From “The 80-80 Marriage” by Nate Klemp.
“Kaley swung around in her office chair. “I told you, it drives me nuts when you don’t put your shoes away. And it’s not my job to put away your crap.” One week in and the fight for fairness—the fight over who’s doing more and who’s doing less, who cares more and who cares less—had begun.” (p. xi)
“Six years into our marriage, things got even more complicated. We had a baby girl, and suddenly we weren’t just bickering over the mundane tasks of domestic life and extended family logistics. Now the entire structure of our lives—from our finances to our work ethic to our careers to what we did during our increasingly rare “free time”—was up for grabs. We soon discovered that we had no clue how to answer some of the most basic questions in married life: Who pays the credit card bill? Who cooks dinner? Who books airplane tickets when we travel? Who schedules our daughter’s dentist appointments? Who takes care of her when she’s sick? And who picks her up from daycare?” (p. xiii
“Looking back, it’s now clear. This fight had nothing to do with picking up our daughter. It was about something deeper: fairness. This fairness fight almost ended our marriage. But it’s also the fight that led us to change it.” (p. xiv)
“We also discovered that most modern couples grapple with a similar list of challenges. Almost everyone we spoke with reported living in a constant state of busyness, a harried feeling of never having enough time. One woman told us, “I go through life just wishing someone would give me an hour.” Another told us, “I’m used to getting an A-plus in life, but I’m so spread thin right now that everyone in my life—my husband, my kids, my employees—gets a C or a C-minus from me.”” (p. xv)
“In chapter one, we’ll explore how we got here, via the 80/20 model. Think 1950s Pleasantville, a time when rigid and unjust gender norms defined marriage. The man’s job is to work, achieve, and provide. The woman’s job is to raise the kids, manage the social calendar, and make sure her husband comes home to a clean house and a wonderful meal each evening. In this arrangement, women contribute 80 percent, if not more, of the time, energy, and emotional work of marriage. Men get away with 20 percent. While the problems with this model are now painfully obvious, we’ll examine the subtle structural virtue of this arrangement that has fallen away over the past seventy years. In chapter two, we’ll explore where we are now, the 50/50 model. Thanks to a growing consensus around gender equality, both partners now have the cultural stamp of approval to become a hard-charging executive, a path-breaking scientist, or a rock star.” (p. xviii
“This move toward an 80/80 marriage involves two big shifts. The first is a shift from a mindset of fairness to one of radical generosity, which shapes what we do, what we see, and what we say. The second is a shift away from the restrictive roles of the 80/20 model and the confusion of the 50/50 model to a new structure, one organized around shared success, designed to help us navigate roles, priorities, boundaries, power, and sex more skillfully.” (p. xix
“And at the end of the day, when Melissa asks Josh to read the book she’s interested in, why let him off the hook with a simple OK? What would happen if she revealed her frustration, saying, “Having this conversation about improving our marriage is important to me. I really want you to read the pages I flagged sometime next week so that next Saturday night we can have this conversation.” (p. 179
“While it’s easy to think it’s the big moments that define our experience of marriage—the weeklong trip to Costa Rica or that romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at an expensive restaurant—it’s really the other 99 percent of life’s moments, the ones shaped by microscopic habits, that create the atmosphere of our life together. Our entire day is made up of these microscopic moments. These habits can be things like giving your partner a hug when they return from work—good habit. Bragging about your partner’s latest win at work in front of friends—good habit. Leaning over to your partner in bed before you fall asleep each night to offer a kiss and say, “I love you”—another good habit.” (p. 190)
“That’s the power of mindset. It sounds subtle, but what you choose to see in your marriage colors your experience of your life together. It has the power to turn every waking moment into a relentless stream of reasons to feel angry, resentful, or disappointed. But it also has the power to turn every moment into an opportunity to see the unique strengths, insights, and contributions of your partner.” (p. 64
“The answer, drawn from thirty years of extensive research, boils down to what we witnessed in Amy and Eleanor: happy couples see things differently. According to Gottman, “There’s a habit of mind that the masters have, which is this: they are scanning the social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They’re building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully.”3 Happy couples, in other words, see the world of their marriage through this lens of appreciation.” (p. 65
“Gottman has even translated this skill of marriage masters into a simple formula: 5 to 1. Marriages that thrive experience five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. For every criticism, insult, or complaint, in other words, these couples express five compliments, appreciations, kisses, or gentle touches. Some couples take this even further.” (p. 65″Unhappy couples, by contrast, see their partners differently. They’re not looking for things to appreciate in each other. They’re scanning each moment to catch their partner screwing up. And when that happens—when their partner walks in the door late, forgets to pick up milk on the way home, or doesn’t follow through—they’re ready to berate them with criticism, passive-aggressiveness, or ridicule.” (p. 66)
“Because we’re all working against our own biology, it’s not enough to express appreciation when inspiration strikes. You can’t just wait for it to happen. You have to make it happen. In short, the way to reverse the momentum of our biology is through building the skill of appreciation the same way you might develop any other habit, such as flossing your teeth, volunteering once a month at your local homeless shelter, or going to a six a.m. Pilates class three times a week.” (p. 68)
“To overcome this challenge, it can be helpful to leverage the science of habit formation by setting up a regular cue—a reminder that helps you actually remember to express appreciation. One couple we spoke with, for instance, uses dinner as their cue. They start the meal by expressing appreciation for each other. For other couples, the time just before going to sleep, when they are lying in bed recapping the day, is the perfect time. This cue works like a life alarm clock (more on that in chapter fifteen). It’s your regular reminder to continue building the mindset of appreciation.” (p. 69)
“In fact, the more we talked to couples, the more we noticed a pattern. Appreciation and criticism work like deposits and withdrawals from a bank account. Thanking your partner for planning a trip—that’s a deposit in the emotional bank. Appreciating your partner in front of your family for cooking an amazing meal—that’s more money in the bank. Telling your partner that the way they eat is annoying—that’s a small withdrawal. Suggesting that your partner hit the gym a few more times each week to slim down their dad bod—that’s another withdrawal. Insulting your partner’s intelligence in front of friends at a dinner party—that’s the kind of withdrawal that brings you close to a zero balance.” (p. 70)
“What we learn from Mark and Jill is that taken by themselves, none of these minor disruptions in connection really matter. Each disagreement, disappointment, or issue has almost no impact on the health of your marriage. But when thousands of these issues accumulate over time, the impact can be catastrophic. As Jill observed, “When your hearts are getting pulled apart a quarter inch at a time, you don’t feel the quarter inch. But when a quarter inch is matched up with another quarter and another quarter and another quarter, you get to inches, and then feet and then miles apart.” (p. 74)
“Potholes are the low-grade sources of friction in relationships that are annoying but tolerable. They’re what Mark and Jill called slow fades. These aren’t the big fights about parenting philosophy, sex, money, or feeling controlled. These are the smaller but more frequent tiffs over trivial stuff such as feeling unappreciated after planning a vacation, bickering over which set of friends to see on the weekend, or saying you’re fine instead of asking your partner for what you really want.” (p. 77)
Reveal and Request
“The big idea here is that most of the everyday issues that pull us apart are either fixable or manageable, if—and this is a big if—we’re willing to communicate clearly about these issues as they arise.” (p. 78)
“Reveal Share your inner emotional experience:
“I felt sad when . . .”
“I felt angry when . . .”
“It hurt my feelings when . . .”
Or “I felt unappreciated when . . .”
“This is just about revealing the inner experience keeping you from feeling connected. Request Tell your partner what he or she can do to get back into connection with you:
“My ask is that you show up on time next week.”
“It’s important to me that you follow through the next time you say you’ve got something handled.”
“Please don’t call me by that name anymore.”
Reveal and Request Here’s what it looks like when you combine these two:
“I felt sad that you never thanked me for the work I did to finish our taxes [the reveal].
Next time I complete a big project for us, it’s important to me that you say thanks [the request].”
“I know you were joking, but it really hurt my feelings when you called me an idiot at dinner the other night [the reveal].
Can you please not call me that [the request]?”
“I feel angry when you turn away from me after sex [the reveal]. Can you hold me for a few minutes before we go to sleep [the request]?” (p. 79)
Priorities
“Priorities are determined by a shared set of values. Boundaries become a way of saying no to the opportunities, requests, and demands of modern life that don’t lead to shared success. Power becomes more balanced. And when it comes to sex, the most intimate domain of marriage, we encounter a surprising truth: the better the structure of shared success in marriage, the better the sex.” (p. 90)
“In our interviews with happy couples, we heard a common metaphor again and again: an 80/80 marriage is a “team sport.” As one man told us, “For us, marriage is identical to being on a basketball team. If one of us isn’t good at three-pointers, then that person focuses on passing. It’s a team mindset that’s the opposite of give-and-take. It’s a mindset that says, ‘What do we need to do together to win?’” (p. 90)
“For some couples, success means achieving financial security. For others, it means the ability to travel the world and experience different cultures. For others, it means building a community of close friends and neighbors. For others, it means having a positive impact on the world. For others, it means having outrageously good sex. And for many couples, success arises from some combination of these and other projects.” (p. 94)
Your Shared Values of Success
“So the first step in building this new structure of shared success is to begin figuring out what shared success means for you and your partner—in other words, to identify your shared values of success.”
Make Roles Clear
“When roles are clear, each small task or to-do gets done by the partner who owns that domain. Completion is quick and almost automatic. When roles become confused, each small task or to-do becomes like a city council meeting—a jumping-off point for discussion instead of action. That’s why role confusion is so maddeningly inefficient: instead of just dragging the garbage cans out to the curb, we’re lost in the time-sucking discussion of why we should do it, who should do it, and when it needs to get done.” (p. 103)
Jon told us, “The most important thing is to play to each other’s strengths. I do all the bills and finances because they take less emotional labor and burden for me. It doesn’t cause me anxiety. For Andrew, on the other hand, it’s a huge burden.” The goal of dividing tasks, in other words, is largely about efficiency. As Jon put it, “We try to think, What can we do well with the least amount of energy?” (p. 105)
“In any couple, you have a different service level for your expectations for how clean the floor needs to be. I’m willing to walk around in bare feet on a sticky gross floor; Jon isn’t.” If one person has to have a spotless kitchen, in other words, their service level for that task is high. If the other doesn’t care, their service level is low. This insight led them to a powerful realization: if one person has a higher service level, it makes the most sense for him to either own the task or be in charge of outsourcing it. The high-service-level partner, after all, will see problems that need to be addressed long before the low-service-level partner.” (p. 105)
“There are some tasks in marriage that neither person is particularly good at and neither person wants to do. There are also times when one person’s standards are higher across the board, and no matter how hard the other partner tries, he or she can never meet expectations. In these cases, if you have the financial resources to do so, outsourcing can be an excellent option. If you can’t get aligned on bathroom cleanliness, hire a housecleaner. If neither of you wants to weed the backyard, hire a gardener.” (p. 108)
Life Report Card
“The basic approach here is to pick a few areas to prioritize and then willingly accept getting C’s, D’s, and F’s in many of the other subjects of life. This sounds like a strange aspiration, but it’s actually liberating. To know that the best you can give at work right now is a B allows you to loosen your grip on perfectionism.” (p. 117)
“Geoff knew it wasn’t as simple as saying he was going to prioritize his family. He had to build a system of checks, balances, and reminders to turn this aspiration into a reality. As he explained to us, “Most people in the business world live with the idea that if the system needs to flex, it’s going to flex in the direction of spending more time on business. I decided to do the opposite. I have set up my family time so that it is fixed. So if the system gets overloaded, the amount of time I spend with my family stays the same. My time at the office is what gets compromised.” (p. 130)
“To pull off this countercultural feat, Geoff and Lauren have a dedicated family calendar, in which time with each other and family time are blocked and untouchable. They also both made difficult structural decisions in their careers to free up more time for being together as a family. Once they placed a priority on time together as a family and as a couple, in other words, they changed the structure of their lives and set clear boundaries to protect it.” (p. 130)
“In contrast to the “You can have it all” motto, they are also clear that there are real trade-offs that come with these boundaries—that prioritizing one area of life means other areas will be impacted negatively. As Geoff told us, “These kinds of decisions aren’t easy. You have to come to grips with the fact that you will make less money and you will accomplish fewer things in your career if you prioritize your family like this. That’s just the physics of it.” (p. 130)
Money and Budget
“Then there’s Michaela. In her relationship, she’s consistently had the more prestigious job with the bigger salary. And as she reluctantly admitted to us, she catches herself using her status as the higher earner to exert just a little bit more clout than her partner: “When it comes to choosing where we go on vacation, that’s always my choice. It’s strange to say it out loud, but I really do think to myself, ‘Well, I’m paying for the majority of the trip, so I’m going to pick where we go.’” Or take Pete. He earned less than his spouse for the first few years of marriage. But then one day he sold his business, and in an instant, the balance of power changed. He told us, “When I started making more money, I felt a shift in power around how we talked about spending our money. I felt like I had more sway. One time when we were planning our budget I even said, ‘This is my money,’ and my wife quickly reminded me, ‘No, it’s not. This is our money.’” (p. 137)
“When you try to hide the cost of that expensive new mountain bike from your partner, the one with dual suspension and titanium components that weighs less than a Thanksgiving turkey, power is imbalanced. You just withheld vital information about your finances and took away their ability to fully understand or push back on your decision to make this major purchase. When you never consult your partner and then tell them at the last minute that you’re headed off to stay in a ski lodge with some old college friends for the weekend, power is imbalanced. You just took the decision of how to spend the weekend out of their hands, and even worse, you left them to manage everything while you’re gone without really asking.” (p 138)
“How can you do that? Consider two core principles. One is about how you save your money as a couple. The other is about how you spend it. Principle 1: Shared Success Means Shared Savings This first principle is the most basic and also the most essential principle of marriage, money, and shared success. To win together, you need to have some shared pot of resources. This doesn’t mean that you have to scrap your prenup (if you have one) and move everything into a single account. That works for some couples, but not all. What it does mean is that you need at least some shared pool of resources. To aspire toward shared success without actually sharing anything, after all, is like saying you want to donate to important causes without ever giving anything. It’s a positive intention without real action. When it comes to sharing financial resources, here are three primary models to consider:
“All in: If you want to go all the way with shared success, this is the model we recommend. In this model, everything is shared: bank accounts, investments, bills, debt, etc. The virtue of this model lies in its simplicity. By going all in, you’re committing to shared everything, which is the perfect design for shared success.”
“Side stashes: Some couples find that they each still want a small pot of money separate from their shared accounts, money that they can spend freely, without having to worry about how their partner might react. The best way to set this up is using what financial adviser Priya Malani calls a side stash—a small amount of money set aside for each person in his or her own separate account.6 This system is like an allowance for adults. To set this model up, all you have to do is create a monthly auto-withdrawal from your joint account into these two individually held side stash accounts.”
“Separate finances with a joint stash: Couples who still want to keep their finances separate can create a joint stash of shared resources. This strategy works like the side stash in reverse. Keep your individual accounts separate and then create a shared account in the name of your family team. You fund this account through monthly automatic withdrawals from each of your individual accounts. Either you can withdraw the same amount from both of your accounts, or if one of you makes more than the other, you can make the withdrawal amount proportional to income (for instance, if you each agree to contribute 5 percent each month to the joint pool, someone making $10,000 a month contributes $500, while someone making $1,000 a month contributes $50). (p. 142)
“I see couples all the time where one partner, usually the wife, feels controlled by her husband, who has a higher income.” To solve this problem, Charles and Rita created a budget. At the beginning of each year, they meet and agree on how much they want to spend on various things. As Charles told us, “This is a budget that goes down to line items like my clothing, Rita’s clothing, children’s clothing, entertainment, home improvements, vacations, and Uber rides.” This exercise can be especially difficult for the higher-earning partner. It requires them to be reasonable and generous. They are, after all, likely putting more money into the pot. It also requires both partners to agree to live within the constraints of the budget.” (p. 144)
5 Essential Habits
Habit 1- Create Space for connection
“If we had to distill the modern predicament of marriage down to two words, they would be: no space. Couples from all walks of life told us this is the number one challenge they face. As one father of triplets living in Manhattan put it, “We get so wrapped up in the kids’ needs, school, and food that we become husband-and-wife servants for the kids; we can easily forget about each other, how we met, and why we want to be together.” Another woman we interviewed observed, “There’s no room for connection. There’s just a whole lot of doing.” So how can we create space in marriage for connection? Thriving couples rely on three primary types of habits: micro, medium, and macro habits.” (p. 194)
“Micro habits are the subtle ways we stay connected in the midst of even the most chaotic days. It’s taking the dog out for a ten-minute walk together after dinner. It’s greeting each other with a kiss and a long hug. It’s having a family dinner. It’s talking through your day while lying in bed. It’s sharing your appreciation at meals. It’s doing a quick emotional check-in by asking: “How are you really doing?” The happiest couples we spoke with used these micro habits to stay connected in the midst of life.
Medium habits require carving out space on the calendar. Date night was the medium habit shared most frequently by the couples we interviewed. Others, however, had their own clever alternatives to going out to dinner on a Friday night. They talked about “ditch days,” in which they cut out of work together for a couple of hours to watch a movie. “Adult swim time,” in which they went skinny-dipping for thirty minutes during the workday. Or, our personal favorite, the “date hike,” which we do religiously every Saturday morning, rain, shine, sleet, or snow.
Macro habits require going away to spend long stretches of time together. Some couples talked about yearly vacations alone together, without the kids. Others could only fit in a weekend once a year. Venture investor Brad Feld and his wife, Amy Batchelor, told us about their ritual of “Qx vacations,” in which the Q stands for quarterly and the x stands for whether it’s the first, second, third, or fourth quarter of the year, which is the frequency of these “off-the-grid” trips for connection.5 You may not be able to take a quarterly trip. But even a day or two a year when you have the time and space together to connect can have a huge impact on the health of your marriage.” (p. 194)
Habit 2- The Call-and-Response of Radical Generosity
“To spend more time living in this mindset, we recommend initiating the call-and-response of contribution and appreciation once a day. This involves two interconnected daily habits. The first is doing one radically generous act a day. This is your chance to express radical generosity through contribution—a hug, a card, a clean kitchen floor, or a fresh cup of coffee delivered to your partner in bed. It’s an act that has the power to break through the fog of resentment and trigger an upward spiral of generosity between you and your partner. The second habit is about what you see. It’s paying close attention to your partner’s acts of contribution throughout the day and then appreciating them for their work. It’s telling them, “You look amazing today in that new shirt,” “I saw you out there pulling weeds in the lawn. Thanks for your work on that,” or “I’ve been noticing how much time you’re spending with our son, tutoring him in math. I really appreciate all the work you’re doing to help him.” One of these radically generous acts often leads to two or three or ten, which is how these daily habits can slowly transform all areas of your life.” (p. 196)
Habit 3- Reveal Issues, Misunderstandings, and Resentments as They Arise
“Imagine your partner just insulted you in front of friends at a dinner party. Imagine they forgot to pick up your child from camp, leaving Junior waiting outside in the rain for more than an hour. Imagine they were forty-five minutes late to your Thursday date night but didn’t call or text to let you know. These are problems. But these issues get much worse when you don’t reveal your true experience and instead spend days or even weeks stewing in passive-aggressiveness or lashing out at your partner over meaningless stuff, all because you don’t want to have a direct conversation and face the issue head-on. That’s why one of the most essential habits of the 80/80 model is to reveal issues as they arise.”
“As we discussed in chapter seven, you don’t have to go through an elaborate process. All you have to do is Reveal and Request: reveal your experience and make a reasonable request. This is the habit of hearing the insult at the dinner party and then telling your partner afterward, “When you made that joke at dinner, it really hurt my feelings. Please be more careful about what you say next time.” It’s telling your partner after the forgotten pickup at camp, “I feel scared when you forget to pick up our child. I feel like I can’t trust you. Can you please set an alarm next time?” Or it’s telling them when they arrive forty-five minutes late, “When you show up late without texting me, it makes me feel like you value your time over mine. Can you please make a point of letting me know when you’re running late?” (p. 197)
Habit 4- The Shared-Success Check-in
“You can do this by building the habit of a shared-success family check-in. This is a time dedicated to staying in sync about the logistics of life. It could be a short conversation at the beginning of each day. It could be a longer check-in once a week. It could even be an extended time for reflection a few times a year, in which you take a step back and look at the big picture. Here’s one pro tip for making the most of these check-ins: make a point of seeing if you can stay in the spirit of radical generosity and shared success. Notice when you get hooked by the tendency to think about what’s best for you. Then remember to shift back to the essential” (p. 200)
Habit 5- Create Space from Digital Distractions
“During the writing of this book, we heard some tragic stories of affairs, divorce, and intractable conflicts. And yet some of the most tragic stories involved a subtler form of disconnection. They were the stories of two partners sitting in bed each night, staring into the screens of their smartphones and tablets, so entranced by Twitter, blogs, news sites, or games that the other person all but disappeared. They were the stories of one partner trying to have an important conversation, talk through plans, or reveal an issue but feeling like the other person was “not all there,” half paying attention to the conversation, half paying attention to the device in their hand. These stories point to a larger cultural experience. On some level, we’re all living in what psychologist Linda Stone has called a state of continuous partial attention, never fully on, never fully off, always slightly distracted from what’s happening in the present moment.”
“There’s a simple but not always easy way to put an end to this pattern: create time and space away from digital distraction. The couples we interviewed talked about all kinds of ways to do this: Keep smartphones and tablets out of the bedroom. Lock devices in a box during focused time, like at the dinner table. Establish a norm of asking each other permission each time you use your phone in the other’s presence by saying, “Is now a good time for me to respond to this text?” If it’s possible, go for a walk or go out for an entire date night and leave both of your phones behind. Use “Do Not Disturb” mode to screen out random calls and texts during couple time. Never have sex with a phone nearby. Before looking something up or checking your phone, ask yourself, “Do I really need to know this, right now?” You may be surprised to find that the answer is generally no.” (p. 202)
