The Art of Manliness - The 80⧸80 Marriage — A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.560 A lot of people go into marriage with a 50-50 mindset. Everything in the relationship from

00:00:16.860 tangible things like childcare and chores to intangible things like the effort and energy

00:00:21.040 needed to keep the partnership going is supposed to be divided equally. The 50-50 approach to

00:00:25.740 relationships is all about fairness and that seems sensible and rational but my guest says

00:00:30.760 it actually sabotages relational happiness. Nate Klimp is a former philosophy professor and the

00:00:35.700 co-author along with his wife of The 80-80 Marriage, a new model for a happier, stronger relationship.

00:00:41.760 Today on the show, Nate shares how cognitive biases skew our perception of our contributions

00:00:45.980 to relationship, what happens when couples get stuck in the 50-50 mindset of domestic scorekeeping

00:00:51.140 and how shifting to an 80-80 model of radical generosity can create an upward spiral of

00:00:56.240 connection and appreciation. And we discuss practical ways to divide household responsibilities,

00:01:01.700 decide how much time to spend with each spouse's respective parents, and establish values that

00:01:06.060 will guide your partnership as you navigate life changes and work towards a spirit of

00:01:09.680 shared success. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash 8080.

00:01:21.140 All right, Nate Klimp, welcome to the show.

00:01:30.240 So good to be here with you, Brett.

00:01:32.080 So you co-authored a book called The 80-80 Marriage with Your Wife. And in this book,

00:01:36.900 you both propose a new framework for thinking about marriage. And you start off the book

00:01:41.560 with a story of what kickstarted the idea of the 80-80 marriage. Tell us that story.

00:01:46.800 Yeah, well, I'll give you maybe even a more complete story than what we say in the book,

00:01:52.320 which is to say that when we first got together, we had this fairy tale-like beginning to our

00:02:00.040 relationship. So we met in high school. We were both seniors in high school. We were chemistry lab

00:02:05.840 partners. We went to senior prom together. And then we pragmatically broke up before we went to college.

00:02:11.140 And seven years later, it magically came back. We started dating again. We got married.

00:02:17.700 And if you had asked our friends at the time, they probably would have told you we were like

00:02:23.220 the perfect couple. And in some ways that ended up becoming a trap for us because a year or two

00:02:29.520 into marriage, as anybody who knows, who's been married knows, like things got real. And for us,

00:02:37.060 that looked like I was in my final year of getting a PhD, struggling to get a job as a professor. I had

00:02:43.240 a serious bike accident. We were just locked into all sorts of conflict to the point where

00:02:49.460 we almost got divorced at the time. Luckily, we didn't. We were able to push through that.

00:02:55.400 But over the decades, it's now been 19 years since then, we started to just ask this question,

00:03:02.540 like, what was the fundamental essence of our conflict? And what we arrived at is that essentially

00:03:10.000 we were fighting over whether it was fair and the it being all sorts of things, you know, like

00:03:16.540 childcare and housework and finances and all the different things that go on in our life.

00:03:22.940 And so we decided to see, you know, were we the only people experiencing this? Were there others out

00:03:29.700 there locked in this battle for fairness? And that's what ultimately led us to write the book.

00:03:34.780 And we interviewed a number of different couples. And what we found is that on some level, most modern

00:03:40.140 couples seem to be stuck in this conflict over fairness for what is or isn't fair. This practice

00:03:47.060 of keeping an elaborate mental scorecard of all the wonderful things you do juxtaposed against all the

00:03:52.940 things your partner doesn't do. And yeah, you call this framework of thinking about fairness in a

00:03:58.060 marriage. You call it the 50-50 marriage. And on paper, it seems like that should be a good idea, 1.00

00:04:03.740 but you found that it doesn't work. It just makes things worse. Why doesn't it work? Why does

00:04:08.460 focusing on fairness in a marriage make things worse? Because people might be thinking, well,

00:04:13.100 that doesn't make any sense. In a 50-50 marriage, you're trying to be fair. And isn't that a good thing?

00:04:17.980 Yeah. Well, and this is so surreptitious. It's happening all the time, mostly under the radar

00:04:25.060 of awareness. For example, just the other day, I think it was last night, actually, I was unloading

00:04:30.140 the dishwasher. And I thought to myself, man, this is like the third time in a row I've unloaded the

00:04:34.180 dishwasher. And I could feel the agitation. And that's just a micro example of how this shows up.

00:04:40.220 It's this thought, things aren't fair, which is then followed by some experience of anger or resentment.

00:04:47.440 And the reason this doesn't work, it's actually kind of interesting. There's this really cool

00:04:52.580 science coming out of the field of marriage research, where they do these time survey studies.

00:04:59.280 And they found a couple things. The headline here is that we're basically really bad at assessing what

00:05:06.300 is or isn't fair. So if you're saying, man, I contribute 60% or 70% to my relationship,

00:05:12.720 that number is based mostly on pure delusion. And there are like two things that contribute to this.

00:05:20.340 One is what psychologists call availability bias, which is basically just a fancy way of saying,

00:05:25.380 in my marriage and my relationship with my wife, Kaylee, all of the wonderful things that I do,

00:05:32.180 like all those contributions are available to me. I see them happening in real time when I'm taking

00:05:37.640 our daughter to her violin lesson or whatever it might be. When it comes though, to what Kaylee's

00:05:42.760 doing, all of a sudden things get a little bit blurry and foggy, like she's contributing, but I

00:05:48.200 don't really see any of that happening in real time. And most of it, I don't see happening at all.

00:05:53.380 And I don't even know about it often. So there's this tendency then to systematically

00:05:58.460 underestimate what our partner is doing. You add on top of that, one other cognitive bias,

00:06:04.320 the overestimation bias, where they found in researching couples that people tend to radically

00:06:11.520 overestimate the amount of time they spend on household labor and on childcare. So what that

00:06:17.640 means is if I say like, Hey, I spent an hour yesterday cleaning up the kitchen, it was probably

00:06:22.900 more like 30 minutes. And you put these two together and you start to see, okay, we're systematically

00:06:28.660 underestimating what our partner does. We're systematically overestimating what we do.

00:06:33.340 And then we're having this conversation about trying to make things fair. And you start to see

00:06:39.060 that the numbers are just based on delusion. And that's why we think this idea, this mindset of

00:06:45.960 50-50 fairness just doesn't work. And it leads to perpetual, constant conflict.

00:06:52.680 Yeah. So we're keeping a mental scorecard when we have a 50-50 marriage, but the problem is the

00:06:57.220 scorecard is probably not accurate.

00:07:00.380 Yes. Wildly inaccurate is the way I would put it.

00:07:02.980 Yeah. And you talk about some of the reoccurring problems or conflicts you see in couples that

00:07:09.060 you interviewed when they try to do everything 50-50. You mentioned one in your own marriage,

00:07:14.840 the domestic scorekeeping fight. It's like, well, man, I did, I've done dishes three nights in a row.

00:07:19.540 What's going on here? What are some other common areas in a marriage where people try to do things

00:07:24.820 50-50 and it just causes a lot of tension?

00:07:29.220 I'm so glad you asked that, Brett, because it was really interesting when we would ask couples,

00:07:34.240 do you fight about fairness? Most couples said, no, we never have a fight like that.

00:07:39.480 And then we would ask them about things like who does the chores around the house or money,

00:07:45.120 and they would reveal all of these different conflicts that were in essence conflicts over

00:07:51.140 fairness. So that's what I was saying earlier. Often this is happening beneath the radar of

00:07:56.660 awareness. So seeing the kind of classic archetypes of this fight can be really useful just as a way

00:08:02.580 of cultivating awareness. So yeah, you mentioned domestic scorekeeping. That's one way it shows up.

00:08:08.220 Another way it shows up often for couples is trying to make the balance of time spent with

00:08:15.460 each extended family or each set of friends equal. So for example, in our life, we used to live in Los

00:08:21.920 Angeles and we come back to Colorado where both sets of parents lived for the holidays. And we would

00:08:27.460 have these epic explosive fights over trying to figure out the right balance of time spent with my

00:08:34.660 family and then spent with Kaylee's family. And many couples that we've interviewed have something

00:08:40.080 similar going on. There's also a fairness fight for many couples around money. So a lot of couples

00:08:47.520 fight over who's saving more, who's spending more. And then another way this shows up, especially with

00:08:54.060 couples who have children, is as anyone who knows who has a kid, once you have a kid, all of a sudden

00:08:59.820 free time and leisure time becomes like, we like to call it domestic gold. It's this insanely scarce

00:09:06.860 resource. And so we were interviewing one woman and she was telling us about how she went to Target,

00:09:13.160 right? And she spent an hour at Target and she got home and her husband was like, oh, cool. You had

00:09:18.860 your hour of free time. Now I'm going to go to the gym, which of course triggers this huge fight over

00:09:23.360 again, this balance of the amount of leisure time that each person in the partnership gets.

00:09:30.220 Yeah. And for the wife, she's probably a target, not for leisures. She's probably buying stuff for the 1.00

00:09:35.180 house. So like for her, it was just a chore. Exactly. Yeah. For her, it was a chore. And that

00:09:40.820 was the essence of the fight that she was talking about is that she's like, that wasn't leisure

00:09:45.540 time. Like that was me buying a bunch of crap for the family. Are you kidding me? And you can imagine 0.98

00:09:50.200 then how that fight would ensue from there. Yeah. The 50, 50 split on time with in-laws or family.

00:09:57.660 I remember when we first had kids that, that can actually get exhausting because you do try to be

00:10:01.520 fair. Cause you want your parents to see the kids and you want your wife's parents to see the kids,

00:10:06.200 but then trying to do two Christmases in one day, it was exhausting. Just like wore you out. I mean,

00:10:12.480 we were fair, but in the end it was like, I'm tired. That was not fun.

00:10:17.220 It's funny that you mentioned that we had a similar experience. I'll never forget it. We were,

00:10:21.580 had just gotten through the holidays and our system was my parents got Christmas Eve and Christmas.

00:10:27.760 Her parents got the next four days because they didn't get the real holiday. They got a bonus

00:10:32.900 two days after. And, uh, we got to the end of that one year. And I remember we had the same

00:10:38.620 experience of just like, this is exhausting. Like this is just torture. Yeah. And what's interesting

00:10:45.580 is that everyone's definition of fairness is going to be different because everyone's got a different

00:10:49.240 calculus going on in their head. So you're like, uh, well, we didn't get to spend Christmas Eve and

00:10:53.580 Christmas with my family. Uh, so we get to add an extra two days. And then the other person's like,

00:10:58.360 well, no, why would we do that? I only got to spend two days with my family. So you only get

00:11:03.040 to spend two days with your family. Like that's fair. Yeah. Well, and what, what's also interesting

00:11:07.520 is that it's not just you and your partner. Generally the families are also in on the whole

00:11:14.420 game, right? There's a lot of guilt and a lot of pressure coming from each set of families or each

00:11:19.820 set of parents saying like, Hey, we need you. You know, how could you miss Christmas this year?

00:11:24.600 So it becomes this very complicated thing to navigate. Yeah. And this can also happen with

00:11:30.160 friends too. It's like, well, we spent time with your friends. Now it's time to spend time with my

00:11:35.020 friends. And then there might be this negotiation that goes on back and forth and just causes conflict.

00:11:41.360 Yeah. And I think it's just important to mention here that there is nothing inherently wrong with this

00:11:48.160 effort to achieve fairness. I mean, it really is a noble goal, but the problem is that it can become

00:11:54.680 such a pervasive mind state that it really starts to pit people in relationship against each other.

00:12:02.340 And it starts to create a culture in a relationship. That's very individualistic. That's very

00:12:07.480 me versus you, what I want versus what you want, right? It, it kind of turns the relationship into a

00:12:13.980 negotiation, which ultimately isn't very loving, isn't very sexy. So that's why I think it starts

00:12:21.080 to break down for most couples. And one of the things that heightens the conflict over fairness

00:12:26.020 in a modern 50, 50 marriage is that there's a lot of role confusion. When you talk about this in the

00:12:31.400 book, like in an older model of marriage, like a 1950s model of marriage, it had its downsides,

00:12:37.080 but it also had its benefits in that, you know, everyone knew what they're supposed to be doing.

00:12:42.260 It was like, well, mom does this, dad does this. And there was no confusion. Now today,

00:12:47.400 most people, they want a more egalitarian relationship. Both spouses might be working, 0.90

00:12:52.520 both are taking part in childcare, but then the question becomes, okay, well, how, how do we divvy

00:12:58.500 all this stuff up? There aren't any set roles and they're just kind of winging it. And then this just

00:13:02.400 causes all this conflict. Yeah. So one of the big shifts to our current state of relationships and

00:13:08.980 this mindset of 50, 50 is that we are now both equals in this relationship. And that means we're

00:13:16.420 both equally capable of being a rockstar or an amazing scientist, but it also means that we're

00:13:21.920 both equally capable of cleaning the dishes or unloading the dishwasher or doing the laundry.

00:13:27.760 So what that creates to your point is this state that we like to call role confusion, where it's like,

00:13:34.100 wait, we could both be doing all of these different things. So whose job is it to do them?

00:13:40.320 And when we would interview couples about this, it was really interesting because we'd ask them,

00:13:44.940 you know, how did you decide on your structure of roles in your relationship? And basically everyone

00:13:50.680 we talked to had the same reaction. They kind of looked confused for a moment. And then they said

00:13:56.080 some version of, I don't really know. I guess we, we just are kind of winging it. And we actually

00:14:02.240 started to call this the wing it approach to roles, which is the standard approach that most couples

00:14:08.180 take to creating a structure of roles. You know, one guy I remember I talked to, he was like,

00:14:14.040 somehow I'm the toothbrush guy with our daughter. Like every night when it's time for us to put her

00:14:20.260 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

00:14:25.380 in that role, but that's just like the role that I ended up in. And there's not necessarily anything

00:14:30.900 wrong with this accidental approach to roles, but we think there's a better way to think about this.

00:14:37.040 And that is this shift from accident to something more like design to actually having a conversation

00:14:43.620 with your partner. And most couples have never done this where you take a step back and you say like,

00:14:48.660 Hey, let's look at the structure of what we do. Let's look at what we enjoy doing, what we don't enjoy

00:14:54.620 doing, what we're good at, what we're not good at, what we might be able to outsource. And let's

00:14:59.000 actually like design this thing to work for us. So that can be a huge thing for most couples to do.

00:15:05.780 Yeah. And we're going to talk about some questions you can ask to figure this out. But before we do,

00:15:11.200 let's talk about the 80, 80 marriage. So you and your wife proposed, instead of looking at marriage

00:15:15.200 through the rubric of 50, 50 fairness, we need to have an 80, 80 marriage. So what does an 80,

00:15:21.620 80 marriage look like? The first thing you'll probably notice is that the math doesn't work.

00:15:26.640 There's no such thing as a 160% hole. That's just a mathematical impossibility. But the basic idea

00:15:33.760 behind 80, 80 is shifting the expectation or shifting the goal from just doing your 50%,

00:15:42.260 which locks us into that mindset of fairness to striving to contribute at something more like 80%.

00:15:49.180 And that's a mindset shift from what we call fairness to what we like to call radical generosity.

00:15:54.460 And we know that it's not going to work, right? There is no way that you and your partner can

00:15:59.220 both contribute at 80%. But it's kind of this radical, illogical goal that's really meant to

00:16:05.800 uproot this habit in our thinking that most of us have developed. And the idea is that if we approach

00:16:12.840 our life and our marriage together with this goal of striving for 80%, all of a sudden we start to

00:16:19.880 radically change the underlying culture of the relationship. And I will say here that usually

00:16:25.720 when I get to this point, there are many people who start voicing objections like, wait a minute,

00:16:31.880 you're saying I should do 80%. That is just a recipe for my partner to totally take advantage of me.

00:16:37.980 Why would I do that? And so I think there's a really important response to that objection that I

00:16:43.240 just want to get to briefly, which is we like to say, and this is validated by psychology, that

00:16:48.720 your mindset is contagious. So if you're operating in that 50-50 mindset where there's a lot of

00:16:55.200 resentment and a lot of anger and a lot of scorekeeping, your partner will generally mirror

00:17:00.220 that back to you at every turn. You've created a kind of contagious atmosphere of resentment.

00:17:05.320 If on the other hand, you and just you shift to something more like the 80-80 mindset of radical

00:17:12.280 generosity, that is also contagious. Your partner might be like, what is happening? Are you on drugs?

00:17:18.900 Like, did you go to a yoga retreat? What is wrong with you? But what also tends to happen is that 0.99

00:17:26.240 your generosity opens up a space for your partner to also be a little bit more generous. And you can start

00:17:33.340 to create this virtuous upward spiral. Yeah. The 50-50 mentality can get you stuck

00:17:39.440 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

00:17:46.680 relationship, your spouse is going to start syncing up with that pattern you set up. And it just becomes

00:17:52.000 this vicious downward cycle. And it's all just unsolvable conflict to try to make things exactly

00:17:59.540 fair. Because how do you decide if work done outside the home is weightier than work done

00:18:06.080 inside the home? Or if this chore is harder than that chore? I mean, it's all just unsolvable

00:18:12.620 conflict. So instead of trying to make your responsibilities and contributions mathematically

00:18:19.420 equal, just operate with an attitude of generosity. And then that can become contagious.

00:18:26.020 It's like, well, if you do that, then your spouse will see it. And she's like, oh, wow,

00:18:29.300 he's doing a lot. I appreciate that. I'm going to do something for him. And then it becomes

00:18:33.960 a positive tit-for-tat. Totally. And it's kind of a fun experiment to do if you're listening to this

00:18:40.140 podcast and it's just you without your partner. Try the experiment of taking a day or a week where

00:18:45.760 you just really consciously start to live into this mindset of radical generosity. And just see

00:18:53.660 if your partner's behavior doesn't change in subtle ways. We call it like stealth 80-80. It's

00:18:59.500 a fun experiment to try. And one of the big takeaways I got from the idea of the 80-80 marriage or the

00:19:04.020 overarching principle is that it's about if I win, we both win. Or if you win, I win too. It's like you

00:19:11.140 see your marriage as a team effort. Whereas the 50-50 marriage, you're mostly thinking like, well,

00:19:16.180 what can I get out of this relationship? Like, how can this marriage help me become a better me?

00:19:21.060 Which, I mean, marriage can do that. But if that's your goal, then you're just going to get

00:19:26.180 stuck in these tit-for-tat traps. But when you kind of approach it from like, hey, we're on the

00:19:31.460 same team. What can we do so that we can both succeed? Everything just goes so much more smoother.

00:19:37.520 That's exactly right. I mean, it's really interesting that many couples do get stuck in this trap of

00:19:44.800 basically thinking like, what can I do for me? How can I stand up for number one here? And I don't

00:19:52.260 think it's an accident that this happens. We are raised in a culture that celebrates individual

00:19:58.320 excellence. For me and Kaylee, we went to college and the message we received was you need to do

00:20:05.660 something amazing. You need to achieve success as an individual. And so then we got married and the

00:20:12.120 expectation becomes, okay, now you're supposed to shift from individual success to this collective

00:20:17.460 project together where you're sharing your life and your space and your money. And that shift is

00:20:24.300 really radical. And most people aren't really able to make that shift quickly. So that's where there is

00:20:31.260 this more conscious effort that I think we all need to make in our relationships to see if we can

00:20:37.900 shift the emphasis in our own thinking from individual success or how do I win alone? How do

00:20:44.180 I win in my career and my life to a goal that's more like shared success? You know, how do we win

00:20:50.320 together? Yeah. I love that. Cause like sometimes it might mean one person gets to achieve like their

00:20:56.240 personal goal. Cause it helps the family out in the long run. And then sometimes it means the other

00:21:01.140 person gets to do that. And like, you just, maybe you take turns. It's not like fairness, but it's just

00:21:04.640 like you kind of intuitively know, okay, well it's time for me to do this thing or it's time for you

00:21:08.640 to do this thing. Let's marshal the, our resources, we make this happen. And then it can change as the

00:21:14.200 relationship progresses. Exactly. Yeah. You can alternate between who's background, who's

00:21:19.340 foreground. And that's a really cool thing to do. Kaylee and I do that a lot. You know, if I'm writing

00:21:23.860 a book, I'm foreground when it comes out, if she's doing a big engagement, she's foreground and I'm

00:21:29.480 kind of holding the house together and our daughter together. And so that alternation can

00:21:35.420 actually be really quite fun and just a way to grow together. And I would say like the main shift

00:21:42.380 to try to aspire toward is when your partner has a big win, even if there is like a little tinge of

00:21:49.860 jealousy or envy, which happens in a lot of partnerships, see if you can really celebrate

00:21:54.620 that. Because ultimately if your partner wins big, that is a win for both of you. And so,

00:22:00.060 so it's like that shift of just trying to celebrate the wins together rather than as individuals.

00:22:05.880 You know, as I was reading about the 80, 80 marriage, it made me think about pioneer days

00:22:10.980 in America, like living out on a farm on the prairie, you know, back then, you know, a couple had to be

00:22:17.200 this real unit, you know, the husband and wife, they had roles, the kids had roles, everyone had

00:22:22.460 responsibilities, but everyone pitched in with everything. I mean, if one person couldn't do

00:22:27.980 something, then the other person had to pick up the slack. It wasn't about fairness. It was just

00:22:32.100 like, okay, what do we need to get done to survive? Let's all work together here.

00:22:38.120 I love that. It's actually funny. I was just interviewing a couple in Australia. We're writing

00:22:42.420 a new book on busyness and love, and they were farmers in rural Australia. And they were basically

00:22:48.660 living what you described. Like the guy was telling me, you know, his calves had pink eye and they

00:22:54.040 were out there trying to get the pink eye treated while they were feeding the calves and getting them

00:22:58.940 ready for, you know, taken down for purchase or whatever it was. And, um, it's a, it's a cool

00:23:05.100 analogy. The other analogy that I really like here is if you can imagine your family as something like

00:23:12.960 a business, we like the name family Inc for this. In fact, we, this was something we ended up cutting

00:23:18.800 from the book, but the reason I think that's helpful. And some people resist that. Cause

00:23:23.660 they're like, no, it's about love and spontaneity. And I don't want to think of my family as a

00:23:28.660 business, but what's helpful about that is just thinking, Hey, if we were a kind of collective

00:23:34.760 business, then it doesn't really matter who's making more money or who's achieving more success.

00:23:41.300 What matters is that we're lining up what we each do such that we maximize the success of the

00:23:48.360 collective enterprise. And that's a really different way of thinking of it. You know,

00:23:52.220 we also use the analogy of basketball sometimes, right? Like 50, 50 is kind of like playing basketball

00:23:58.760 where you and your partner are on the same team technically, but you're both trying to drive up

00:24:03.300 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.

00:31:53.740 Yes.

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 0.94

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, 0.92

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, 1.00

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. 0.97

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 0.81

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, 0.99

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

00:50:58.280 unlock.

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

00:51:11.260 weekly marriage meeting.

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

00:52:31.440 go through all those logistics all the time.

00:52:33.640 It's great. Well, Nate, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:52:37.420 about the book and your work?

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.

00:53:17.080 Thanks so much, Brett.

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.

The Art of Manliness - February 11, 2025

The 80⧸80 Marriage — A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship

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