Partner Pen Play in Parallel (PPPiP): A New PPPiParadigm for Relationship Improvement

Abstract

Healthy romantic relationships contribute to human physical health and emotional well-being. Technologies that catalyze human sexuality such as silicone sex toys and video-conferencing are increasingly common today, and disruptive sexological artifacts such as sexbots are speculated to eventually compete directly with human-human sexuality. The consequences of these evolutionary transitions in human sociosexual behavior are entirely unknown at the individual or collective scale. Here we introduce Partner Pen Play in Parallel (PPPiP), the act of simultaneous improvisational drawing on paper without clinical supervision. In this prospective article we sketch out what PPPiP is, then provide interdisciplinary evidence from art therapy, sexology, affective neuroscience, and aesthetics to support PPPiP as a useful strategy for relationship development. PPPiP combines the advantages of individuated artistic practice with the established frameworks of improvisation and dyadic relationship interventions. Relative to traditional art therapy practices, PPPiP is less clinically oriented, features fewer external constraints, and directly encourages the dynamic integration of artistic creation with relationship co-creation. PPPiP emphasizes the importance of narrative structure and controlled novelty at multiple scales in intimate partnerships, connecting art therapy practices more directly to recent neuropsychological research. Evidence from brain imaging in improvisational and aesthetic contexts supports a model in which PPPiP synergistically activates motor and cortico-limbic neural circuits associated with skilled emotive-creative processes. PPPiP thus represents a transdisciplinary answer to the question of what will we carry from our sociosexual past towards a healthier textosexual future.