Marriage and equal partnership

If we start aligning on our family values and having regular conversations about what’s important to us, everything changes. Instead of assuming others don’t care, we build a shared understanding of why things matter—and we can approach tasks as a team rather than individuals just checking boxes.

Here’s what this can look like:

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you might stress over Christmas traditions like putting up fairy lights 🎄in the exact perfect arrangement, but your partner might think, Why are we doing this? The kids will just knock them over anyway😧 . To them, it’s not about being lazy; it’s about not seeing the point.

What are the essential blocks to building a strong foundation between partners and establishing balance for longevity?-Not everything must be said-The combination of empathy and responsibility is very important-Be able to see things from your partners point of view, while also being able to take responsibility for things-The ability to navigate... See more

This is followed by a leisurely twenty-minute shower, a late breakfast, a long nap, and then a meandering perusal through a variety of periodicals. Meanwhile, I am ferrying our daughter to birthday parties and playdates. On weekend evenings, Tom doesn’t check with me before he meets friends for drinks; he just breezes out the door with the

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But equality, as Lean In’s Sheryl Sandberg has stated, is not a zero-sum game. Beyond the most immediate and obvious benefit—that I will cease being, as Real memorably put it, a “raving lunatic”—there are so many others. A Cornell study found that couples with young kids who split housework more evenly reported better and more frequent sex than

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“Darby Saxbe, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, explains to me that couples often fall into a pattern of demand and retreat—most often, the woman demands and the man retreats. This dynamic has arisen, she says, because men have less to gain by changing their behavior, while women are more likely to want to alter the... See more

Real frowns. “But she’s the after-school mom and the cook and the cleaner-upper,” he says. “That would be fine if she didn’t work, but not if you’re both working. What I see happening with guys is ‘Don’t mess with me—I need sleep and R&R so I can fight the dragons for my family.’ But she’s fighting the dragons now, too.” In the old days, he goes

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