How couples stay connected when life gets busy
- Judith Mendiolea Lelo de Larrea
- Apr 20
- 7 min read
Ryan and Becky Pineau fell in love as teens, but this PEI couple keeps their marriage healthy by prioritizing each other
Originally published by The Telegram Dec 18, 2025
Ryan Pineau was just a teenager when he first met her.
One of his friends had turned 16 and had a car, so the boys made a plan. They told their parents they were heading to Summerside to see a movie — but instead drove straight to Charlottetown, ready for adventure.
On a bitterly cold P.E.I. night on Dec. 27, 1999, they spotted a car full of “pretty girls” and followed them.
Once they convinced them to park, standing outside in the cold with his buddies, he asked for a girl’s name.
“Becky,” she said.
The group spent the rest of the night talking. Before they left, Ryan worked up the nerve to ask Becky for her phone number.
Unsure whether she actually wanted to talk to the boys again, Becky and her friends came up with a clever solution: she wrote her number on individual popsicle sticks — one digit per stick — and handed him the jumbled puzzle.
Yet, the future accountant knew he was good with numbers. First, he figured out the most likely area code and prefix for Charlottetown. Then, piece by piece, he tried combinations until he eventually reached her.
“I knew. Then and there,” Ryan said.
Twenty-six years later — 11 years of marriage and a daughter between them — the Pineaus said they are still finding small ways to stay curious about each other, even when the days feel overfull.
Why staying together is hard, and how often things change
Marriage and divorce trends in Canada have shifted significantly over the past few decades. Nationally, the divorce rate among married couples dropped from 12.8 divorces per 1,000 married persons between 1991–1995, to 7.7 per 1,000 between 2016–2020, according to Statistics Canada.
In the Atlantic provinces, the decline is similar. Among married couples in P.E.I., the divorce rate fell to 6.6 per 1,000 between 2016–2020.
Still, for many couples, pressures such as work, parenting and time-scarcity make maintaining connection difficult. That’s why what some call “dating your spouse” matters, not as occasional romantic outings, but as everyday acts of attention and care. That, said couples counsellor Hannah Terpstra, is the foundation of emotional safety. Lasting relationships depend on people feeling “seen, heard and valued,” she said, and that comes from daily habits, not one-time occasions.
What connection looks like in real life
For Ryan and Becky Pineau, connection takes the form of check-ins at the end of the day, often done on the couch with their phones in another room. If a hard conversation is coming, they get in the car and drive, sometimes for hours, until the words come easier.
“We’ll go for a drive just to talk,” Becky said. “It kind of takes the pressure off.”
Their everyday rituals aren’t glamorous: sharing memes throughout the day, walking through neighbourhoods, or running errands together just to extend the conversation. Once a year, they take a child-free trip, even if it’s close by.
“We make it a priority to hang out with each other and to connect with each other… We end the day with connection of like what was your day?” Becky said. “We’re chatting and there’s no other distractions… we make it a priority just to be present in the moment.”
They don’t call these dates. They call them life.
“Everything we do, we do for the story,” Ryan said. “We kind of just live for adventure… We just like to have stories. So we chase down things for the story.”
What makes relationships durable
Terpstra said the behaviours Ryan and Becky rely on are exactly the kind that sustain long-term partnerships.
Emotional safety shows up in those long drives where difficult conversations have room to breathe. “When people feel safe,” she said, “they’re far more likely to stay open, curious and compassionate.”
Terpstra works with The Gottman Institute method, a therapy model based on decades of relationship research. She said most couples she sees are not struggling because they argue too much, but because they speak in ways that shut each other down.
“People do just, they want to feel validated. They want to feel understood. We want to feel known,” she said.
One of the biggest red flags she sees in relationships is what the Gottman Institute calls the “four horsemen”: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.
“We can’t have a good healthy conversation, and you can’t have a healthy relationship if those four horses are sort of loose and running amok,” Terpstra said.
Instead, she teaches partners to slow down, summarize what they’ve heard and validate at least some part of each other’s perspective. “You can validate at least 10 per cent of what your partner is saying,” she said, a skill that can de-escalate conflict quickly.
Repairing conflict is not about agreeing on everything, she added, but building the bridge back to each other. “What helps with repair is that safe conversation… being able to both understand each other’s perspectives and work toward making that bridge.”
“We get that, we feel safe when we feel that we’re not being criticized, we’re being heard, our perspective is being validated,” Terpstra said. “The idea isn’t that we’re not going to ever have conflict to have a healthy relationship, but it’s more so that how do we actually fight right?”
Recent studies from universities in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario indicate that when couples engage with structured therapy models, such as the Gottman Method or Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), roughly 70 to 75 per cent report sustained improvements in communication, intimacy and conflict resolution.
Terpstra also talked about “bids for connection,” the small, everyday attempts to get your partner’s attention. These can be as simple as sending a funny photo, commenting on something trivial or asking a question that invites a longer conversation. What matters is responding.
“If we are tossing that ball back and forth, we’re going to have a good knit together… But if we’re dropping that ball of yarn… the only things left tying us together are we might have children together or a home,” Terpstra said.
Missing these bids repeatedly can lead partners to stop trying.
“Next time I’m going to think to myself, ‘Oh, they didn’t care last time, so I’m not going to do it.’ So bids are not thrown anymore if they’re dropped previously,” she said.
Another key behaviour is appreciating each other’s strengths. Ryan praises Becky’s ability to see possibilities. Becky said Ryan is “steady” and “kind.” Those recognitions reinforce stability.
A reflection on communication
Terpstra also highlighted the value of presence over performance.
“A stress-reducing conversation is essential, it really builds a sense of being a team,” she said. “What happens in this conversation is you would have one partner who's venting about their day… And the other partner is just being a safe space for them. They're showing a lot of empathy.”
A “safe space,” she explained, means listening without interrupting, judging or fixing. The goal is connection, not solutions.
“Sometimes one partner tends to be a fixer. And so we don't want fixing in this conversation… you're just there to listen, to hear, to empathize, to say things like, oh, I'm so sorry that happened, that sucks.”
Using soft communication, “I statements,” gentle starts to hard topics and validating even 10 per cent of what your partner is saying, can prevent conflict patterns from escalating, she added.
Time, burnout and the midlife pressure cooker
Both Ryan and Becky said the hardest stretch of their relationship happened when Ryan was working long hours in accounting, with little left to give at home.
“I would come home at 5 o'clock normal and we'd spend our evening together. And then after she went to bed, I'd go back to work, and I'd work,” Ryan said. “When we had a daughter… that just gets harder and harder to do. And I think it started to really weigh on our time together.”
One night, sitting around a campfire with friends, he realized how much of his life he was missing.
“I just came to the realization that if I didn't make changes, we weren't going to have those kind of family memories together. So I quit practically the next day.”
Terpstra said many couples reach similar breaking points, but often wait years longer than necessary before asking for help. That delay, she said, can make repair harder.
Work, burnout and parenting can drain the energy needed to maintain connection, she said, but small daily touchpoints — like quick check-ins or meaningful gestures, can keep couples from feeling like strangers.
“Dating” vs. “maintaining”: reframing what couples actually need
The idea of “dating your spouse,” Terpstra said, can create pressure for grand gestures. Real maintenance is quieter: listening without defensiveness, showing curiosity, responding to bids for connection and asking questions you haven’t asked in years.
Becky put it simply: “Make each other a priority… you’ve got to consciously work at it. It’s not just going to happen.”
For couples looking to reconnect without spending money, Terpstra recommended playfulness, non-sexual touch and gentle check-ins. “Taking time to play together, that’s a really big one… shake it up and play together, have fun together.”
“We usually go out at least once a month, just the two of us… that is just for us,” Becky said. “Priority is putting each other first.”
Those dates don’t have to be expensive. “We just drove around the other night… looked at Christmas lights… had tea and coffee and drove around and giggled,” Becky said.
Experts agree couples stay connected not through planned outings but through consistent behaviours that say: I’m here. I’m paying attention. I care.
Small ideas that cost nothing
Both interviews pointed to the same simple, low-cost habits:
• Checking in at the end of the day with no phones
• Going for a drive just to talk
• Sharing funny anecdotes (memes, jokes, moments at work)
• Sitting together without multitasking
• Walking or looking at neighbourhood decorations
• Asking thoughtful questions about feelings or memories
• Using conversation prompts or question cards (no brands)
These behaviours create the “micro-moments” that give relationships resilience, Terpstra said.
“We’re trying to live, not wait for retirement,” Ryan said. “Cram as much life into every day.”
It isn’t the dates that keep them close, it’s the way they pay attention. In the small rituals, the late-night drives, the shared jokes and the quiet check-ins, they keep returning to the same choice they made as teenagers: to show up, again and again, for the story.
Comments