reminder of what we’ve experienced together as a couple. We’ve learned to value each other more as independent human beings who have a life together and apart from each other. If you need more reasons why you should consider documenting your relationship on Notion, I’ve written a whole blog post as well as how you can get started.
If you’re looking to plan a romantic valentine’s day evening or a birthday gift, you can get my template here and spend 3 nostalgic hours filling it up together. Else you can go one step further, pre-fill it and surprise them with a printed copy.
2. Play this game with Post-it Notes to learn about each other
If you’re new in your relationship and curious to learn about what your partner thinks of different topics in the universe, this game with post-it notes is a fine bet to keep you hooked for 2-3 hours. The game encourages conversations and helps reveal likes and dislikes on different things on a quantitative scale. As each opinion has a story, your relationship becomes stronger when you become aware and gradually accept the different life experiences the other person has had, which helped shape their perspectives and beliefs.
The instructions on how to play can be found here and for those couples in long-distance relationships, I have a Miro template available for free in the above link.
3. Write a research paper about them and their life
Alright so this one’s going to be difficult for those tight on time, but it’s easily one of the nerdiest things you can do for your partner. For this, I put my scientist hat on and described my partner as a rare and novel discovery amongst the human species. Here’s an excerpt from the paper:
Given the right amount of time and connections to their friends, it is fairly easy to put together a short research article about your partner. I followed the following steps in getting this done -
1. Create a skeletal document on Google Docs with an outline of section headings. I went for the five sections listed in (i) to (v) in the screenshot above.
2. Hit up all their friends who will do anything for them. Ask them to prepare one figure and a couple of lines of description to feature in the paper
3. Create humorous figures using Miro and Canva. Pro tip - Canva’s background remover tool is a phenomenal feature for quickly creating meme-worthy figures.
4. Block out a window of time (>= 8 hours) to write out the sections in nerd language. If writing is not your fortè, hit up one of your friends in academia to assist you with the tone of the paper. (Remember, everything in life is figure outtable!)
5. Compile all your writing, diagrams, and contributions from your partner’s friends in the Google Doc. Add an abstract and a conclusion section that summarizes the paper.
6. Hire a LaTeX expert on Fiverr to give your document that research paper polish. They should be able to turn this around to you in 2-3 days so be sure to keep that buffer when you start.
If you manage to successfully pull this off, the paper is bound to make them tear up at how special you made them feel.
So, what are you waiting for? Rather than gifting a generic heart-shaped box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day or a video compilation from their friends for their birthdays, go one step further and play to your nerdy strengths to sweep your boo off their feet.
Also published here.