A lot of minor relationship friction comes from decisions that genuinely don't matter: where to eat, which show to start next, who texts the reservation back. Neither person has a strong preference. Both people are a little tired. A ten-minute circular conversation happens, the decision gets made, and both people feel vaguely annoyed in a way that wasn't really about the decision. Rock Paper Scissors doesn't fix relationships. It does fix this specific pattern, which comes up more often than most couples would admit.
The practical case is simple: the game is neutral, fast, and produces a result both people participated in creating. That last part is underrated. A coin flip is genuinely random but it feels arbitrary — someone got lucky. Rock Paper Scissors feels slightly more active because both people made a choice. Whether that distinction holds up under scrutiny doesn't matter much. What matters is whether the person who lost the throw can move on without lingering resentment, and people generally can when they felt like they had agency in the process.
There's also a competitive dynamic that works in favor of couples specifically. You're playing against someone you know well. Their tells, habits, and tendencies under mild pressure are more visible to you than they would be to a stranger. Over a long relationship, a dedicated observer can develop a meaningful read on their partner's throw tendencies. This information is less useful when the decision actually matters and more useful in the meta-game of enjoying the fact that you've been paying attention to someone closely enough to know what their hand does before they know.
The argument against using RPS for couple decisions is that some decisions should be made by the person with the stronger preference, and using a game sidesteps the conversation about what you actually want. That's fair. The game is not a substitute for communication. It's a substitute for the ten-minute conversation about where to eat when neither person genuinely cares about where they eat. Those are different situations. Knowing which one you're in is the only strategic skill required.
Couples who find a recurring use for RPS tend to describe it as one of the small rituals that makes a relationship feel like its own thing, distinct from just two people sharing an address. That's probably right. A two-second decision resolution mechanism that you've both agreed to use and that produces a winner in a way nobody disputes isn't just practical. It's a tiny shared system that you built together. Which is, in a small way, what a relationship is.