Marriage and equal partnership
I feel like that I start asking my husband “which” he wants to do. As in “do you want to give the kid a bath in 10 minutes or unload and re-load the dishwasher now?” I let him choose but hold him responsible for whichever. It feels so silly sometimes, but I have found that’s the only way I get the help I need.
Darcy Lockman • All the Rage
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:
Define Your Family... See more
Here’s what this can look like:
Define Your Family... See more
Strategies to reduce mental load in a marriage
Recent data published in the Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that couples in which men do more than a third of the household work have more sex than those who do less, and that these relatively egalitarian couples are the only ones to have experienced an increase in sexual frequency during three decades over which sex within marriage has
... See moreDarcy Lockman • All the Rage
Right, but Should We Be Scheduling Sex? Esther Perel Answers All the Questions
share.snipd.comBut 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
... See moreJancee Dunn • How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids
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
... See moreJancee Dunn • How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids
“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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