The couples who last, the friendships that endure, the families that do not become strangers — they all share a private language of play, an inside joke the world outside cannot see. Nasreddin's relationship with his wife was famously contentious in the stories, but even those arguments have a game quality: two people who had found their native form of play and called it marriage. A relationship without play is not a relationship in any interesting sense — it is a contract.
Each step builds on the last.