I'm sorry, but am I the only one who feels like utilizing brightly colored game cards in an effort to get a full grown man to participate in the maintenance of his own home some sick pantomime of teaching a small child how to do basic tasks??? Does no one else see how humiliating this is for a fully grown woman??
Or do we just not care? Like humiliation and degradation is just a feature of women's lives??
I've always had secondhand embarrassment about these weird relationship playing cards. Maybe it's because I play a lot of card games myself (MTG, traditional card games like Poker, Texas Hold 'Em, ERS, etc., tarot and tarocchia), but these "Conversation Starter" type cards just give me the ick. They seem like a very immature and tactile way to approach issues in a relationship, much like the way you mentioned about how they seem to be used to teaching a small child.
I have a friend who is married to a man who swears by these types of card decks because they're "designed" to "help" you get to know the people in your life. I attended a talk for work where the speaker, a businesswoman entrepreneur, also mentioned using cards like these in her marriage, her friendships, with her children...it all felt very weird and just silly. They're also the same demographic of woman talking up these kinds of cards. I think that says something to what their marketability is supposed to be: nostalgic, retro, hands-on therapy approach but in a soft, accessible, "fun" way. Also very based in cons00ming: "ooooh you can buy a fun new accessory for a better relationship!!"
I can understand how using therapeutic tools might help people, but the very existence of cards like these speaks to a deeply cultural insecurity we have developed over the past few decades. Using cards like this really does feel like play therapy to me.
*shuffles deck* "Okay, I tap four manna to ask you what the hell your problem is. Once you enter the battlefield, my 1/1 counters make it so that you take two damage each time you try to gaslight me."
washing dishes is mindless enough that illegal immigrants can do it while high on cocaine.
And have FUN while doing it!!! That's why the back of every industrial kitchen in America sounds like THIS:
People are dancing, laughing, snorting lines off of a meat cleaver...surfaces are being wiped down, dishes are being cleaned, sauce bottles are being refilled...front of house is putting the stools on the bar and vacuuming and the Spanish announcer is louder than that, sitting in a metal mixing bowl being used as a speaker...it's closing time on a Saturday night somewhere in my mind

...
He's not an immigrant skiing the slopes!