The 80/80 Marriage

Key Highlights

This move toward an 80/ 80 marriage involves two big shifts. The first is a shift from a mindset of fairness to one of radical generosity, which shapes what we do, what we see, and what we say. The second is a shift away from the restrictive roles of the 80/ 20 model and the confusion of the 50/ 50 model to a new structure, one organized around shared success, designed to help us navigate roles, priorities, boundaries, power, and sex more skillfully. (p. xix)

In marriage, you witness firsthand each email, text, crumb picked up off the floor, or school drop-off that you do. When it comes to what your partner does, things get fuzzy. You might occasionally see them coming home with an armload of groceries or spending an unknown amount of time planning after-school activities or a vacation. But most of the data is unavailable to you. The result is that you’re intimately aware of what you do, but more or less clueless about what your partner does. (p. 25)

To make matters worse, psychologists started noticing in the late 1990s that we’re not just blind to our partner’s contributions, we’re also deluded about our own. When it comes to what we do around the house, we consistently overestimate our contributions. 7 We say we spent ten hours watching the kids, when it was really six. We say we spent three hours shopping when it was really more like ninety minutes. And here’s the real kicker. In all these studies, while both men and women consistently overestimate their own contributions, men do it more—a lot more. (p. 26)

If 50/ 50 is the ratio of fairness, 80/ 80 is the ratio of radical generosity and shared success. Each partner strives to contribute 80 percent, for a combined whole of 160 percent. We realize that the math doesn’t work. But think of it this way. From the mindset of 50/ 50 fairness, 100 percent is the outer limit of love, connection, and creative potential. As you can see in the diagram above, the 80/ 80 model pushes us beyond these limits. The combined 160 percent represents a new world of marriage. It blows up the assumptions and the math of the 50/ 50 model to give us access to deeper love, connection, and intimacy. (p. 32)

This is the 80/ 80 mindset. It’s a mindset that can appear like ordinary generosity. Generosity changes the atmosphere of marriage. It’s doing more than you have to. It’s contribution for its own sake. It’s giving with no strings attached. Generosity flips the ordinary mindset of marriage upside down, from asking, “What have you done for me?” to asking, “What can I do for you?” (p. 43)

Happy couples do the very same thing. When one person offers a compliment at dinner, leaves a card on the bedside table, or sends a heartfelt text message, that is the call. That’s one of those magic moments of radically generous contribution. It’s an act driven by the desire to give but also begging for some sort of response. Appreciation is the response. It’s how we make music in marriage. When one partner makes the bed, takes care of a sick child, or goes out of their way for the other, appreciation is seeing and acknowledging these contributions. It’s saying to your partner, “I see you. I see how generous you are. I see how much you are trying. And I value how much you care.” (p. 68)

The big idea here is that most of the everyday issues that pull us apart are either fixable or manageable, if—and this is a big if—we’re willing to communicate clearly about these issues as they arise. When it comes to these pothole problems, there’s a tool you can use to reveal your experience and get back into connection with your partner. It’s the practice we call Reveal and Request. (p. 78)

In our interviews with happy couples, we heard a common metaphor again and again: an 80/ 80 marriage is a “team sport.” As one man told us, “For us, marriage is identical to being on a basketball team. If one of us isn’t good at three-pointers, then that person focuses on passing. It’s a team mindset that’s the opposite of give-and-take. It’s a mindset that says, ‘What do we need to do together to win?’” (p. 90)

This idea of winning as a team may sound almost cliché. But living this way, in the midst of all the pressures of modern life, is a radical practice. It’s an extreme departure from the structure of most marriages. The 80/ 20 way, after all, is like playing on a team where, yes, you both want to win, but only one player gets to take the shots. The 50/ 50 way, in contrast, is like playing on a team of all-stars, where both players are more concerned with driving up their individual stats and winning MVP than winning the overall game. The 80/ 80 way is about becoming a true team. It’s about playing to each other’s strengths, balancing power, and taking turns in the spotlight. (p. 90)

We’ve always lived in a culture that celebrates success. And yet over the past few decades, we seem to be striving for something more like success on steroids. It’s a strange new aspiration, best summed up by the belief that you can “have it all.” (p. 114)

This wasn’t always the case. It used to be enough to do one thing well. You could be a brilliant writer or an amazing athlete or an inspirational teacher or a successful businessperson or a devoted stay-at-home parent—you didn’t have to be all five. With the rise of the 50/ 50 model, however, it’s no longer enough to be great at just one thing. We’ve set a new cultural goal—to be great at, well, everything. (p. 114)

This perverse new goal weighs most heavily on women. As Gloria Steinem explains, “You can work full time in the paid labor force, only if you keep on working full time in the unpaid labor force. You cook three gourmet meals a day, you raise two perfect children, you dress for success, and as a women’s magazine once put it, you are ‘multi-orgasmic till dawn.’” 1 This leaves professional women feeling the guilt of not being home more, and it leaves stay-at-home moms with the nagging feeling that they should be doing more to advance professionally. It leaves most women feeling that to truly succeed, you have to become a modern-day superwoman—effortlessly amazing in all areas of life. (p. 115)

All of this leads us to the hard truth of modern life. We can’t get all A’s in life. And without clear priorities, we’re unlikely to get any A’s at all. In fact, without priorities, we seem to naturally slip into the trap set by our you-can-have-it-all culture of trying to do everything well, feeling shame, inner criticism, and embarrassment when we don’t, and then giving up altogether on having priorities and just responding randomly to the incoming demands of life. (p. 117)

If we learned anything from talking with other couples, as well as sex experts and sex therapists, it’s that this conventional view is quite simply false. It’s impossible to seal off what happens in the bedroom, during our most intimate moments, from the rest of life. Far from being separate, sex is more like the mirror of married life. Either it reflects the strength of your connection, or it reflects past resentments, misunderstandings, and wounds. As Corey Allan, a marriage and family therapist we interviewed, put it, “How you do life is how you do sex. How you do sex is how you do life.” (p. 154)

The hurried pace of modern life isn’t the only thing to blame for this lack of sexual desire. As we’ve seen throughout this book, the mindset and structure of the 50/ 50 model also wreaks havoc on sexual intimacy. If we’re constantly keeping a mental tally of who contributed more, who cares more, and who’s trying harder, we exist in a perpetual state of irritation and resentment. Our boundaries and priorities aren’t clear. And on top of all that, we most likely have a mountain of emotional issues that we’ve never revealed or even discussed with each other. (p. 156)

If your goal is to experience real change—to grow and deepen your connection with your partner—then the choice is clear. The 80/ 80 model can’t just be an idea. It has to become a practice. (p. 189)

Why? Because big life changes rarely come from an idea, concept, conversation, or book alone. They come when ideas turn into ordinary and automatic habits, woven deep into the fabric of ordinary life. (p. 189)