Does exercising together make couples happier?

It’s happening again.

I’m moving around in the dark studio, draping cool, lavender-soaked towels across people’s eyes and foreheads, pressing their shoulders down with my hands during the last five minutes of an evening yoga class. I’m stepping over outstretched arms and legs during savasana, the final resting posture, when a guy’s hand reaches out and — yes! — wraps around the hand of the woman next to him.

They are totally on a yoga date.

I’ve seen this a lot since I started teaching yoga. Husbands and wives practicing together on a weekend morning or a weekday after work. Prospective couples trying out the whole fitness thing together and stealing glances and comments as the class moves along. Perhaps grabbing a glass of wine afterward.

And I see more established couples twining their fingers through each other’s during savasana, just like I’m witnessing now.

It’s all super cute to watch. And it brings up the question: Does exercising together make couples happier?

My frank answer: I don’t know, and I don’t care.

I’ve dated plenty of yogis, I’ve dated plenty of non-yogis. My current, serious, non-yogi boyfriend and I have never practiced in a class together, although we have jogged together. Two times, tops.

We’ve never made a point to do more than that.

In the context of our relationship, exercise is my time for me. I go for a quick run to zap stress or spark my serotonin levels, I mindlessly cycle at the gym and brainstorm work ideas or read a book. I huff and heave and drip sweat in peace.

Meanwhile, I practice yoga to explore my relationship with myself, rather than with someone else. My mat is my free space to sweat like a monster (hot yoga isn’t exactly romantic), to push myself to grow in strength and flexibility and patience, to drop whatever emotionally or mentally weighs me down before I go back into the day and back to my relationship(s).

I don’t care that my boyfriend and I don’t exercise together. We have enough post-work interests that overlap — social gatherings, arts events, cooking, reading, leisurely conversing, randomly adventuring — that we don’t look for exercise to be part of our relationship equation.

But if he spontaneously decides to finally take a hot yoga class with me this week? I’ll happily unroll his mat next to mine, sweat it out and soak up this one extra hour we get to spend in each other’s company.

As long as he doesn’t hold my hand in savasana. That’s still my time for me.

Photo: Rémy Thurston

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Does exercising together make couples happier?."