Spouse, partner, or roommate -- it doesn't matter. If you both work outside the home, yet one of you does most of the work inside the home, arguments and resentment will unfold.
A study by Harvard Business School suggests that up to 25% of married couples end their relationships because of chores. Researchers found that arguments over who did what at home were the third leading reason for divorce among 3,000 couples.
As reported by ABC News, research found that men, not women, benefited from a less traditional gender role divide in household chores.
Sharing household chores ranks as the third-highest issue associated with a successful marriage, behind only unfaithfulness and good sex.
In a groundbreaking study, a connection was established between women's decreased sexual desire and their role in managing a majority of household chores.
The case for a fair division of the work needed to manage a home is compelling, and this post shares exactly how this can be done with excellence.
The Fair Play System
The Fair Play System is a revolutionary approach designed to rebalance domestic work and caregiving responsibilities between partners, fostering a marriage.
Fair Play emphasizes shared responsibilities and values, not just splitting chores evenly. It’s about creating a system empowering both partners to engage meaningfully in the home.
Frederick Van Riper is a Fair Play Certified Instructor and owner of Seat at the Table Coaching. According to Frederick,
"Fair Play is a system to optimize your home organization. But it’s more than that—it’s the master key to doors you didn’t even know needed unlocking."
Key Components of Fair Play
Fair Play involves using a card system where each card represents a task or responsibility, from childcare to financial management. Couples distribute these cards according to their individual preferences, abilities, and time constraints, ensuring a fair division of labor.
The Fair Play system not only helps in managing household tasks but also addresses the often-overlooked mental load and invisible work that can weigh heavily on one partner.
Click here to use the free digital cards.
Starting with Fair Play
Implementing Fair Play starts with an open conversation about each partner's current contributions and feelings towards household management. It's about moving away from assumptions and working together to design a life that feels balanced and fair to both partners.
Divide the cards up with your spouse based on who is responsible for that current task. If one of you wants to see the home managed more equitably, reallocate a few cards at a time.
Using Fair Play
Revisit the system every few weeks, reallocating, if needed, the remaining cards in the deck. Be willing to change as life changes. Perhaps there are career switches or a growing family. As your life changes, so will the needs of your home.
Learn More about Fair Play
To learn more about Fair Play, listen to our interview with Fair Play author Eve Rodsky, embedded at the bottom of this post. You can also review our more comprehensive post about Fair Play, The Fair Play System: How It Works.
House Cleaning vs Housekeeping
Keeping your home clean is an ongoing effort that includes the physical labor of completing the tasks. It also includes the mental load involved in chore organization and coordination.
House Cleaning
Deep cleaning tasks include vacuuming, dusting, mopping, and thoroughly cleaning bathrooms and kitchens. Cleaning your home is one of many responsibilities of managing the home. The mental load of house cleaning is the labor we don't see, such as ensuring we have all our cleaning supplies and scheduling cleanings when you expect company.
Outsourcing House Cleaning
Much of what is required to clean your home can be scheduled and outsourced. Outsourcing should always be a line item in a dual-career couple's budget. Couples should consider how they can buy time to complete household tasks to increase their time to enjoy each other doing what they enjoy most.
Housekeeping
Housekeeping involves more regular maintenance of a home. It includes light cleaning tasks like tidying up, doing the dishes, and doing laundry. As I explained in the summary of the Fair Play System, one spouse or the other should "own" the responsibilities associated with housekeeping, dividing up the tasks between spouses.
Outsourcing Housekeeping
Choosing between house cleaning and housekeeping depends largely on your needs, lifestyle, and budget. Hiring a house cleaner might be the best option for those who manage everyday tasks well but need occasional deep cleaning. Conversely, a housekeeper would be more beneficial if you require ongoing assistance with day-to-day chores.
Click here to learn more about our Marriage Toolkit and access a free preview!
Addressing the Mental Load
The mental load is the cognitive and emotional work that people do to manage their lives and the lives of others. It can include planning, scheduling, remembering, anticipating, preparing, and organizing tasks that take place in the mind.
The mental load can be invisible, often unnoticed and rarely valued, and can happen at work, during leisure time, and even interrupt sleep.
Felicia Kashevaroff is an ICF-certified coach trained in a number of modalities, including the Gottman method, Organization and Relationships Systems Coaching (ORSC), small group facilitation, and and conflict resolution. Felicia is the founder of Tend Task.
I asked Felicia to address the common challenges couples face when trying to share the mental load equitably in marriage.
What often stands in the way of addressing the mental load in a marriage?
Most couples start their marriages with a general understanding that they want to be equal partners, but they don’t take the time to get really granular about what sharing the load actually looks like.
Without digging deep into the details, unconscious gender norms take over, and an unbalanced relationship develops. This can start as early as the wedding planning process, which is rife with gendered norms that encourage women to WANT to take on the lion’s share of planning for an event that should be a joint representation of your relationship.
In a heterosexual relationship, women often take ownership of the mental load of wedding planning, which sets the tone for taking on the mental load of household and relationship management. Research shows that not only do women willingly take on more of the mental load, but they convince themselves that any contribution by their partner is an indication that they are contributing equally.
Such a dynamic can feel relatively manageable until you become parents — then it becomes unsustainable for one partner to bear more than their share of the mental load. Oftentimes, this is when a deep resentment starts to take hold in the relationship.
To undo this dynamic, it takes hard work to deconstruct the unconscious gender norms that got you there and to rebuild belief systems and behaviors that lead to a more balanced division of the mental load.
What is one simple and actionable step spouses can take toward a fair and equitable distribution of the mental load needed to manage a home in marriage?
I always recommend the noticing exercise from Dr. Kate Mangino’s book, Equal Partners. Although Mangino does this exercise with her children to teach them to contribute to the household, the exercise is a great opportunity for adult partners to start to uncover who “sees” what needs to be done around the house and to open conversations for both partners to start noticing and acting more effectively around the house.
We are proud that Dr. Mangino is a Modern Husbands Advisory Board Member.
If you were to speak directly to someone who loves their spouse and wants to be a teammate but has a partner who can't articulate their frustrations around shouldering an unfair amount of the mental load, what would you say?
I would encourage the partner who sees that there needs to be a more equitable balance in their relationship to start taking action. It’s understandable to want your partner to articulate their feelings, but that’s actually adding to their mental load.
Think about your experience with daily life.
Where can you step in and take on more responsibility?
Do you notice that your partner struggles with meal planning and shopping?
Start doing it yourself.
Do you notice that it’s a real struggle for your partner to get off work in time to do daycare pick-up?
Tell them you’re going to do it from now on.
If your partner starts to question how you’re doing these tasks that are new for you, then ask them to sit down and work out a shared standard that you both agree upon. Taking action is a tangible and meaningful way to show that you’re a team.
House Chores App
Coexist is a mobile app designed to alleviate the mental load of household management by providing a platform for easily coordinated, delegated, and scheduled tasks.
Users can set up reminders, customize notes, and share information with anyone in or outside their home. The app's standout features include meal planning, recipe organization, and creating smart grocery lists, all of which aim to simplify daily routines and foster teamwork in the home.
Silvia de Denaro Vieira is the Co-Founder & CEO at Coexist. Coexist is the tool for the future of home management, making housework more visible, fair, and automated.
I asked Silvia how Coexist helps couples manage chores together?
"The Coexist app helps couples manage chores together by giving them a shared space to plan, track, and remember everything. With all tasks, lists, meals, and events in one place, it’s easier to stay on the same page and avoid misunderstandings."
My wife and I use Coexist and love it! Click here for more details.
House Chores List Template
Click here to download your free and customizable house chores list, illustrated below.
An Interview with Fair Play Author Eve Rodsky
Eve Rodsky transformed a “blueberries breakdown” into a catalyst for social change when she applied her Harvard trained background in organizational management to ask the simple yet profound question:
"What would happen if we treated our homes as our most important organizations? "
Her New York Times bestselling book and Reese’s Book Club Pick, Fair Play, a gamified life-management system that helps partners rebalance their domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, has elevated the cultural conversation about the value of unpaid labor and care.
Described as the ‘antidote to physical, mental and emotional burnout,’ Rodsky aims to inspire a new narrative around the equality of time and the individual right to personal time choice that influences sustainable and lasting change on a policy level.
Rodsky’s work is backed by Hello Sunshine—Reese Witherspoon’s media company whose mission is to change the narrative for women through storytelling. Rodsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Seth and their three children.
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Eve Rodsky Interview Transcript
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (00:00.079)
Eve, Christian and I feel like we're meeting a superstar here. Thank you for joining us.
Eve (she/her) (00:04.259)
I feel the same. I really believe the next frontier of this movement in terms of just, you know, equity in the home is really men. And so I really appreciate your willingness to talk with me today.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (00:21.639)
Well, we want to begin the podcast with the end in mind. So inspired by your book, which by the way we read, the fair play documentary was released in the past year and it's been wildly popular. It's available on Apple TV and it walks viewers through the common challenges that couples face managing the home together, particularly homes where both spouses work. And what I found most interesting,
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (00:50.343)
was the feedback from the husbands at the end of the documentary. Can you start by sharing what they had to say?
Eve (she/her) (01:01.547)
Okay, Brian and Christian, and you'll know this too, literally any man that I've spoken to, and we're talking, you know, thousands and thousands of men at this point in 16, maybe even 17 different countries, there's never been anybody who said to me, I regret investing in my family. I regret investing time to figure out my home organization. I regret.
Eve (she/her) (01:30.835)
trading assumptions for structured decision -making. There's never been anybody who's ever said that, right? Even this one systems analyst who I love from a big, you can just imagine sort of a big car company that deals with lots of systems, which you can imagine, he's a systems analyst. And he said to me that as a systems analyst, his home was one where literally every night they were waiting to decide who's taking the dog out, right when it was about to take.
Eve (she/her) (01:59.787)
a piss on the rug. And he's a systems analyst. And he said, I don't actually understand how I was having as a systems analyst, which is somebody who creates processes so you don't have to make the same decision every single day, was making the same decision every single day, right? And that was sort of his pre fair play life. So I want to just start with that big picture, this idea that.
Eve (she/her) (02:26.845)
When you invest in your home, like I said, I've never seen one man, whether he's married to another man, married to a woman in a polyamorous relationship, even I have men who are in polyamorous relationships who tell me they play fair play. I've never seen one man say to me that they regret that investment.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (02:44.217)
Wow. Wow. And so as you're sharing this, I guess what comes to mind is, you know, my feelings, because I was, if you've seen the documentary or you've read the book, there's a story in there about the blueberries. And let's lead with that, Eve, if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about that, because that's, I was the husband on the other end 20 years ago. Can you share?
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (03:12.327)
just a little bit about, you know, kind of like what prompted this.
Eve (she/her) (03:18.315)
Yes, well, Brian, I'm sure that you can agree and Christian, no one sets out to be an expert on the gender division of labor. I don't think, Brian, that when you are at your third grade, what do you want to be when you grow up board that you would said, you know, creator of an organization that's trying to like right the wrongs of the gender division of labor. I feel the same way that wasn't like on my third grade. What do you want to be when you grow up board? But as life happens, right, things that you think are going to be there for you, whether it's just.
Eve (she/her) (03:48.201)
inherent fair partnerships. You have values, which is that you want to support your loved ones. We have internal values. And then all of a sudden, one day, you wake up and you say, wait, I'm not living those values. And so for me, the breakdown was after my second son, Ben, was born, where my husband, Seth, and I talk about this in the book, sent me a text, right, from his perspective, probably completely innocuous.
Eve (she/her) (04:17.035)
I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. But I think, Brian, you can, as someone who's evolved, right, when you are a woman who has just had a second child and you get a text like that, I'll tell you what happened to me. What happened to me was that I looked around as I was getting this text where I saw that I had a breast pump on the passenger seat of my car. I had a gift for the newborn baby to return in the back seat of my car.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (04:24.743)
Mm -hmm.
Eve (she/her) (04:46.123)
I had taken a step back in my career and started my own law firm for flexibility. So I had a client contract in my lap that I was trying to mark up while I was racing to get my older son from a toddler transition program that lasts in America, you know, 10 minutes and costs like a million dollars. And in the midst of this chaos, Seth sends me this text that literally took the breath away from me. So I pulled over.
Eve (she/her) (05:15.755)
which you don't do lightly in LA because of traffic. And I just started to cry. I started to sob in my car, thinking to myself, how did I get here? How did I become the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs? Like that's literally where we were in our relationship, where I felt like I was the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs. But Brian, I need to explain the context because then you, of course, from your perspective, right, a lot of men will say, obviously Seth,
Eve (she/her) (05:43.499)
didn't know he was triggering this massive breakdown in our marriage based on his text message. But the context was after my second son, my workplace was also abandoning me because they were making it very hard for me to come back after my maternity leave. They weren't offering me flexibility. This is pre -pandemic.
Eve (she/her) (06:08.683)
you know, where this was an in -office culture. They weren't offering me a place to pump, you know, breast milk. They were saying maybe they could get me a broom closet without an outlet. So I felt very abandoned by my workplace. And then on top of it, when I went to that toddler transition program, the name tag that I was given was Zach's mom. This was a school that told me they were going to know me and support me, and they didn't even know my fucking name. They were calling me Zach's mom.
Eve (she/her) (06:37.963)
And then on top of that, now I have a husband who also I felt like was abandoning me to the assumptions that somehow I was going to still be the one to take care of the kids, get the flexibility to my work, buy his blueberries. And so that three -part abandonment of sort of my identity to my community as Zach's mom, my workplace making things so difficult for me, plus Seth.
Eve (she/her) (07:07.851)
and his assumptions about what type of work, unpaid work I should be doing for the family. Brian, that was what was the perfect storm that allowed me to start thinking about a different way to live, whether that was gonna be divorce, whether that was gonna be saying to Seth, I need to do something different. But that breakdown was the beginning of, I would say, the second part of my marriage.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (07:32.583)
The reason that I wanted you to share that after sharing the fact that the men who you work with at the conclusion will always say that they are thankful is because I was a Seth and I was working 60 to 80 hours a week. And I looked at my role simply as to be the provider, despite the fact at the time that, you know, hope worked.
Eve (she/her) (07:51.355)
Hmm.
Eve (she/her) (07:58.619)
Right.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (08:00.931)
It was a, you know, the typical generational norm of a flexible schedule. And so on my mind, it's like she takes care of the home and I bring home the bacon with zero regard for what she was experiencing with the challenges of what it takes to maintain a home. And, you know, fast forward to today where now I'm the one who's managing most of the home tasks gladly. So I feel horrible that.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (08:30.885)
that I would ever diminish the work that she was doing to make sure that our family was happy and running and not just diminish it, but not even recognize it because I hadn't experienced it myself. And throughout this journey from being, you know, what Seth was going through with you to where I am now.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (08:52.227)
I want to just make sure that our listeners understand that I am much happier as a person, as a father, as a husband, now that I have a heavy hand in helping run the home, because I can see the smile on my wife's face as she too has a career. She's aspirational and she feels liberated in part because she now has the mind space to devote to working outside of the home. And she feels like that she's not carrying that total burden that we're a team.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (09:22.181)
And so if you're a listener, understand that what we're trying to help you do will make not only your wife happier or your husband, but it will also make you happier.
Eve (she/her) (09:40.259)
Amen. Preach to that.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (09:41.923)
Go ahead, Christian.
Christian Sherrill (09:43.896)
I was just going to interject. I remember watching the movie when I was a teenager, The Hours. Do you all remember this movie? It was kind of a meditation on Virginia Woolf and her books, especially Mrs. Dalloway, which is something that we were reading in my high school English class. And there was this scene where the sort of prototypical 1950s husband comes.
Eve (she/her) (09:52.195)
Oh yes, yes.
Christian Sherrill (10:12.896)
home to the sort of cookie cutter, ranch style house. And the wife in the couple is there at home with the expectation that, you know, everything is settled, dinner is ready, cheerful, you know, perfume and makeup, you know, on point. And the husband comes home with a bouquet of flowers in this scene. And then he, you know, sort of shuts down when, you know, his wife doesn't sort of like,
Christian Sherrill (10:43.032)
He preys on him and thank him infinitely for what a thoughtful gesture about the flowers. And it just occurred to me when you were describing this sort of epiphany and kind of turning point, Eve, that a lot of us are working, a lot of men specifically are working to not be the guy with the flowers, but rather to be someone who.
Eve (she/her) (11:09.957)
That's right.
Christian Sherrill (11:11.384)
who equitably divides these things and honors the teamwork that it takes to have a successful relationship and marriage. So just grateful for your guidance in that, Eve. Can you walk us through basically how Fair Play works, the system, how it breaks down?
Eve (she/her) (11:36.201)
Absolutely. So my early beta testers, so after the blueberries breakdown, I started to research this issue, right? So for those who've never heard these terms, the blueberries breakdown does have a name. It's called invisible work. It's called emotional labor. It's called the mental load. And so,
Eve (she/her) (12:01.609)
I wanna sort of explain what doesn't work first, Christian, and then we can talk about what does work. So what doesn't work is having a helper, right? So again, I did not find men, why fair play is such a love letter to men. I didn't find men who ever said like, I wanna be the flowers guy. Like I always, always there is a openness, you know, but typically the openness looks like, well, if she just would not spend time on unnecessary things.
Eve (she/her) (12:30.513)
and tell me what to do, then I can help. So those things were in my mind too, before I understood what it took to actually write the ship of assumption to structured decision making. And so the first thing I did was what was given to that term, just make me a list. If I just know how to help you, I will help.
Eve (she/her) (12:59.369)
And so I did that for Seth. I made him the list of all lists that you both know about because you've read Fair Play, but for those who don't, I spent nine months with an Excel spreadsheet because at the end of the day, I do love spreadsheets. I'm a lawyer that works with highly complex families. I use a lot of Asana and Trello. So again, men, I will say, do appreciate that level of...
Eve (she/her) (13:28.999)
rigor and sophistication, especially men who have been coaches and understand systems, coaches and military, men who are in the military really appreciate that rigor. But in the beginning, it started just with that assumption that's actually wrong, which is that men will help if they just have a list. And so I created something called the Should I Do spreadsheet.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (13:29.189)
Yes.
Eve (she/her) (13:51.913)
that was ultimately created over nine months before social media. So you can imagine how hard it was. It's called the snowball research effect to actually get enough data that's representative of the US. So I look for the US census and try to get representative samples and got to 98 tabs on an Excel spreadsheet. So if you can picture the bottom picture 98 tabs and ultimately 2000 items of work that women.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (13:56.773)
Wow.
Eve (she/her) (14:19.369)
Ultimately, in 16 countries were telling me they were doing that was invisible to their partners. I sense that that list, Christian and Brian, with no context, just a can't wait to discuss, right? And that conversation did not go like I planned. It was a disaster. I give Seth this amazing spreadsheet I'd worked at. And so in a way, it almost reminds me of the flowers.
Eve (she/her) (14:48.169)
Because I come home with a spreadsheet, like, here you go, here's my gift to you. It will tell you everything I need help with. And Seth just responded with an early pixelated version of the monkey emoji, of the monkey that was covering its eyes. I don't want to see this, like whatever this thing is that you're sending to me. And I think when I got the see no evil monkey emoji,
Christian Sherrill (15:02.136)
I'm
Eve (she/her) (15:16.105)
Other women who had seen my spreadsheet were reaching out to me and saying things to me like, oh my God, Eve, I received this should I do spreadsheet? I've never seen anything like it. And I just want to let you know that I'm not staying in my marriage. So sometimes you have to talk about what fails before you could talk about what succeeds. What fails is unleashing consciousness without a solution.
Eve (she/her) (15:44.297)
And this spreadsheet, this list, which so many men had said to me, if I just had a list, I could do better, was actually not working. It was actually making relationships worse. So I'm going to retire the notion that lists alone will change your relationship. If you use the fair play cards like a list, they will also fail you. So instead, what I'm going to tell you both, and we'll talk about this, because again, you're...
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (15:53.541)
Hmm.
Eve (she/her) (16:11.209)
from more familiar than probably your listeners are with the system. But the secret formula that Fair Play became was not a list, but ultimately it became that, I'll start that again. So it's not a list. What ultimately worked was when I said to myself, I don't want to divorce Seth, especially after this list didn't work. I want to become my own client.
Eve (she/her) (16:39.881)
And so there was this really funny ad in the eighties and nineties in New York city. It was called the hair club for men. And there was a guy who said, I'm not just the owner of the hair club for men. I'm the first client. And he would take off his like toupee and show that he was in the hair club for men. So I'm like the hair club for men. I became my first client and I started to practice what I was teaching in my day job. So my day job is I'm an organizational.
Eve (she/her) (17:05.883)
management specialist that works for families that look like the HBO show Succession. And yes, you should feel bad for me. Those clients are a pain in the ass. But what I do for those organizations is I bring some grace and humor and generosity to really, really difficult family situations. So I figured if I could do it for the most fucked up organizations in the world, couldn't I do it for my home organization? And so I scrapped the list.
Eve (she/her) (17:33.691)
And instead I put up in a whiteboard for myself, what if we treated the home as our most important organization? What if we treated our home as our most important organization? And then I listed the secret formula. So you asked me what fair play is. I wrote the formula of success that I was telling my families for a decade to have a successful organization, especially if it's a family. You need three things. Boundaries.
Eve (she/her) (18:03.095)
systems and communication. So ultimately that's what Fair Play is. Yes, Fair Play is a secret formula to get you to three things. It's to get you to boundaries, systems and communication. And you guys can guess what I started with first because what's the easiest of all three of those things?
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (18:05.379)
Say those three things again. Say those.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (18:24.323)
Well, I would assume systems, but I'm probably wrong. Am I right? Am I right?
Eve (she/her) (18:27.291)
What do you think?
Eve (she/her) (18:29.111)
Yes, yes, exactly. No, you're right. Of course, of course. So ultimately it started as a system where I was able to take the data from the Should I Do spreadsheet and start to put it into an organizational system that is not rocket science, as you both know. It is the exact thing we do with our workplace.
Eve (she/her) (18:53.499)
where I'm not gonna work for you, Brian, if I come into your office and say, hey, what should I be doing today? I'm just gonna wait here till you tell me what to do. It's based on things that men can really understand. It's based on an ownership mindset. That's all it is. I took the, should I do spreadsheet? I took every task in that spreadsheet. I started to explain what it would take to own, to be a partner instead of a helper, just like the workplace where you own your responsibilities. And even my Aunt Marion's mahjong group.
Eve (she/her) (19:23.707)
Christian and Brian, had more clearly defined expectations. Even in the Mahjong groups, if you don't bring snacks twice, you're out of the group. Like everybody understands expectations around ownership and responsibility. So once I put it in those terms, I started to get early adopters. Like I said, men who understood systems, they don't put a point guard in for a center unless it's like LeBron James or like men who were in the military who understood the power of systems.
Christian Sherrill (19:27.496)
Thank
Eve (she/her) (19:51.035)
And that's where Fair Play started. It started as an ownership mindset based on a system that we use basically everywhere else, which is ownership and not helper, helpership.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:00.543)
Oh, hold on. I've got somebody that wants to say hello. It's my wife, Hope.
Eve (she/her) (20:05.947)
I hope. Oh my gosh, we love you. You and Brian are like changing the world.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:07.491)
You.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:12.259)
Thank you for, no, you are for sure
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:14.797)
changing the world. Thank you for all you are doing. This is awesome. Okay, good. Thanks, babe. And for our listeners, that was my wife and she can attest to it. I was telling her how shitty of a husband I was. Oh, really? Yeah, I was being honest. No, not at all. He does everything, thankfully. Nice. Thanks, babe. See you, babe.
Eve (she/her) (20:19.513)
Well, hope stay with us. Yes, big hugs.
Eve (she/her) (20:27.291)
Oh, I love it we got.
Eve (she/her) (20:32.987)
Hahaha!
Eve (she/her) (20:39.129)
Well,
Eve (she/her) (20:39.439)
we love the evolution is the key, right? That's, that's what I love so much about Brian. Your story is that, you know, this is a practice and we'll, we'll talk about that, but that, I just wanted to explain that ultimately when people ask what fair play is, it's a, it's, it's basically inputs. Um, it's, it's, it's tools and inputs to get you to the idea of boundaries, systems and communication in your home organization.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (21:08.131)
And for our listeners, let me give you an example of how I've applied this in our marriage because it obviously wasn't easy because as Eve was saying, it's not just systems, it's communication and boundaries. And...
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (21:25.589)
One of the things that I neglected to do initially and I figured it out pretty quickly was, you know, give my wife grace when she was letting go of something and I was starting to do it because naturally she's looking over my shoulder because she's done it for 20 years. And, you know, I had to recognize that of course she's going to do it and she had to recognize that, you know, there's got to be a way that we can do this where I realized that you own the task. I'm not going to be looking over your shoulder and
Eve (she/her) (21:41.987)
Yes.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (21:55.075)
Um, recently I noticed that, you know, kind of she, one of the things she held onto was laundry and I using the fair play cards. And I know that, you know, for our listeners, um, you can't see them, but I, but I'm showing them in the video, cause we have a video portion of this, you know, we were going back and forth on, you know, kind of how to initially divide the self, but I thought to myself, I watch football on Sundays. Why is my wife doing laundry when I can do the laundry while I watch football? This is, I mean,
Eve (she/her) (22:23.575)
Hmm. I love it.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (22:23.939)
Why not do that?
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (22:25.055)
So, you know, the first step was like, I'll take it. Well, you know, for the listeners out there, I'm not, I want to, again, stress, I'm not perfect. I'm the kind of guy that throws in like a doormat with a suit and the washer and think that's fine. So I did not know what I was doing whatsoever. I'd never done the laundry except for in college when nobody has nice clothes. So, um,
Eve (she/her) (22:37.133)
Hahaha!
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (22:47.491)
to Eve's system with spreadsheets. I know it's probably hard to see up. You can't see it. I'll post it when we post this on our blog. Oh, there we go. So my wife is in finance and she lives on spreadsheets. She creates this spreadsheet to tell me, you know, like nice clothes, workout clothes. She breaks them all into these segments and tells me, what is it that you do?
Eve (she/her) (22:47.899)
Ha ha ha.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (23:12.483)
with each of these sets of clothes, like the spin cycle, the laundry detergent, and all these things I didn't even know existed. So I just follow her spreadsheet. I own the laundry. And like now all of a sudden it's like her Sundays are free. And it's not like I'm doing that much more. I'm just folding laundry while I'm watching football. And so that's an example of where we talked about it. We have boundaries now, and there's a system in place that originated from the Fair Play cards.
Eve (she/her) (23:19.003)
Love it.
Eve (she/her) (23:40.379)
My God, can I just cry and how amazing that is and how much I love Hope for creating a
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (23:47.241)
One of the things that occurred to me as I was evolving and reading your book, reading Dr. Kate Mangino's book, Equal Partners, was that when a spouse, in my case, it was my wife, owned most of the responsibilities at home, it was just easier for her to say, I got it. So if I were to reach out and say, what can I do to help, in a genuine way, in the same way a manager doesn't want to do somebody else's job because it takes more time.
Eve (she/her) (24:13.235)
Mm -hmm.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (24:17.195)
for them to explain it than to do it themselves. My wife would just say to me, I got it. So naturally I would be like, sweet. And that creates resentment because she can't communicate the complexities behind the invisible labor to let's just say cook, which I know Christian's gonna talk about here in a second and everything that's required around that from the grocery shopping to cleaning up afterwards.
Eve (she/her) (24:17.635)
Yes.
Eve (she/her) (24:21.747)
Yes, yes.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (24:43.465)
And it was easier for her to say I got it. And for me, it was like, okay, no problem. And now I don't understand why she resents me because I've never been in her position. I've never owned the responsibility of managing a home or at least just enough of a responsibility to recognize why she would tell me that.
Eve (she/her) (25:07.891)
Can I tell you something why that's so important too? I just wanna say one more thing, why it's not your fault out there. I wanna say this like goodwill hunting style. I don't know if you remember that movie, but the most, the best part of that movie is when Robin Williams just looks at Matt Damon and says, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. That is it. I want all men to be Matt Damon in this situation. It is not your fault.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (25:16.553)
Oh, what a great movie.
Christian Sherrill (25:16.784)
Yes.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (25:23.433)
Are you going to shake me even tell me it's not your fault? Is that my Matt Damon right now?
Eve (she/her) (25:36.403)
And I think that's why it's so important because I wish it was just a system. If it was just as easy as a system, someone else would have done this work. They wouldn't have devoted their life to a fair play movement because I could just hand out the cards and just say, go for it. Right. But the reason why I said earlier, it has to be three things is because ultimately the boundaries lead to terrible communication. So what do I mean by that? Why it's not your fault is because society has conditioned.
Eve (she/her) (26:06.419)
men to treat their time differently, to protect you from what we've ultimately thought of as shitty, crappy work, but ultimately is our humanity. Like the tooth fairy, like picking up a sick kid from school. And then the other thing that no one talks about is when you introduce a child to a relationship, even the most fair men in the world married to women, society starts to bang.
Eve (she/her) (26:34.035)
and push you into more traditional lines of thinking than you probably ever would have yourself. And on top of that, you add 40 cards. There are 60 cards that apply to people for a home organization without kids. You add 40, 40 more cards when a child comes. Nobody is saying to you before you have kids, have you talked about the exponential workload that's going to increase? They will say to you,
Eve (she/her) (27:02.099)
Have you thought about the registry for your random car seat? They'll say to you, have you like banked your cord blood? But no one is actually saying to you, you're adding 40 additional cards, which is about 50%. I'll say, let's just say it's about 50 % more labor to your plates. How are you going to handle this labor? And so I think that's why it is really a system that has been set up to fail.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:31.369)
And
Eve (she/her) (27:31.407)
young.
Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:31.583)
Thank you, Eve. You're making such a big difference for so many people. And it was an honor to have you on today. And my wife obviously greatly appreciates you. So from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for joining.
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