My husband and I are in an interesting season of our marriage— he’s working the most he has ever worked in his life as a mailman at around 70-80 hours a week, whereas I am doing a hybrid role working from home part-time with our puppy and in the office part-time. So lately, our time together is very limited and precious. Our sacred quality time is in the evenings when he gets off work— we eat home cooked meals or takeout together and watch television while he recovers from his 10-12 hour days. And on his very limited days off, we really squeeze the most out of them, getting up early to get our weekly starbucks breakfast fix and spending a relaxing day in catching up on life things. When he’s lucky to have multiple days off in a row, we use one day for social endeavors and the other as a total relaxing couch potato day.

On our sleepy days in, something we’ve really found we enjoy doing together is playing Mario Kart. This is not a new thing in our relationship— it’s something we bonded over early on in our first months of dating. When we bought a Nintendo Switch in the middle of the pandemic (mostly for me to join the ranks of nostalgia gamers to play Animal Crossing), Mario Kart was immediately the next game we bought. I have fond memories of playing Mario Kart for hours on end during one of hottest summers in Seattle on record. We sweated it out in our cramped basement apartment drinking white claws and playing Mario Kart every evening for weeks. It has always been a fun activity for us to do together, and we realized pretty early on it was also a fun way for us to catch up about our days and our innermost thoughts while playing.

The funny thing is, a study came out in 2022 that says Mario Kart is actually one of the most stressful video games ever created. But for us, it’s the opposite. Jake and I both grew up playing it, and the courses are so entrenched in our memories that we have gotten to a point where it’s actually really comforting to drive the familiar roads. Funnily enough— we both find the chaos of being pelted with red shells and slipping on bananas to be a nice background noise for a deep conversation.

We realized recently that this probably should have been one of the first signs to the both of us that I had ADHD. Many people with ADHD often end up doing multiple things at once, as they have trouble focusing on a single task at a time— for me, doing tasks with something playing in the background has always been how I’ve existed. But this could also be thought of as ‘stimming’ — which is doing something repetitively that calms your nervous system so you can better focus on the task at hand. Think of fidget spinners, for example, a little toy you spin in between your fingers, which have been found to help ADHD kids focus in school and other settings. “They help ground and distract the hyperactive body so the mind can pay attention.”

For me, that’s kind of what Mario Kart became— a repetitive thing to do with my hands while my greater focus could be on the in-depth conversation with my husband. And as we both have ADHD, this is something that we realized actually was really bonding and relaxing for the both of us.

Now, I know what it might sound like— how can playing video games side by side while having a conversation really be that much quality time? But for us, it’s something that we really look forward to, and arguably some of the best conversations we’ve had have been with Mario Kart on in the background. It’s a funny thing that we do that works for our relationship and our limited time together. It’s a way to unwind and relax, and is a uniquely nostalgic thing for the both of us. I love that as an unanticipated side effect, it has also turned into a vehicle for deep conversation and greater connection. It feels like a way to both enjoy our free time in a nostalgic universe and catch up at the same time— and I think our relationship is better for it.