The 80⧸80 Marriage — A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship
Episode Stats
Summary
Nate Klimp is a former philosophy professor and the co-author, along with his wife, of The 80-80 Marriage, a new model for a happier, stronger relationship. Today, on the show, Nate shares how cognitive biases skew our perception of our contributions to relationship, what happens when couples get stuck in the 50-50 mindset of domestic scorekeeping, and how shifting to a model of radical generosity can create an upward spiral of connection and appreciation.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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A lot of people go into marriage with a 50-50 mindset. Everything in the relationship from
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tangible things like childcare and chores to intangible things like the effort and energy
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needed to keep the partnership going is supposed to be divided equally. The 50-50 approach to
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relationships is all about fairness and that seems sensible and rational but my guest says
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it actually sabotages relational happiness. Nate Klimp is a former philosophy professor and the
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co-author along with his wife of The 80-80 Marriage, a new model for a happier, stronger relationship.
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Today on the show, Nate shares how cognitive biases skew our perception of our contributions
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to relationship, what happens when couples get stuck in the 50-50 mindset of domestic scorekeeping
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and how shifting to an 80-80 model of radical generosity can create an upward spiral of
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connection and appreciation. And we discuss practical ways to divide household responsibilities,
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decide how much time to spend with each spouse's respective parents, and establish values that
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will guide your partnership as you navigate life changes and work towards a spirit of
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shared success. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash 8080.
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So you co-authored a book called The 80-80 Marriage with Your Wife. And in this book,
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you both propose a new framework for thinking about marriage. And you start off the book
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with a story of what kickstarted the idea of the 80-80 marriage. Tell us that story.
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Yeah, well, I'll give you maybe even a more complete story than what we say in the book,
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which is to say that when we first got together, we had this fairy tale-like beginning to our
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relationship. So we met in high school. We were both seniors in high school. We were chemistry lab
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partners. We went to senior prom together. And then we pragmatically broke up before we went to college.
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And seven years later, it magically came back. We started dating again. We got married.
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And if you had asked our friends at the time, they probably would have told you we were like
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the perfect couple. And in some ways that ended up becoming a trap for us because a year or two
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into marriage, as anybody who knows, who's been married knows, like things got real. And for us,
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that looked like I was in my final year of getting a PhD, struggling to get a job as a professor. I had
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a serious bike accident. We were just locked into all sorts of conflict to the point where
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we almost got divorced at the time. Luckily, we didn't. We were able to push through that.
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But over the decades, it's now been 19 years since then, we started to just ask this question,
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like, what was the fundamental essence of our conflict? And what we arrived at is that essentially
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we were fighting over whether it was fair and the it being all sorts of things, you know, like
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childcare and housework and finances and all the different things that go on in our life.
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And so we decided to see, you know, were we the only people experiencing this? Were there others out
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there locked in this battle for fairness? And that's what ultimately led us to write the book.
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And we interviewed a number of different couples. And what we found is that on some level, most modern
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couples seem to be stuck in this conflict over fairness for what is or isn't fair. This practice
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of keeping an elaborate mental scorecard of all the wonderful things you do juxtaposed against all the
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things your partner doesn't do. And yeah, you call this framework of thinking about fairness in a
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marriage. You call it the 50-50 marriage. And on paper, it seems like that should be a good idea,
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but you found that it doesn't work. It just makes things worse. Why doesn't it work? Why does
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focusing on fairness in a marriage make things worse? Because people might be thinking, well,
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that doesn't make any sense. In a 50-50 marriage, you're trying to be fair. And isn't that a good thing?
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Yeah. Well, and this is so surreptitious. It's happening all the time, mostly under the radar
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of awareness. For example, just the other day, I think it was last night, actually, I was unloading
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the dishwasher. And I thought to myself, man, this is like the third time in a row I've unloaded the
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dishwasher. And I could feel the agitation. And that's just a micro example of how this shows up.
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It's this thought, things aren't fair, which is then followed by some experience of anger or resentment.
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And the reason this doesn't work, it's actually kind of interesting. There's this really cool
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science coming out of the field of marriage research, where they do these time survey studies.
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And they found a couple things. The headline here is that we're basically really bad at assessing what
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is or isn't fair. So if you're saying, man, I contribute 60% or 70% to my relationship,
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that number is based mostly on pure delusion. And there are like two things that contribute to this.
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One is what psychologists call availability bias, which is basically just a fancy way of saying,
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in my marriage and my relationship with my wife, Kaylee, all of the wonderful things that I do,
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like all those contributions are available to me. I see them happening in real time when I'm taking
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our daughter to her violin lesson or whatever it might be. When it comes though, to what Kaylee's
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doing, all of a sudden things get a little bit blurry and foggy, like she's contributing, but I
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don't really see any of that happening in real time. And most of it, I don't see happening at all.
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And I don't even know about it often. So there's this tendency then to systematically
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underestimate what our partner is doing. You add on top of that, one other cognitive bias,
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the overestimation bias, where they found in researching couples that people tend to radically
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overestimate the amount of time they spend on household labor and on childcare. So what that
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means is if I say like, Hey, I spent an hour yesterday cleaning up the kitchen, it was probably
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more like 30 minutes. And you put these two together and you start to see, okay, we're systematically
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underestimating what our partner does. We're systematically overestimating what we do.
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And then we're having this conversation about trying to make things fair. And you start to see
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that the numbers are just based on delusion. And that's why we think this idea, this mindset of
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50-50 fairness just doesn't work. And it leads to perpetual, constant conflict.
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Yeah. So we're keeping a mental scorecard when we have a 50-50 marriage, but the problem is the
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Yes. Wildly inaccurate is the way I would put it.
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Yeah. And you talk about some of the reoccurring problems or conflicts you see in couples that
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you interviewed when they try to do everything 50-50. You mentioned one in your own marriage,
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the domestic scorekeeping fight. It's like, well, man, I did, I've done dishes three nights in a row.
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What's going on here? What are some other common areas in a marriage where people try to do things
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I'm so glad you asked that, Brett, because it was really interesting when we would ask couples,
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do you fight about fairness? Most couples said, no, we never have a fight like that.
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And then we would ask them about things like who does the chores around the house or money,
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and they would reveal all of these different conflicts that were in essence conflicts over
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fairness. So that's what I was saying earlier. Often this is happening beneath the radar of
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awareness. So seeing the kind of classic archetypes of this fight can be really useful just as a way
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of cultivating awareness. So yeah, you mentioned domestic scorekeeping. That's one way it shows up.
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Another way it shows up often for couples is trying to make the balance of time spent with
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each extended family or each set of friends equal. So for example, in our life, we used to live in Los
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Angeles and we come back to Colorado where both sets of parents lived for the holidays. And we would
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have these epic explosive fights over trying to figure out the right balance of time spent with my
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family and then spent with Kaylee's family. And many couples that we've interviewed have something
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similar going on. There's also a fairness fight for many couples around money. So a lot of couples
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fight over who's saving more, who's spending more. And then another way this shows up, especially with
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couples who have children, is as anyone who knows who has a kid, once you have a kid, all of a sudden
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free time and leisure time becomes like, we like to call it domestic gold. It's this insanely scarce
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resource. And so we were interviewing one woman and she was telling us about how she went to Target,
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right? And she spent an hour at Target and she got home and her husband was like, oh, cool. You had
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your hour of free time. Now I'm going to go to the gym, which of course triggers this huge fight over
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again, this balance of the amount of leisure time that each person in the partnership gets.
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Yeah. And for the wife, she's probably a target, not for leisures. She's probably buying stuff for the
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house. So like for her, it was just a chore. Exactly. Yeah. For her, it was a chore. And that
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was the essence of the fight that she was talking about is that she's like, that wasn't leisure
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time. Like that was me buying a bunch of crap for the family. Are you kidding me? And you can imagine
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then how that fight would ensue from there. Yeah. The 50, 50 split on time with in-laws or family.
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I remember when we first had kids that, that can actually get exhausting because you do try to be
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fair. Cause you want your parents to see the kids and you want your wife's parents to see the kids,
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but then trying to do two Christmases in one day, it was exhausting. Just like wore you out. I mean,
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we were fair, but in the end it was like, I'm tired. That was not fun.
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It's funny that you mentioned that we had a similar experience. I'll never forget it. We were,
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had just gotten through the holidays and our system was my parents got Christmas Eve and Christmas.
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Her parents got the next four days because they didn't get the real holiday. They got a bonus
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two days after. And, uh, we got to the end of that one year. And I remember we had the same
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experience of just like, this is exhausting. Like this is just torture. Yeah. And what's interesting
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is that everyone's definition of fairness is going to be different because everyone's got a different
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calculus going on in their head. So you're like, uh, well, we didn't get to spend Christmas Eve and
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Christmas with my family. Uh, so we get to add an extra two days. And then the other person's like,
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well, no, why would we do that? I only got to spend two days with my family. So you only get
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to spend two days with your family. Like that's fair. Yeah. Well, and what, what's also interesting
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is that it's not just you and your partner. Generally the families are also in on the whole
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game, right? There's a lot of guilt and a lot of pressure coming from each set of families or each
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set of parents saying like, Hey, we need you. You know, how could you miss Christmas this year?
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So it becomes this very complicated thing to navigate. Yeah. And this can also happen with
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friends too. It's like, well, we spent time with your friends. Now it's time to spend time with my
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friends. And then there might be this negotiation that goes on back and forth and just causes conflict.
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Yeah. And I think it's just important to mention here that there is nothing inherently wrong with this
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effort to achieve fairness. I mean, it really is a noble goal, but the problem is that it can become
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such a pervasive mind state that it really starts to pit people in relationship against each other.
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And it starts to create a culture in a relationship. That's very individualistic. That's very
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me versus you, what I want versus what you want, right? It, it kind of turns the relationship into a
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negotiation, which ultimately isn't very loving, isn't very sexy. So that's why I think it starts
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to break down for most couples. And one of the things that heightens the conflict over fairness
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in a modern 50, 50 marriage is that there's a lot of role confusion. When you talk about this in the
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book, like in an older model of marriage, like a 1950s model of marriage, it had its downsides,
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but it also had its benefits in that, you know, everyone knew what they're supposed to be doing.
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It was like, well, mom does this, dad does this. And there was no confusion. Now today,
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most people, they want a more egalitarian relationship. Both spouses might be working,
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both are taking part in childcare, but then the question becomes, okay, well, how, how do we divvy
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all this stuff up? There aren't any set roles and they're just kind of winging it. And then this just
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causes all this conflict. Yeah. So one of the big shifts to our current state of relationships and
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this mindset of 50, 50 is that we are now both equals in this relationship. And that means we're
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both equally capable of being a rockstar or an amazing scientist, but it also means that we're
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both equally capable of cleaning the dishes or unloading the dishwasher or doing the laundry.
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So what that creates to your point is this state that we like to call role confusion, where it's like,
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wait, we could both be doing all of these different things. So whose job is it to do them?
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And when we would interview couples about this, it was really interesting because we'd ask them,
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you know, how did you decide on your structure of roles in your relationship? And basically everyone
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we talked to had the same reaction. They kind of looked confused for a moment. And then they said
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some version of, I don't really know. I guess we, we just are kind of winging it. And we actually
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started to call this the wing it approach to roles, which is the standard approach that most couples
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take to creating a structure of roles. You know, one guy I remember I talked to, he was like,
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somehow I'm the toothbrush guy with our daughter. Like every night when it's time for us to put her
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to bed, I'm the guy who brushes her teeth. I don't know how that happened. I don't know how I ended up
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in that role, but that's just like the role that I ended up in. And there's not necessarily anything
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wrong with this accidental approach to roles, but we think there's a better way to think about this.
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And that is this shift from accident to something more like design to actually having a conversation
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with your partner. And most couples have never done this where you take a step back and you say like,
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Hey, let's look at the structure of what we do. Let's look at what we enjoy doing, what we don't enjoy
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doing, what we're good at, what we're not good at, what we might be able to outsource. And let's
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actually like design this thing to work for us. So that can be a huge thing for most couples to do.
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Yeah. And we're going to talk about some questions you can ask to figure this out. But before we do,
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let's talk about the 80, 80 marriage. So you and your wife proposed, instead of looking at marriage
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through the rubric of 50, 50 fairness, we need to have an 80, 80 marriage. So what does an 80,
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80 marriage look like? The first thing you'll probably notice is that the math doesn't work.
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There's no such thing as a 160% hole. That's just a mathematical impossibility. But the basic idea
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behind 80, 80 is shifting the expectation or shifting the goal from just doing your 50%,
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which locks us into that mindset of fairness to striving to contribute at something more like 80%.
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And that's a mindset shift from what we call fairness to what we like to call radical generosity.
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And we know that it's not going to work, right? There is no way that you and your partner can
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both contribute at 80%. But it's kind of this radical, illogical goal that's really meant to
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uproot this habit in our thinking that most of us have developed. And the idea is that if we approach
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our life and our marriage together with this goal of striving for 80%, all of a sudden we start to
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radically change the underlying culture of the relationship. And I will say here that usually
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when I get to this point, there are many people who start voicing objections like, wait a minute,
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you're saying I should do 80%. That is just a recipe for my partner to totally take advantage of me.
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Why would I do that? And so I think there's a really important response to that objection that I
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just want to get to briefly, which is we like to say, and this is validated by psychology, that
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your mindset is contagious. So if you're operating in that 50-50 mindset where there's a lot of
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resentment and a lot of anger and a lot of scorekeeping, your partner will generally mirror
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that back to you at every turn. You've created a kind of contagious atmosphere of resentment.
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If on the other hand, you and just you shift to something more like the 80-80 mindset of radical
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generosity, that is also contagious. Your partner might be like, what is happening? Are you on drugs?
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Like, did you go to a yoga retreat? What is wrong with you? But what also tends to happen is that
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your generosity opens up a space for your partner to also be a little bit more generous. And you can start
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to create this virtuous upward spiral. Yeah. The 50-50 mentality can get you stuck
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in a tit-for-tat trap. It's like, I'll do this if you do that. And if that's how you approach the
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relationship, your spouse is going to start syncing up with that pattern you set up. And it just becomes
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this vicious downward cycle. And it's all just unsolvable conflict to try to make things exactly
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fair. Because how do you decide if work done outside the home is weightier than work done
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inside the home? Or if this chore is harder than that chore? I mean, it's all just unsolvable
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conflict. So instead of trying to make your responsibilities and contributions mathematically
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equal, just operate with an attitude of generosity. And then that can become contagious.
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It's like, well, if you do that, then your spouse will see it. And she's like, oh, wow,
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he's doing a lot. I appreciate that. I'm going to do something for him. And then it becomes
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a positive tit-for-tat. Totally. And it's kind of a fun experiment to do if you're listening to this
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podcast and it's just you without your partner. Try the experiment of taking a day or a week where
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you just really consciously start to live into this mindset of radical generosity. And just see
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if your partner's behavior doesn't change in subtle ways. We call it like stealth 80-80. It's
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a fun experiment to try. And one of the big takeaways I got from the idea of the 80-80 marriage or the
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overarching principle is that it's about if I win, we both win. Or if you win, I win too. It's like you
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see your marriage as a team effort. Whereas the 50-50 marriage, you're mostly thinking like, well,
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what can I get out of this relationship? Like, how can this marriage help me become a better me?
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Which, I mean, marriage can do that. But if that's your goal, then you're just going to get
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stuck in these tit-for-tat traps. But when you kind of approach it from like, hey, we're on the
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same team. What can we do so that we can both succeed? Everything just goes so much more smoother.
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That's exactly right. I mean, it's really interesting that many couples do get stuck in this trap of
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basically thinking like, what can I do for me? How can I stand up for number one here? And I don't
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think it's an accident that this happens. We are raised in a culture that celebrates individual
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excellence. For me and Kaylee, we went to college and the message we received was you need to do
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something amazing. You need to achieve success as an individual. And so then we got married and the
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expectation becomes, okay, now you're supposed to shift from individual success to this collective
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project together where you're sharing your life and your space and your money. And that shift is
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really radical. And most people aren't really able to make that shift quickly. So that's where there is
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this more conscious effort that I think we all need to make in our relationships to see if we can
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shift the emphasis in our own thinking from individual success or how do I win alone? How do
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I win in my career and my life to a goal that's more like shared success? You know, how do we win
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together? Yeah. I love that. Cause like sometimes it might mean one person gets to achieve like their
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personal goal. Cause it helps the family out in the long run. And then sometimes it means the other
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person gets to do that. And like, you just, maybe you take turns. It's not like fairness, but it's just
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like you kind of intuitively know, okay, well it's time for me to do this thing or it's time for you
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to do this thing. Let's marshal the, our resources, we make this happen. And then it can change as the
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relationship progresses. Exactly. Yeah. You can alternate between who's background, who's
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foreground. And that's a really cool thing to do. Kaylee and I do that a lot. You know, if I'm writing
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a book, I'm foreground when it comes out, if she's doing a big engagement, she's foreground and I'm
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kind of holding the house together and our daughter together. And so that alternation can
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actually be really quite fun and just a way to grow together. And I would say like the main shift
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to try to aspire toward is when your partner has a big win, even if there is like a little tinge of
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jealousy or envy, which happens in a lot of partnerships, see if you can really celebrate
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that. Because ultimately if your partner wins big, that is a win for both of you. And so,
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so it's like that shift of just trying to celebrate the wins together rather than as individuals.
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You know, as I was reading about the 80, 80 marriage, it made me think about pioneer days
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in America, like living out on a farm on the prairie, you know, back then, you know, a couple had to be
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this real unit, you know, the husband and wife, they had roles, the kids had roles, everyone had
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responsibilities, but everyone pitched in with everything. I mean, if one person couldn't do
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something, then the other person had to pick up the slack. It wasn't about fairness. It was just
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like, okay, what do we need to get done to survive? Let's all work together here.
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I love that. It's actually funny. I was just interviewing a couple in Australia. We're writing
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a new book on busyness and love, and they were farmers in rural Australia. And they were basically
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living what you described. Like the guy was telling me, you know, his calves had pink eye and they
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were out there trying to get the pink eye treated while they were feeding the calves and getting them
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ready for, you know, taken down for purchase or whatever it was. And, um, it's a, it's a cool
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analogy. The other analogy that I really like here is if you can imagine your family as something like
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a business, we like the name family Inc for this. In fact, we, this was something we ended up cutting
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from the book, but the reason I think that's helpful. And some people resist that. Cause
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they're like, no, it's about love and spontaneity. And I don't want to think of my family as a
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business, but what's helpful about that is just thinking, Hey, if we were a kind of collective
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business, then it doesn't really matter who's making more money or who's achieving more success.
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What matters is that we're lining up what we each do such that we maximize the success of the
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collective enterprise. And that's a really different way of thinking of it. You know,
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we also use the analogy of basketball sometimes, right? Like 50, 50 is kind of like playing basketball
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where you and your partner are on the same team technically, but you're both trying to drive up
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your stats and maximize your individual numbers when the MVP award or whatever. Whereas when you shift
00:24:09.900
to 80, 80, the goal is just like, how can we win this game? And if that means that I'm shooting more,
00:24:14.920
more three pointers than you are, that's okay. Right. If that means you're passing more or I'm
00:24:19.780
passing more, that's okay. It's a very different way of thinking about a partnership together.
00:24:25.560
We can even go further back. I like this business analogy. So if you go back to the ancient Greeks,
00:24:31.240
Aristotle, he talked about household management and our word economics,
00:24:36.340
comes from that. But for the Greeks, it wasn't like economics, like, you know, businesses and
00:24:43.440
countries trading for them. Economics was centered in the home. And so he wrote a lot about like,
00:24:49.680
how do you manage a home properly so that everyone in the family can flourish? And so he talked about
00:24:56.520
there's, there's a lot of practical stuff when it comes to home management, you have to manage
00:25:00.860
resources, know where your stuff's at. You have to think about the income coming into the household
00:25:06.120
so that you can buy things that you can continue to grow the household. But then also a part of
00:25:10.820
economics or home economics for Aristotle, it was like, how do we rear our children so that they can
00:25:16.920
become productive, active participants in Athenian democracy? So I like that idea because the husband
00:25:24.900
and wife and for Aristotle, there was a lot of, you know, gender disparity, of course, because like
00:25:29.240
ancient Greece, but he did see the husband and wife, they had to work together on this thing
00:25:33.080
to make sure the home had good oikios or good economics. So you could achieve this eudaimonia
00:25:41.260
or flourishing for the family. Can I just say you talking about Aristotle is like the highlight of
00:25:46.980
my year so far. I don't know if you know this, but my background is in political philosophy. That's
00:25:52.000
what I got my PhD in. And my wife actually cut, I had some passages on Aristotle that I was going to
00:25:58.060
put in the book. And she's like, nobody cares about Aristotle. We're cutting that, right? So
00:26:02.300
that was one of our conflicts in the book. But to get to the content of what you were saying,
00:26:07.440
yeah, totally. And the other piece of Aristotle that I think is really interesting here is if you
00:26:12.620
think about his conception of the ideal political regime, you know, he was the one who came up with
00:26:18.500
our typology of monarchy, oligarchy, and what was his other name for it? Polity, I think was the,
00:26:26.000
or democracy, I guess. Democracy, yeah. And as I recall him, the key distinction between good and
00:26:33.980
bad regimes in politics was really about, is this focused on the individual's interest or is this
00:26:41.500
focused on the common good? And I think that's another way of thinking about what we're trying
00:26:45.560
to aspire toward here in the 80-80 model. In 50-50, we are focused on individual interest,
00:26:52.320
individual success. It's all about me. But when we shift to something more like 80-80,
00:26:57.800
we're looking at like the common interest. How do we win together as a collective? The two of us,
00:27:04.180
or if we have kids, maybe it's the three, four, five of us.
00:27:08.660
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:27:10.700
And now back to the show. Okay. So let's talk more about the 80-80 marriage. You say there are
00:27:18.020
three elements to an 80-80 marriage. What are those three elements?
00:27:22.560
Yeah. So that mindset of radical generosity is kind of an overarching term for a way of thinking
00:27:30.220
about the world, a way of seeing the world. And the question then becomes, how do you operationalize
00:27:35.780
that? I mean, if you just say, I'm going to be radically generous, that doesn't really give you
00:27:40.480
much to do practically. So the three pieces to this, the first is about what you do, and that's
00:27:47.320
contribution. Contribution is really in many ways, the essence of generosity. And I like to think of
00:27:54.240
contribution in a marriage, the most useful forms of contribution as these small micro acts that are
00:28:01.480
just reminders to your partner that you're thinking about them, that you care about them,
00:28:05.360
that you love them. So it's great to like get your partner a trip to Fiji or get them concert tickets
00:28:12.400
for some amazing artists. Those big acts of contribution are fine and definitely useful.
00:28:17.940
But the essence of contribution is really about what are the daily acts of contribution you can do
00:28:23.160
that are small, but significant in terms of building connection. So things like writing,
00:28:29.600
I love you on a post-it note, putting it on your partner's computer, things like just getting
00:28:35.300
them a cup of coffee in the morning, filling their car up with gas, right? These are very simple
00:28:39.780
things. Yeah. The filling up your car with gas. So a long time ago on our website, you know,
00:28:44.860
when we had comments, someone left a comment, it was like 15 years ago. It was like, always fill up
00:28:50.760
your wife's car with gas to bless her. And so I always, that stuck with me for some reason. So I'll,
00:28:57.320
whenever I see the car, you know, it's almost empty. Like, well, I got to bless my wife.
00:29:01.620
Gonna, gonna go fill up the car with gas at QT. I love that. Yeah. And it's just like such a simple
00:29:07.260
thing. It takes you what, five minutes on your way home. Yeah. But it, it's just one of these actions
00:29:13.200
that reminds your partner, like, wow, there's a spirit of love happening here. So that's the first
00:29:18.320
one that the second piece is appreciation. And we like to think of this almost like the response
00:29:23.760
to the call of generosity. So, you know, in music, there's this idea of call and response and,
00:29:29.060
and generosity is a, is an amazing thing. It's a contribution, but it often is, is sort of asking
00:29:35.160
for some sort of response. And that is what we call appreciation. The other thing I would say about
00:29:40.300
appreciation is that this is really counter habitual, that most of us have this tendency of seeing our
00:29:47.100
partner through the lens of what they've done wrong. You know, like seeing where they fell short or
00:29:53.040
seeing where they didn't quite do what they said they were going to do. And appreciation is basically
00:29:57.420
just flipping the glasses that we wear in our relationship. So we're actually looking for what
00:30:02.020
our partner did right. And then we're expressing that like, Hey, I noticed that you did this amazing
00:30:07.620
thing with our kids. You took them out yesterday afternoon and, and took them on an adventure.
00:30:12.540
Thank you. Right. So, so that's the act of appreciation. Um, and you know, there's all sorts of research
00:30:18.520
in the field of marriage science showing that appreciation is perhaps the most powerful thing
00:30:23.420
you can do to create more connection in your relationship. The final thing, the third piece
00:30:28.840
of radical generosity is what we call revealing. And what we mean by revealing is basically just
00:30:34.940
expressing your full truth in your marriage. And there's two sides to this. So on one side,
00:30:41.340
it's expressing what's happening in your inner world. So there was this interesting study they did
00:30:46.840
at UCLA. They found that the average couple with kids spends 35 minutes a week talking to each other
00:30:54.000
and they didn't really study what they were talking about. But if I had to guess, they were probably
00:30:59.960
talking about logistics or like the news or the weather. And so one aspect of revealing is just
00:31:08.760
shifting the way you talk to one another such that when you're at the end of the day, updating each
00:31:13.660
other on your day, you're revealing what's actually happening in your inner world. Like what's really
00:31:18.100
going on with you. The second piece to revealing is when you have those moments of disconnection or
00:31:25.220
misunderstandings or somebody's feelings got hurt, using that as an opportunity to reveal as a way to get
00:31:32.120
closer. And that's not that easy to do for most couples, but it ends up being really powerful if you can
00:31:38.020
start to transform those moments of disconnection into opportunities to get closer.
00:31:43.540
How do you reveal that second thing? Because oftentimes if you try to tell your spouse, like,
00:31:48.700
hey, you did this, it can just, it's an opportunity to get resentful.
00:31:54.140
Any ways to do that where it doesn't cause more bad feelings?
00:31:58.460
Yeah, absolutely. And this is another one of those areas where we want to see if we can shift from
00:32:03.520
our accidental habits, which mostly aren't that skillful to a more skillful way of approaching it.
00:32:10.060
So let's say Kaylee's late for dinner. You know, she said she was going to be there at six and she's not
00:32:14.980
there until 615. The accidental way of approaching that is for me to just lash out at her, right? To just be
00:32:21.560
like, are you kidding me? I've been sitting here for 15 minutes. Like, who do you think you are? You're more,
00:32:27.020
you think you're more important than I am, right? And you can imagine I could continue that
00:32:30.620
conversation. She'll get defensive. We'll get in a big fight. It'll be a terrible dinner together. So that's kind of
00:32:37.440
how things go down by accident. What we recommend is an approach that we call reveal and request. And the basic
00:32:44.480
idea is to start by just revealing what we like to think of as your inarguable truth. So what's really going on with
00:32:51.660
you? What emotion are you feeling in that moment without blame? Just like, hey, I'm feeling X. And then offering some
00:32:58.360
sort of request for how they might be able to make it right in the future. So that would look
00:33:03.520
something like, hey, I've been here for 15 minutes and I noticed that I've just been feeling kind of
00:33:10.480
frustrated because you didn't text me to let me know that you were late. In the future, would you be
00:33:15.220
willing to just send me a text if you're going to be 15 minutes late? So it's a pretty significant
00:33:21.260
difference if you just start to think about how the other person's going to respond to those two
00:33:26.820
approaches. Okay. So ADA to marriage, the overarching principle is radical generosity.
00:33:31.700
It's like, hey, we're a team. If you win, I win. Three attributes, it's contribute. So find little
00:33:37.300
ways you can contribute to your wife throughout the day. It could be small things, fill up the gas tank,
00:33:42.660
write her a note, pick up her favorite drink from QT on the way home, show more appreciation
00:33:48.060
throughout your week, and then reveal. So it could be problems that are coming up or reveal,
00:33:55.180
hey, this is what I'm doing. This is what's stressing me out. Here's what I'm thinking about.
00:33:58.740
Let them know. One thing you talk about too, and sort of being more intentional about creating a
00:34:04.260
culture in your marriage is establishing common values for the family. Just like any team or any
00:34:12.240
business, I love this business analogy. They have a mission statement, for example, that guides all the
00:34:18.080
actions within the business. You argue a family, a marriage should also have something similar.
00:34:22.920
So how do you recommend couples establish sort of this overarching mission statement or going
00:34:27.920
back to Aristotle and overarching telos for the family? Yeah, the family telos. I like the sound
00:34:33.440
of that. Yeah, absolutely. That's a really important thing. And it's really interesting
00:34:37.900
actually to notice that almost every business has a very clear set of values. And yet most relationships
00:34:45.280
don't. Most relationships are winging it, doing it by accident. So we think that's really
00:34:50.560
important. And it was interesting actually, when we had all of these interviews with various couples,
00:34:56.080
what we discovered is that there are no better or worse values for a marriage. So the expanse of
00:35:03.920
different possibilities is really wide. We would talk to some couples where their value was adventure.
00:35:09.440
So there was one couple we talked to, they basically lived out of a van for seven years and just
00:35:14.960
drove around the country, going to different national parks and having adventures. That was
00:35:20.120
their value. And they were aligned on it. So it worked for them. Other couples were more concerned
00:35:24.740
with things like building wealth or security. And you could imagine if you took a partner from the
00:35:30.220
wealth couple and you put them in the adventure couple where they had like quit their jobs in New
00:35:34.400
York and were living out of a van, they totally freak out. But all that's to say values aren't better
00:35:40.860
or worse. What is a problem is when you're in a relationship and you're not aligned on your
00:35:46.120
values. That's where a lot of conflict comes from. So we think it's really helpful to just sit down and
00:35:52.660
think about as a couple, what are the three to five values that we want to guide our life together,
00:35:59.380
the way we parent, the way we show up with each other, the way we show up at work. We think it's
00:36:04.900
really cool once you've done this to actually make an artifact out of it. So we have our values
00:36:10.240
right on the outside of our kitchen table on another counter and we put them on a little
00:36:16.000
whiteboard. And so it's something we see all the time. And I think that's important because
00:36:20.380
some couples will actually do an exercise like this. They'll come up with values and then the
00:36:25.240
values won't actually be used in their relationship. So you want to see if you can use these values for
00:36:31.340
big decisions around money or big decisions around your career. And what's cool about that is
00:36:37.580
instead of getting into that trap we've been talking about of what's best for me versus what's
00:36:43.020
best for you, values give you a different way to make decisions. They give you a kind of rubric for
00:36:49.100
running your life decisions through where it's like, well, in terms of that career move, what's going
00:36:54.500
to align most closely with our values? That's a really different question than what's best for me
00:36:59.780
versus what's best for you. And these values or these telos, it can change as the family progresses or as
00:37:06.760
the marriage progresses. So keep having that conversation about your telos and your marriage
00:37:11.360
and your family. It's an ongoing thing. Make sure it's front and center there as you're making
00:37:15.580
decisions that affect the entire family. Let's talk about some more brass tacks things. So we talked
00:37:20.460
about one of the biggest sources of contention in a 50-50 marriage is role confusion. No one knows
00:37:26.800
who's supposed to be doing what. There's maybe a sense of unfairness and how things are divvied up.
00:37:32.400
You mentioned most couples, the way they divvy up roles in a marriage to wing it,
00:37:36.760
just sort of like, I'm the toothbrush guy for some reason. I don't know why I'm toothbrush guy,
00:37:40.100
but I'm toothbrush guy or you're the grocery person. Any advice on how to be more proactive
00:37:46.160
in assigning roles in a marriage so that it's a win-win for everybody?
00:37:51.320
Absolutely. We actually in the book have a pretty elaborate practice that you can walk through with
00:37:56.700
your partner, but here's the shorthand version of that that you can do. It's as simple as take a
00:38:01.700
couple of pieces of paper. And step one is just write down all of your roles as individuals.
00:38:08.180
And this is a really interesting step because a lot of times we're not even clear on what our roles
00:38:13.560
are, right? Like most couples couldn't tell you really quickly off the top of their head,
00:38:18.940
Hey, yeah, I do these 20 different things. So that exercise is really important. There's a trap there,
00:38:24.540
which is there can be a tendency when you write those down to start to get into that fairness mindset
00:38:30.440
and compare. Wow. Like your list is really long and my list is really short. This is unfair.
00:38:35.920
That is not the goal at all. Right. The goal in that first stage is just like, get it all down on
00:38:40.920
paper, create awareness of what's happening today. And then the second step to this is get out two
00:38:47.440
more pieces of paper and have a conversation about, Hey, like if we were to actually design this
00:38:54.220
and not just do this by accident, what are the things you enjoy doing? So for example, I have
00:39:00.860
like a weird enjoyment for taking the trash out. It's just not a thing for me. My wife has an
00:39:06.140
enjoyment of folding laundry and doing laundry. It's just like not a thing for her. So those are
00:39:11.620
obvious no brainers. Like those should be on each of our respective lists, but that can be a useful
00:39:17.500
process because you start to ask, well, what am I good at? What do I enjoy? And then importantly,
00:39:22.620
what can we outsource? So for some couples, there are things that nobody wants to do. Like in our
00:39:28.520
house, nobody wants to clean the toilets. And we're fortunate that we have the resources that
00:39:33.860
we're able to bring somebody in once a week who helps us clean our house. And it's amazing.
00:39:38.740
And actually in our budget, that's under like marital, like a contribution to marriage,
00:39:44.360
not cleaning. I mean, that's, that's how we think of it. Like this is a contribution to us
00:39:49.660
because it saves us from all sorts of conflict and fights around who's going to clean the toilets.
00:39:55.620
No, I love that. We've done that in our own family. Like for me, a weird one. I like going
00:40:00.000
to the doctor's office or the dentist's office. I don't know why I like doing it. I like filling
00:40:04.760
out the forms. And so I'm the guy, I, I, I'm the one who takes the kids to the dentist and the
00:40:09.520
doctor and make appointments for them. That's my, and my wife hates it. She hates going to the doctor,
00:40:13.480
hates going to the dentist. I'm like, Hey, yeah, I'll take that one. It's great.
00:40:16.860
So I like that. So talk about what you're good at, what you enjoy and then delegate.
00:40:21.340
And that delegate piece, you talked about, this is really important because sometimes
00:40:23.900
what often happens is let's say your wife delegates something to you because it's important to her,
00:40:31.440
but she doesn't have the time for it or something like that. But then you just keep putting it off
00:40:35.540
and you have these check-ins. Your wife's like, Hey, have you done that thing yet? Like, no.
00:40:39.080
And the reason why you don't do it, it's like for you, it's just not that important. It's like,
00:40:42.200
I just don't, it's not that in the grand scheme of things isn't important,
00:40:44.840
but it's important to her. And that can be a big source of tension because like,
00:40:48.020
it's really important to her. And it feels like you're disrespecting her because you're not doing
00:40:51.600
it because it tells her like, you don't think it's important either. So the solution to that is
00:40:55.520
just outsource that to somebody else, like a third party. So it gets done.
00:41:00.460
Yeah. If it's possible, that's such a great solution because you can have a conversation that
00:41:05.100
goes like, Hey, I know this is really important to you. It's hard for me to complete for whatever
00:41:11.220
reason, or it's not very important to me. Can we bring somebody else in who can help you? You know,
00:41:16.480
like in our house, uh, my wife is really like, it's important to her that our yard looks really
00:41:23.920
good and I could care less and I hate mowing lawns and all that sort of thing. So that's one of those
00:41:28.700
areas where it's like, I want to honor that. It's really important to you that our yard looks great.
00:41:34.220
I also just like, that is not on my priority list at all. So maybe we can see about getting
00:41:41.160
somebody to come in and help us with that. One issue you talk about in a marriage that can be a
00:41:46.020
source of conflict and the 80, 80 approach to marriage can help with this is this idea of
00:41:50.980
over-functioning and under-functioning. What is over-functioning and under-functioning?
00:41:55.420
How does that cause conflict? Yeah, this is a dynamic that shows up in a lot of relationships
00:42:01.440
where there's an over-functioning or over-contributing partner. Statistically speaking,
00:42:06.560
that's probably usually the woman, but that's not always the case. And then there's also often an
00:42:11.680
under-functioning or under-contributing partner, which statistically speaking is often the man.
00:42:17.520
And a couple of things about this. First of all, it seems like it would be awesome to be the
00:42:22.800
under-functioning partner, the under-contributor, but I was that partner in our marriage for probably a
00:42:29.440
decade. I've interviewed a number of people who have found themselves in that role. And what I hear
00:42:35.600
consistently is that it actually sucks. Like you think, oh, it's cool. I don't have to do as much,
00:42:41.340
but it sucks to be in a position where it feels like you're not actually contributing. Nothing you do
00:42:49.080
is right. And so what often ends up happening is there's a gap between how much each of these
00:42:55.680
partners is doing. The under-contributor feels like nothing I do is right. So I'm just going to
00:43:01.340
stop doing anything. So the gap just starts to widen and widen and widen. And when you approach
00:43:07.760
that kind of a distinction between over-contributing, under-contributing partner from a 50-50 mindset,
00:43:14.180
it actually makes the inequality grow paradoxically. Because the more the over-contributor is begging
00:43:21.280
the under-contributor to contribute, the more they just sort of pull back, the more they withdraw,
00:43:26.640
the less they do. So that strategy just doesn't really work very well. What does work, we found,
00:43:32.940
is for the under-contributor or the under-functioning partner, there's a responsibility there to really
00:43:38.360
see if you can lean in and see if you can contribute knowing that you might do it wrong, knowing that it
00:43:44.540
might not be perfect. But then the more interesting role is for the over-contributor, the over-functioning
00:43:50.980
partner, a lot of times they're stuck in that position unconsciously because there's like this
00:43:57.460
weird gift that comes from being the over-functioning partner, which is that you have control.
00:44:03.020
Like you know when all the playdates are, you know where all the money goes, you know that you're
00:44:09.860
getting the right brand of dishwasher cleaner from the grocery store. And so from the perspective of
00:44:17.160
the over-contributor, the unlock there is you actually do have to start letting go of control
00:44:22.440
and your partner might do it wrong. They might get the wrong thing at the store, but that's kind of
00:44:27.380
like the movement of each partners that you have to make to start to dissolve that dialectic between
00:44:33.140
the two. Let's circle back to something we talked about earlier that I know caused a lot of tension in
00:44:38.560
a marriage. And that's how to decide whose family to spend the holidays with or how often to visit
00:44:44.840
each spouse's parents and stuff. Do you have any advice on how to navigate that conflict?
00:44:49.860
This is such a huge source of tension for a lot of couples. Certainly it has been for us.
00:44:55.080
And I think the first thing to notice is that many times when we're having this argument,
00:44:59.840
we're having this argument as our parents' kids. What I mean by that is we're having the argument
00:45:06.300
from the perspective of, I'm my parents' kid. My parents really want to spend time with us.
00:45:12.380
We need to make sure that the amount of time we spend with my parents and with your parents is fair.
00:45:17.480
And what that does is it totally takes out of the conversation what's best for you and your
00:45:24.580
partner, right? And so there's almost like a shift here from being your parents' kid to being the adults.
00:45:32.060
And if you approach this question from the perspective of, hey, now we're the adults,
00:45:37.420
then I think there's a really different perspective, which is rather than thinking of this
00:45:43.180
question of, you know, how are we going to divide the holidays from the perspective of what's best
00:45:48.180
for our parents? Like, how do we make our parents happy? How do we be good kids? To shift to a different
00:45:55.060
question, which is what's best for us as a couple? So in other words, you're putting your priority
00:46:01.880
responsibility on you as a couple rather than on pleasing your parents. And when you're able to
00:46:07.660
do that, all of a sudden the answers might really change to these questions. So for example, you might
00:46:13.700
say, hey, yeah, let's go back and visit our parents, but let's stay in a hotel this time. Or let's make
00:46:19.660
sure that we have a few hours every day that's for us. You might also notice that from that perspective,
00:46:26.200
you actually end up with a somewhat unfair solution. Like you may voluntarily say, hey,
00:46:32.620
let's actually spend less time with my family because that's not what's best for us. So there's
00:46:38.280
a way in which you can make that fairness fight almost dissolve by just shifting the priority from
00:46:44.600
what's best for your parents and how do we satisfy them to what's best for us as a couple and really
00:46:50.300
stepping into that position of we are the adults. We get to decide what's best for us.
00:46:56.640
I like that. I imagine that's a tough shift for people to make.
00:47:01.560
Yeah. And I think particularly early on, Kaylee and I got married when we were 26 and we really
00:47:08.060
took on the role of our parents' kids. And that caused so much conflict between the two of us because
00:47:14.740
it was almost like we were each the representative of our respective family. And we were having these
00:47:20.740
fights where we were sort of like the proxy representative for our family. And that started
00:47:25.640
to dissolve the moment we said, wait a minute, we're actually the adults here. We're going to
00:47:30.340
create our own life. We're going to do what's best for us. And that doesn't mean we're never going to
00:47:34.700
visit our parents. It doesn't mean we don't care about our parents. It just means that we're going to
00:47:39.580
act like we are adults and autonomous rather than being our parents' kids.
00:47:45.160
So at the end, you talk about some rituals that you can take part in to sort of bolster this 80-80
00:47:49.860
marriage. What are some of those rituals that you recommend?
00:47:53.660
Yeah, we have five essential habits that I think are worth trying out as a way to just build habits
00:48:01.960
of connection versus habits of disconnection in your relationship. And they're all based on this idea
00:48:07.500
of living in a more 80-80 structure and mindset in your relationship. So the first one is just
00:48:13.200
creating more space for connection. I mean, when I talk to couples these days, the primary thing I'm
00:48:18.880
seeing is that there's no space. And so thinking about ways where you can have space together as
00:48:25.200
a couple, and we think about this in three ways. One is just like daily micro habits of connection,
00:48:31.400
some sort of check-in every day. Another is having some sort of medium habit of connection. So it might be
00:48:37.300
going on a date night or going on a date hike. That's our favorite, like something you do every
00:48:41.800
week. And then there are more macro habits of connection where maybe you take a weekend together
00:48:47.980
once every quarter or once every year. Maybe you go away for a week. So that's number one. The second
00:48:53.360
is what we've been talking about throughout the podcast, which is this idea of really leaning into
00:48:59.020
radical generosity. So contributing that whole idea of daily acts of contribution. They can be really
00:49:05.720
small, seemingly insignificant, but then also creating a habit of appreciation. My wife and I,
00:49:11.780
we do this every night before we go to bed. It takes like three minutes. It's just like such a great way
00:49:17.240
to end the day. The third thing is what we were talking about with revealing. So when issues arise,
00:49:24.200
revealing what's going on for you, revealing that you're feeling that disconnection and seeing if you
00:49:29.220
can turn those into opportunities for connection. The fourth piece is what we call the shared success
00:49:35.960
check-in. So this is basically an idea of having some sort of, maybe it's a weekly or a monthly check-in
00:49:42.560
where you're able to talk through all of the complicated logistics of your life. Think about
00:49:48.520
what's working well, what's not working so well. We found that couples that do this, they save date night
00:49:54.680
from being all about logistics. Cause if you don't do this, then you end up on date night or, you know,
00:49:59.740
whatever your time together is. And you're talking about like, who's going to pick up the kids next
00:50:03.800
week. And then the final piece is creating space from digital distraction. And this I think is really
00:50:11.200
important because when I talk to a lot of couples these days, what I hear is not that they're in like
00:50:18.960
really deep conflict or they're having affairs or things like that, but there's this like
00:50:24.140
subtler force of disconnection where they'll talk about at the end of the day, one of us is sitting
00:50:30.400
on one side of the bed going through Instagram. The other person is doom scrolling the news.
00:50:35.860
And there's this way in which our devices are just like subtly pulling us away from each other.
00:50:42.620
So really seeing if you can create those spaces from digital distraction, maybe you kick your cell
00:50:47.800
phones out of your bedroom. Maybe you kick them out of your dinner. Maybe you buy a K-safe so you can
00:50:52.880
lock them up for like two hours at night, whatever you need to do, that can be like a really powerful
00:50:59.180
No, I love that. A ritual that my wife and I have been doing for a long time now. And we've
00:51:03.260
talked about this on the podcast before. We've written an article about it, but it's been a game
00:51:07.080
changer for us. And I know the people who have done it has been a game changer for them. It's having a
00:51:12.220
This was introduced by this marriage therapist named Marsha Berger. And you have this meeting
00:51:18.840
once a week and there's a few parts of the meeting. The first part is you spend time appreciating each
00:51:24.240
other. So you just talk about all the things that you noticed throughout the week that your spouse
00:51:27.940
did. Appreciate that. Hey, I saw that you took the kids to this thing. I appreciate you doing the
00:51:32.040
laundry. I appreciate you, whatever. And then you do to-dos. So you talk about all the stuff that you
00:51:37.480
have to do in the household just to make sure the household's running smoothly. You assign tasks,
00:51:41.720
you follow up on assignments. The next part is plan for good times. So you're planning for good
00:51:46.360
times as a family or as a couple, or even planning individual good times. So it's like, hey, I want
00:51:51.980
to go to this thing with my friends this weekend. Are you available to watch the kids? Is that okay?
00:51:57.220
So you can kind of coordinate good times. And then the last part, it's problems and challenges.
00:52:01.480
So you talk about, this is when you bring up like, oh, you know, look, Johnny is misbehaving in
00:52:06.060
school. What do we do about it? Like, who are we going to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with?
00:52:10.660
It's stuff like that. And it only takes about 20 minutes. So it's sort of our weekly family
00:52:15.740
business meeting that just makes sure we're staying connected and are both on the same page.
00:52:21.780
I love that. It's such a great idea. And I'm sure you find that by having that meeting,
00:52:26.820
then when you have time together outside of that, you can actually just be together and not have to
00:52:33.640
It's great. Well, Nate, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more
00:52:39.380
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Best place to go is 8080marriage.com. So that's 8080marriage.com.
00:52:47.160
That's where we have a lot of information about the book. Also, you'll find there that we have a
00:52:51.900
newsletter called the Clamp Insights Newsletter, which goes out once every couple of weeks. And that's
00:52:57.080
really designed to give couples tools that they can use in the midst of everyday life.
00:53:02.060
And we just try to make it fun. We were talking last week about how to use ChatGPT in your
00:53:07.640
relationship. So just kind of like practical tools for being more skillful in your relationship.
00:53:14.600
Fantastic. Well, Nate Clamp, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:53:17.880
My guest today was Nate Clamp. He's the co-author of the book, The 8080 Marriage. It's available on
00:53:23.300
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about the book at the website
00:53:27.180
8080marriage.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash 8080, where you find links to
00:53:32.660
resources when we delve deeper into this topic.
00:53:34.440
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:53:45.900
artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter. It's
00:53:49.800
called Dying Breed. You can sign up at dyingbreed.net. It's a great way to support the show. As always,
00:53:55.740
thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you on the list of
00:53:59.400
podcast, but put what you've heard into action.