The Card That Made Glen Go Quiet: Our Night With We're Not Really Strangers

Glen is not a quiet man. He surveys land for a living, which means he spends his days alone in a truck with his thoughts, and by the time he gets home he has a lot of them. Most nights he talks my ear off while I put dinner on the table, and I usually have to ask him to repeat himself twice. So when he went quiet at our kitchen table on a Thursday night in late October, I noticed.

We were about twenty minutes into our first night with We're Not Really Strangers. I had bought the deck on a Tuesday after a week where Glen and I had said maybe forty words to each other that weren't about groceries or the water heater. The package arrived on a Friday, and I set it on the counter next to the bread box and let it sit there for three days before I got up the nerve to open it. Thirty-one years married, two kids out of the house, and we had turned into logistics roommates. I didn't want to have another conversation about having conversations. I wanted a reason to sit down and actually look at him.

The deck arrived in a sturdy little box, heavier than I expected, and the instructions were simple: take turns drawing, answer honestly, and don't rush. No points, no winners, no way to lose except by dodging. We cleared the mail off the table, poured two mugs of tea, and started at 7:20. I remember the time because I checked my watch when Glen reached for the first card.

The early cards were easy. What do you appreciate about me that you don't say enough? Glen said he liked the way I still make his coffee without asking, even after all these years. What's something I do that makes you feel cared for? I told him I felt cared for when he took the recycling out without being asked, which sounds small and is not. We smiled, we answered, we remembered why we liked each other. Then Glen drew a card that made him go quiet.

The card said something about the version of me Glen married and the version he lives with now, and whether he missed the first one. He read it twice. Then he set the card down and stared at the middle of the table for what felt like a full minute. I have known this man since he was twenty-two. I have seen him at hospital bedsides and job sites and both of our children's graduations. I have rarely seen him look that exposed.

When he finally spoke, he didn't answer the question the way the card asked it. He said, 'I don't miss her. I just forget she's still in there sometimes.' And then he told me about a version of me he missed, and I told him about the version of him I missed, and neither of us was angry. The words came out slowly at first, then all at once, like he had been saving them up for years. We were just honest, the way you are at 2 a.m. with someone you trust, except it was 7:40 on a Thursday and we were both fully awake.

He said, 'I don't miss her. I just forget she's still in there sometimes.'

We played for another hour, until the tea went cold and the kitchen clock ticked past nine. Some cards made us laugh. One made me tear up. A few we answered and then sat with, because We're Not Really Strangers does not let you rush past a good answer. One card asked what I would do with a completely free day, and Glen answered for me before I could, which surprised me, because he usually lets me speak first. The questions are arranged in three levels, and the deck tells you to move through them in order, which means the night builds. You start with the easy warmth and end up somewhere you could not have gotten on your own.

I am not a therapist, and I am not going to tell you that a card game can fix a broken marriage. It cannot. If you are in a marriage with real safety concerns, or if you are in crisis, please talk to a licensed professional. But I will tell you this: Glen and I had already tried the Sunday-evening check-ins, the communication books with the highlighted passages, the worksheets with the boxes we never filled in. We gave each one a fair shot and then let it slide, because structure was never the problem. We are not people who needed more structure. We are people who needed someone else to ask the question we were too proud or too tired to ask ourselves.

We're Not Really Strangers did that. The cards are specific enough to be uncomfortable and gentle enough to be safe. The instructions tell you to look at each other while you answer, which sounds like a small thing and is not. We have played it three times since that first Thursday night, twice more at the kitchen table and once on the couch after dinner, and every time we have learned something we did not know we were hiding.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you and your person have been talking about the water heater a lot lately, this deck is a good reason to stop. Take it from a woman who spent a whole year talking about radiators and grocery lists and nothing else. Clear the table, pour something warm, and give yourselves one hour. You do not have to finish the deck. You do not have to answer every card perfectly. You just have to look at each other and not look away first. That is the whole game, and it is harder than it sounds, and it is worth it.