Playing Toward Connection
An RCT card deck for helping couples name disconnection, explore relational patterns, and imagine what could change
When couples feel more like roommates than partners or find themselves caught in a cycle of conflict without meaningful repair, it can be hard to name what’s missing or imagine a way forward.
BCC’s couples cards give clinicians a place to begin. Thoughtful prompts and practical skills help couples explore disconnection, find words for their experiences, and understand the patterns they bring to their relationship. The cards open meaningful conversations, make room for new possibilities, and invite fresh energy into the work at a pace that honors each couple’s readiness.
Read the Cycle of Growth text
Cycle of Growth
This 18-card Couples deck offers a gradual path through uncertainty and disconnection. The cards do not prescribe an outcome. They help the clinician and couple discover where meaningful movement may be possible.
Set 1: Notice
Explore the relationship by identifying underlying emotions, normalizing fears and uncertainty, and reflecting on the central paradoxes of long-term relationships. The goal is to foster hope, curiosity, and deeper connection.
Set 2: Understand
Understand relational patterns, internalized narratives, and strategies of disconnection. It normalizes their current stage of the relationship while examining past experiences feeding ongoing disconnection. Deepen understanding and create safety for authenticity.
Set 3: Practice
Deconstruct stuck relational cycles and build on insights developed earlier. By exploring the cycle of connection, couples see the bigger story of their relationship. Create opportunities for change, strengthen relational experiences, and foster deeper connection.
Set 4: Repair
Embrace “good conflict” and develop tools to disrupt cycles explored in Set Three. Practice new ways of responding to harmful patterns. Explore alternative outcomes, embrace authenticity, and build a foundation for more meaningful connection.
Ways to use the cards
Conceptualize connection
Clinicians can use the cards to explore relational dynamics outside of session, alone or in supervision, without bringing the cards directly into the work. The cards can map out sessions for increased clarity and possibility.
Help Couples
Use cards to describe outside relationships, family of origin, or favorite fictional relationships. Have the couple choose a card to take home to explore between sessions. Map out experiences for clarity.
Play Together
Play creates space for a couple to safely experience risk and navigate fear together. The cards give them something tangible to help them name patterns and imagine new possibilities.
A closer look
Play
Play is a relational practice of shared exploration through games, stories, and imagination.
In a mutually shaped experience, play lets us risk new ways of relating, be changed by one another, and discover possibilities for connection before we can name them.
When do you play, and which areas of your life need more playfulness?
BCC · 2024
Play — illustrated face
Play — written face
Make room for choice
The cards offer possibilities. Couples can choose what feels useful, decide what they want to explore, and help shape the conversation. Clinicians can follow that curiosity while making room for uncertainty, authenticity, and new ways of relating.