Latest / I Choose Me with Jennie Garth / I Choose...To Play Fair (or at least try) with Eve Rodsky

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I Choose...To Play Fair (or at least try) with Eve Rodsky · I Choose Me with Jennie Garth

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Everyone, welcome to I Choose Me.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: This podcast is all about the choices we make and
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: where they lead us. Today, I wanted to get into
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: a really cool topic something I think my hubs needs
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: to join me for a babe.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Can you just join me for this conversation?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I'm here, Okay, good.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: It's something that all couples have to navigate. How do
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: you decide who's going to do what when it comes
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: to running a household? No one talks about this. Well,
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: today we're going to be joined by Eve Rodsky, who
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: wrote the New York Times bestselling book.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: All about this topic. It's called fair Play.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Just the title alone has me ready for this fun conversation.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Are you ready for it?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Baby? Yeah? I think so.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Please welcome Ev Rodsky to the podcast. Hi, Hi Eve,
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: thank you for being with us.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: I'm so happy to be here. Hi Daan, Hi Jenny.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: This is so fun.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I want to just let's just start with this. How
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: did you come to write a book called fair Play?
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And it's not only a book, it's a it's a
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: documentary and now a card game.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: Correct it's everything all in one. And I will say
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: a very simply Jenny and Dave. It's because my husband
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: set sent me a text that said, I'm surprised you
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: didn't get blueberries. Wait wait, wait, that's why. That's why
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: I did blueberries at home. So let's just want to
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: let's picture the scene.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: I had a breast pump and a diaper bag on
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: the passenger seat in my car. I was driving to
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: pick up my son from his Tawler transition program, which
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: lasts like three minutes in LA as we know, and
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: they cost our entire salaries because we don't have universal
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: childcare in the United States. I had just been gotten
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: off the phone with my workplace, who told me that
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: they had given away all my direct reports. I'm a
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: lawyer and I was working in number finance while I
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: was on maternity leave, and that if I wanted to
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: breastfeed when I came back, that it would have to
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: be in a supply closet and I'd have to bring
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: a battery pack because they didn't have an outlet because
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: we had an open floor plan at the time.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: What year was that, Oh, this.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: Is twenty eleven. This is twenty eleven, and so this
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: is what's all. And then of course there's the gifts
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: for the newborn baby to return in the backseat of
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: the car you're busy late, And then on top of it,
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: I get this text. And so as you know, for
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: those who live in La like, we don't really take
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: it lightly to pull over because you know there's a
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: lot of traffic getting across town, especially if you're going
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: east around three o'clock, and so nightmare. So for me
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: to pull over and be late to pick up my
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: son Zach and to cry in my car about being
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs, you know that
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: something was going wrong. And what I want to just
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: say is that I think my life changed that day
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: because as a private citizen, as a lawyer, as somebody
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: who is known, what I'm to take pride in is
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: my research. I was really really alarmed later on that
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: women's shoulder two thirds or more of what it takes
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: to run a home and family, regardless of whether or
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: not they make more money, and actually even gets worse
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: for women as they make more money in the family.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: I think what I if I had known that, my
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: life would have been a lot better. So Ever, since
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: that Blueberries breakdown, my trajectory in my life has been
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: so different because I feel like a personal vellet candmitted
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: to warning couples that as fair as you think, life
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: is going to be. As one woman said to me,
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: what fair play taught her with the movement taught her,
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: which we'll talk about the documentary of the book The
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: Cards would it taught her and her partner was that
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: she actually didn't have a magical vagina that whispered in
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: her in her ear what her husband's mother wanted for Christmas.
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  Speaker 4: And so that's really the goal. The goal is to
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  Speaker 4: realize that this is work. It's a lot of work,
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: it's a practice. And if we all just got rid
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: of that assumptions and we moved to more structured decision
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: making tools, then couples and relationships they just get better.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 3: I think I've had a blueberry breakdown of my own,
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  Speaker 3: but it looked different, just the similarities, and I perhaps
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: might have a magical vagina, honey, So don't let her
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: convince you, right right, right, No.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: No, we don't have to.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: I'd like to know your blueberry, blueberry, it's a good one.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I think.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: My blueberry was a little more simple than yours. It
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: was just you know, when you you drop all the
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: blueberries either in the grocery store and they fly everywhere
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: or in the kitchen. Yeah, that's a blueberry breakdown for me.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: But yours is much more profound because you're right, there's
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: just not enough information out there about, you know, what
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: happens after you say I do and then you know,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: there are books about becoming a parent, raising a baby,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: raising teens, all of that, but there's no information out
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: there about how to navigate the day in the day out,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: the nitty gritty, that not so fun conversation with your
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: partner that we have to have in order to make
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: everybody feel appreciated.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: To run essentially the business of the family, Yeah, because
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: it's a structure and it has to have, you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: a schedule, it has to have like you know, I.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Think when we first jobs, Yeah, I think when we
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: first met, you didn't really have any concept of like
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: running a household or running being a partner in running
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: a family. Because he came in to our our lives.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I had already had three kids, I was divorced, we
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: had four dogs at the time.
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: I was this seven year old, eleven year old and
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: a sixteen year old.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah wow wow yeah.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: There and there was a lot and there was also.
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: Not a lot of structure where no one had labels
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: of what was their duty around the house.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that goes like to the family extension, the family unit.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And that's me, that's my bad.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: I did come in and go, okay, well the girls
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  Speaker 5: are supposed to do this. I'll do this, you'll do this,
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: and then we'll do that.
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  Speaker 3: What Yeah, wait it didn't work out that way.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: No, no, well well you know what, I'll tell you
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: what I didn't work out. It didn't work out that
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: way because no one's ever ever talks, never has talked
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: about the home as an organization. And so I will
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: tell you Dave and Jenny that even my aunt Marion's
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Magen group, I feel for Dave, even my aunt Marion's
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: Magen group, I realized as I was writing fair Play
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  Speaker 4: had more clearly defined expectations in the home, like you
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: didn't bring snack twice to that group and you were out.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: But literally I remember interviewing a systems engineer, a man
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: who literally wrote systems for a living, and he said
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: to me that in his home they make the same
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: decision every night. They decide who's taking the dog out
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: right when it's about to take a piss on the rug.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: And this is a man who creates systems. What a
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: system is is, as Dave was trying to do, figure
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: out in advance, who's responsible for what, so that in
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: the moment your emotion can stay pretty low and your
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: cognition can stay high. Because when there is no system,
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: what happens for everybody is we have this three toxic words, right,
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: we're going to figure it out. But figure it out
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: just means that we're going to either go back to assumption,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: or are the dog's going to be pissing on the
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: rug or the twoth fairy doesn't come that night because
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: we all thought we were going to do it. And
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: that is what I was coming into when I wrote
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: fair Play, that this can't be good if at Marian's
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  Speaker 4: masa group runs more smoothly than people's homes. And it
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: actually allowed me to get more grace for Seth because
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: this poor man, right to this day he says, how
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: do you get more fairness in a heterosist gender couple.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: He's like, well, you just have to have your wife
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: write a book about you that portrays you in a
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: really bad, terrible light. But really, what the empathy I
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: was able to get for Seth over time was that
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: that magical vagina. Those assumptions that we're talking about. If
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: you think it's just going to figure we're going to
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: figure it out, all we have is really what we
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: saw in our childhood. All we have is what society
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: tells us. Right, we don't get to make those active
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: decisions for ourselves, so then we just become the default.
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  Speaker 4: And often that's a race to the bottom. So it's
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: not something that was gonna work for me anymore, right.
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  Speaker 5: I Mean we come from you know, similar like households
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  Speaker 5: where you know, everybody had like some sort of structure
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  Speaker 5: and chores and all that stuff and hard working and
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  Speaker 5: everybody pitched in.
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  Speaker 1: But it's kind of gone off the rails.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, it does go It just goes off the
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: rails naturally, but I mean it's, yeah, it goes off.
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  Speaker 5: We literally just had a couple of days ago we
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: had this conversation. There's you know, about what certain chores
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: and what people do and this and that and sometimes
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: you know, my my chores to unload the dishwasher, I
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: do it because I'm the first one up in the morning.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, I do it. And sometimes I just
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: don't want to do it.
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'll just leave and go to work and
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: I'll see I'll see if someone's done it. No one's
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: done it, so let's do it. Sometimes I throw tests
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: out there fun.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: But again, that that is that I would say that
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: that is what's great is like hashtag We're all normal
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: because we're all doing that that same thing. But I
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: think what's so hard about that is that often we're
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: communicating in our heads and so we're expecting that somebody
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: knows what, you know, what what we should and shouldn't
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: be doing. And but but the problem I also think,
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: especially if you're bringing kids to the table with this,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: is that what I'm trying to convince people and this
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: I'll just take one step back. So after the blueberries breakdown,
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: one thing I realized as a researcher, I put my
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: researcher hat on. It turns out that what we're talking
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: about actually has a name. It's had a name for
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: many decades. Right. It's called the second shift, emotional labor.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: It's called invisible work. It's often done by women. But
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: what this work is, it's the work of the household.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: But the problem is because people hadn't been treating the
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: home as an organization. We just associated with motherhood. But
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: as Dave just said, what does dishes have to do
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: with motherhood? Right? What is taking out not the garbage
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: because that that is a male masculine task that people understand.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: But what is teaching a kid how to ride a
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: bike and knowing that you have to do that. That's
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: one of the fair place cards I'm showing you. What
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: does that have to do with motherhood? What when you
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: have to decide whether your child's adnoids are being taken
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: out or not? Why does a doctor just call the mother?
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Why does that have Why would that fall in the mother?
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Maybe the partner, the father or the stepfather or the
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: partner has more information on adnoids. But that's what happens,
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: is that we make these assumptions and so and then
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: it sort of falls on our kids to look at
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: this as ah, I don't want to help with chores
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: of the housework, so I always like to say, let's
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: back it up. Maybe I didn't ask your producer whether
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: this would be okay, but I think it would be fun,
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: given what we're saying, to like play a little game
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: about why this is how kids should be looking at
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: this just because you just said that, would you be
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: willing to pay?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Be totally willing?
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, the only thing is that the kids have
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: a dad who I kind of do a lot of
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: the nitty gritty of the parenting. Also, I need to
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: come back and circle back on the adnoid thing. I
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: want to make sure I know what an adnoid is and.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Us, by the way, I second that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: The other thing is, you know, Dave and I do
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: work in partnership on this home and as it runs
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: now with two adult children and one well I guess
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: three adult children. Now she's eighteen, so things are different
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: than they things are different when they were little, for sure.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Totally yeah, yeah changed.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: And the twenty two year old has went to college,
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: came back and is now working with Jenny, and you
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: know it's it's definitely changed as they've grow.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Let's play the game, though, Yeah, let's try it.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: I think you'll see what I mean about how to
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: start having these conversations, especially what I like about it,
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: even with your daughter as she starts to partner with someone, right,
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: we don't want to model. I was the person who
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: had to do it all, so that you have to
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: do it all like that's I saw that because I
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: had I didn't have a father really in the picture,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: so I really didn't really know that there was a
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: day or someone who would even open the dishwasher to
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: see if there was an addition there.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, sometimes even if you do have that male
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: figure in the home, you're still the lady, the mom.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: That's right, that woman, the magical vagina is still doing
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: that's right.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: So let's play. I think these are the conversations. So
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: we're looking at the fair play cards. So if you
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: step back. When I was starting to look at this
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: issue around invisible work the second shift, the only advice
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: I had and Dave was, if you're so overwhelmed, make
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: a list. If you're so overwhelmed, get help, And so
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: I ended up doing that. I made this huge spreadsheet
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: called the Shit I Do Spreadsheet that was ninety eight
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: tabs and about two thousand items of invisible work, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: it took me nine months. I did send it to Seth.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: I didn't get the response that I was hoping for.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: I sent it with no nine months in twenty twelve.
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: Over this is early Facebook, where I was sending it
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: out to women I didn't even know I was getting responses.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: I got a response from a woman of the Jewish
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Federation of Arizona, I remember, and she said, I got
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: your spreadsheet. I want to let you know that I'm
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: not staying in my marriage. So I was like, whoa,
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: this is maybe they do way too much shit. Yes, yes,
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: so I was like, oh, thanks for the information. But
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: so this this was sent to Seth I did. I
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: can't wait to discuss. I got the early version of
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: like a pixelated monkey emoji with him covering his eyes.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: So learn very early on that you know, no context
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: is not so helpful in a partnership. See no evil
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: is sort of probably the easiest way not to engage.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: But what I did know from my day job, because
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: I'm a lawyer, I work with the families that look
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: like HBO shows succession. You should feel bad for me.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: But what I do for those families is I do
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: use governance and organizational tools, as we were saying earlier, Dave,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: to bring structure and grace in humor and some generosity
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: to these really difficult succession decisions, So I thought, well,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: what if I use those same tools and build something
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: for the home. So one of the first things I
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: do with my clients before they start getting into well
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: I'm doing this job or I'm going to take this over,
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: you just have to sort of bring it back to
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: the why. So that's what I wanted to do with
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: the exercise. I just want to grab all of these cards.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to shuffle them, and I just want
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: to stop at one. I'm going to practice, and each
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: one of you will pick one, or we can just
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: do one for both, and then we can well, I
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: just want to show you how to have the why
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: conversations that you can bring your children into, because it's
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: going to show you spoiler alert that this is the
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: stuff we're talking about is so much more than chores
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: and housework and how to run your home. It's about
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: really the core of like our humanity and our values
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: so exactly. So let's just let's just I'll just tell you,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: just tell me when to stop, and we'll just see
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: what you get. Oh, okay, we'll see what this one is.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: This will be Jenny's and then we'll do one for
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: you day. Okay, Jenny you got gifts for family. So
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: what I want to know, and this is there's a
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: different card for gifts for VIPs, which is people outside
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: your home, but family gifts. What I want to know is, like,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: what do you remember about any gift giving from your childhood?
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: From my childhood, I remember my mom and dad giving
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: me gifts mostly. I don't really remember my siblings giving
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: me gifts, okay, off the top of my head. And
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: they were always at Christmas and Birthday just.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: That, okay, And what do you remember were you excited?
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: Were you more excited for your birthday or Christmas? Did
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: your family have big traditions around these yeah, or is
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: it more like, uh, we just throw a dollar under
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: the pillow for you know or something.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: No, it was Christmas definitely. That was the one to
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: look forward to all year.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: Okay, what did that look like? So tell me a
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: little bit about do you remember any gift that you
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: got in your childhood that you can remember that you're
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: excited about.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: I remember my mom would always wrap things really beautifully,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: and so it was just you just would shake them
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: and try to figure out what was in them for
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: the week leading up to Christmas, and I remember this
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: is so silly I got a Michael Jackson record.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I was stoked about.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, that would have been so good. Would
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: you remember if it was thriller or thriller? Oh yeah,
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: that would have been literally my favorite gift because we
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: Billy Jean. We used to like go to the roller rink.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: So Michael Jackson record, and you did you get that
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: from your parents or say?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's what I don't really remember.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: It feels like a sister gift. No, think it doesn't
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: seem like a me would buy you.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm mistaken.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: She did buy me some piggy slippers, though, I remember that.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: Oh I love that, And I will say that maybe
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: that's just a really good mother who's like, like, right now,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: I'm a good mother. I like woke my son up
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: with Playboy Cardis album dropped. So maybe she just that. Yeah,
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: maybe this was like the Playboy Cardi album drop of
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: the eighties. Okay, so that's well. And then how many
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: siblings did you have? How many other people were getting
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: gifts around that time?
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Three sisters in the house at that time?
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Oh wow? So okay, So in thirty seconds I learned
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: that Jenny had a robust family that her parents were together,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: that Christmas was a tradition. So I'm starting to learn
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: stuff about you that you like, Michael Jackson. So that's
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: really fun. So love, Yes, let's do it with you.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Let's just keep going until we stop. Dave stop. Oh okay,
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: this one is hard questions, right, hard question, hard questions?
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: So anything off limits in your childhood? Like how did
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: you learn about the birds and the bees? Did you
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: have any difficult conversations with your parents? Do you remember
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: any anybody? Did you just sort of sail through have
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: to figure it out yourself? Like do you remember any
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: adult actually answering hard questions for you?
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: I'm just curious, no, no.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: No, okay, elaborate.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to think of all the questions that I
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: would have had.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: You didn't ask your mom and dad like tough questions.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Well I.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: Didn't, La.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I just later found out that my mom would embellish things.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: Give me an example, what do you mean?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: God?
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: Okay, So I remember I was like twelve years old
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: and we were walking into a it was like a
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: kmart or Roses.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: It was Roses on the East Coast, and I heard.
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: A different language and I was like, oh, like, what
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: is this or whatever, and I was like, Mom, what
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: language is that? And she's like, I don't know, but
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: it's illegal to speak a foreign language in America.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And I instantly, like at a young age.
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: I remember at twelve years old, was like, well, that's fault,
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: that's not true.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: You knew she was.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I was like, she's crazy.
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: So I kind of like, you know, had that example
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: at and then like the birds and bees talk. I
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: remember I asked my dad something, but my dad would
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: always be like, you know, let's talk about sports. He
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: would change the subject.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Well, how the how the Phillies? Yeah, the Eagles are
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: They're gonna be good this year.
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: So, I mean I just kind of And I had
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: two older sisters. I probably I had some conversations with them.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: That's my favorite configuration from now on. If I had
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: to start over, I'd only marry a man that had
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: two older sisters.
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, and they they just I would ask
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: them a lot of advice with girls, so and they
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: would always set me straight with that, well, suit, what
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: do I do?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: And this girl, this girl doesn't like you.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: Are you close to your sisters?
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: I would say, so, Well, I love that that you
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: had these other adult figures.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my oldest yeah, yeah, my oldest sister. She was
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: I was like sixteen, Oh yeah, I was. She was
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: sixteen when I was born, sixteen seventeen. So she was
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: like kind of my mother because she knew how my
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: mother was.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: She always kind of protected me. And she got married
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: when she was like nineteen.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: So wow, Like I was always at her house.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and she didn't tell you that it was illegal
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: to speak.
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah white the opposite, right, well, said just don't listen
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: to anything, chlo.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Right, right. Well, it's actually funny. When I first met
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: my husband, Seth, he said something like that to me.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: You know how women are, They just don't understand things.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: I was like, what are you talking about? I'm like,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: I understand a lot of things.
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: But again, which is like from my father has told
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: me the same thing.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Growing up, my dad.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: You know, he would be like, well, just don't say anything,
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: and then you just don't cause a hassle because it's just.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: She's not going to understand.
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: Until then me growing up going like, well why would
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: I communicate something like that?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: They just don't understand.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: And then as your parents, right, yeah, how do you write?
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: So you were just about to say that, so breaking
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: those cycles?
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because I see my parents' cycle and I don't
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: want that, even though that they're still together to this day.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's just something that was you know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: my sisters and I we just kind of were like.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: No, you're communicating to the and sharing your communication to
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: the world as opposed to the opposite of what you
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: just said, which is that you were told not to
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: say anything. So what a difference. What a cycle breaking
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: move you're making just in the in the in the
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: doing of this right, And so I think it's yeah, good,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: was it? Sorry? What were you're saying?
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: No, I was going to say, like, I mean, I
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: approach her with a lot of different questions and things
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: like that that I don't think my father would ever
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: really speak to my mother about, you know, certain stuff
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: like that.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: I love these evolved, yes, But what I love is that,
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm not sure even if we were sitting
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: together at a dinner that I would feel as close
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: to both of you just by being able to ask
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: that type of question. Rating two cards, just pulling two
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: random cards. We didn't prectice in advance, we didn't I
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: gave I didn't even tell the producer that I was
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: going to bring the cards out, but I think the
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: spotan eighty is so beautiful. And I think even for
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: your own children, a people do like to hear your
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: stories as they get older. Maybe if they're twelve or thirteen,
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: my son would not want my stories right now except
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: for to use them against me. He uses all my
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: stories against me. But as they get older, Jenny, like
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: where your kids are now, you know this idea that
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: they can learn a lot about you, that this work
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: we're talking about isn't just unloading the dishwasher, which is
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: where we started. It's really our humanity. It's not just
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: chores and housework. Yes, it's an organization, but a healthy
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: organization has really important things besides just systems and who
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: does what. It has boundaries where you respect the other person,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: you go to the other person, and it has communication,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: which is what you're talking about. And if you don't
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: have all three of those things, then it really can't
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: be a healthy organization. And that's what I'm hoping the
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: next generation can learn for sure.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: And I think it also has the component of giving
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: a shit about Yes, the other people that you work with,
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: basically in the house.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: That's so yeah, very true.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think about the opposite of giving a shit.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: It's when, like you said, you have this silent expectation
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: in your head and then that thing doesn't get done.
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: You know, if I had picked a card, one of
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: the ones I was really triggering when I would pick
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: it and tell my story was about garbage, because giving
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: a shit to me is taking the garbage out. I
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Alphabet City. There were a lot of cockroaches and water bugs,
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: and I would help my brother. I was. My mother
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: was a single mother, I told you earlier, and she
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: worked nights, so my brother had autism and other problems.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: So I would help him get to bed, get him water,
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: go into the kitchen. I had my routine. I close
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: my eyes, click on the lights. The cockroaches and water
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: bugs would scatter. Then I would go fill up the
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: water in the same because we didn't have water bottles
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: back then, and then take it to him in his room.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: And what I remember about that was our garbage was
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: just like a takeout bag. I got a knob and
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: it would always like spill out over to our little
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: apartment common area, and so I think for me when
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: Seth would, as Dave was saying, when you wake up
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: and maybe those dishes are not unloaded or you're waiting
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: to see what someone else is doing for me. In
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: my mind, I hadn't told Seth this. He never knew
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: this about me. But I would just see when the
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: garbage would overflow or when that the bag the liner
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: wasn't put back into the garbage, and I would become
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Set's garbage stalker. And I think it took me a
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: while time to understand that instead of just saying put
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: the liner back in, put the liner back.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: In before you even like communicate it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: Right, like with it right. And so he was like,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: you were literally a garbage stalker. And so I think
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: it took the why conversations around fair play where I'm
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: trying to say, invest in the practice like you do
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: with exercise. One of the most depressing surveys I ever did,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: I did it on purpose, was I asked over a
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: thousand people what their most important practices. I did it
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: very vaguely, and I got some interesting answers, as you
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: can imagine, like all the way from exercise to like ayahuasca.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: But not one of those thousand people said that communication
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: was their most important practice, and I did it on
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: purpose so I could have that stat because I think
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: it sounds important that nobody said communication. But I think
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: what we're what I've realized being a mediator for really
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: difficult families and also developing the fair play system of
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: discussing these hundred cards that go into running your home
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: and family, is that the key is really that communication
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: is a practice. And the more you can practice when
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: emotion is low and cognition is high, the more that
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: you get better at knowing how to communicate with Jenny,
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: the more I would get you get better at knowing
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: how to communicate with Dave. It's a practice, just like
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: the more you get better at progressive overload when you
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: lift weights.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: What's a good drill?
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, you want to know the drill?
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I mean you know, I work at golf. I work
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: on the drill. It's like, what is a good drill
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: for that? That's a great point.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: Number one is I'll ask I'll do it as a
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: diverse newly what there's three steps. Again, we didn't make
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: the we didn't know we were going to get here.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: But I think it's a fun way to to play Okay,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: So I want to know, Jenny, if Dave had to say,
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: what your communication? So step one is knowing your own
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: communication vulnerability. It's very important because it allows you to
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: have humor in the moment once you know it. So
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: if Dave had to say about you, like reverselywed, what
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: your communication vulnerability is, what do you think he would say?
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: And I'm going to give you some options? Would he say?
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: What do you say avoidance? What do you say all
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: or nothing? Like you never do this, you always do that.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: What do you say tone like this is a nail
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: on the chalkboard issue? What do you say ignoring where
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: you just want the issue to go away and not
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: bring it up. That's like another version of avoidance. Would
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: he say verbal assassin, which is when you say things
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: in a really nice tone, like Dave, you're the best,
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: but you know did you know you're like the worst
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: stepfathers father of all time? Like I didn't know that
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: it was going to happen? How'd you get this bad?
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: That happens a lot and to a lot of couples,
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: So what would what would he say about you?
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: I think I would have to pick all of them
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: because I am ann not a great communicator.
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: Okay, I would say that, I would say avoidance would.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Be problem avoid Do you have an example?
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: She'll say things, I didn't want to talk about that
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: because I didn't want to see your reaction, which is
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: making an assumption. But yes, have I done that in
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: the past, My am I reactionary?
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, Like for instance, this ties back into household things.
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: Yes, can you.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Help me fix the bathroom door handle?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, which I might go.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the sound, the sound, and then you.
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: Go right now, and then she goes yeah, yeah.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Usually I say whenever you have time, whenever you can
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: get to.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: It, whenever you have time, or but it feels.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Like right now, you feel like it's right now, but
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not. You're assuming that I want to done right.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, you're probably.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Right, which again I do love because that is all
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: things that I think everyone's gonna laugh.
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: And she wants and her brain her she wants me
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: to be like, can you do this? And she was, yeah,
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: I want to do it right now.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: I want to do.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: That, And here's my notebook where I'm going to write
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: it down and I will not forget and it'll get done.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: To the timely manner that that is very very very common.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: But I do, I do. But but you see what though,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: what happens with avoidance. With avoidant people, people where that's
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: their vulnerability, then they'll start to say things like well,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: I might as well just do it myself, or I
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: might as well not even bring it up to Dave,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: and then the rage and resentment start. So avoiding people,
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: rage and resentment, you know, are pretty close to the
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: avoidance because it doesn't go away sadly from avoiding it.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: It just means that it sort of it just builds
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: and then it can often explode at some you know
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: later time. Yeah, yeah, so again. And so that's number
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: one is knowing. So let's do the opposite. So, Dave,
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: what would Jenny say about you? You think? Do you
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: remember the choices?
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I know, she'd say tone.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'd say tone because I get anxious when you
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: have that tone of like you don't want to be
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: talking about something, and it's like you're like annoyed with
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: me by even me asking the question.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: But I love you both one. It's the tone that
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: shows you're both.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Sound.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: I think it's because I get a little like my
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: tone gets loud because I'm trying to like get all
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: these thoughts out and be defensive or trying to make
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: someone understand, so emphatically, my tone goes up and it
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: doesn't stay.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Right with sound effects like uh yeah yeah yeah.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Shaking of the head too as he walks away is
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: another like oh man, see I should have never even
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: asked him to fix the damn doorknob.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: Right, Okay? That that can feel like nails on the
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: chalkboard when someone's tone is frustrating, And I think that
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: that's again what's what's fun about that number one step
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: is that it doesn't mean it's going to go away,
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: but at least you want to like you know your
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: but you know your patterns, so that that's step one.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: So for me, it's always tone like seth with joke.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: You know, you could be saying like let's go have sex,
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: but I but he doesn't want me to say anything
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: because it's always in a tone of like a drill
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: sergeant like now those parties, he's like, I have no
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: idea extent, yeah not you. Your tone is just so bad.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: And then he becomes incredibly avoided, and I'm like, where
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: the fuck did he go? And then he's hiding, so
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: so that that that becomes a pattern.
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: She would say of of I'm avoidant too, Yeah, okay,
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: because I mean I think I think to a certain extent,
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: everybody is like that because you just in the moment,
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: you don't really.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, because you try to like, am I really
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: feeling this?
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: Is it really worth it? Are my feelings just unnecessary feelings?
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: Or should I really have a communication with us?
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: But what I like about that is if you if
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: you're assuming that there's avoidance also and not assuming, but
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: you're you're recognizing that there's avoidance also in some of
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: the ways that can you know, vacillate with tone to avoidance.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: What I think is interesting is both of those avoidance
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: and tone have the same root of the vulnerability, which
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: is what I like is it makes it easy for
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: us to go to step two. So the root of
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: avoidance and tone is to not have the feedback in
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: the moment. So there was something about that that the
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: asking you to do the thing right. And so when
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: you have when you're an avoidant communicator or you are
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: a tone communicator, typically you're giving feedback in the moment,
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: whether that's disappearing and and having a different reaction than
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: your actual reaction, or you're initially reactive, like like you said,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: or why you bring this up now, Like it's hard
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: for avoidant people and people who have tone issues to
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: do something in the moment that's productive. So let's just
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: say that. So step two is to recognize what your
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: vulnerability means about the types of patterns you get into.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to say that that's a feedback in
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: a not a productive feedback in the moment pattern. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: so then step three, if you're looking at that program
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: how to get better at golf, the third step would be,
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: you know, whether it's great that you do the podcast together,
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: but because you're doing this, you already have this idea
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: of structured conversations when emotion is low and cognition is high.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: So do do your a family check in, a communication
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: check in right before the podcast or right after, or
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: when you're in a place where you have short term
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: reward substitution that's what we call it as economists, like
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: you're bringing alcohol with you or a cookie dough. But
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: this idea that there are times for avoidant and tone
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: people to invest in low emotion, high cognition conversations and
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: so that's what I would say. You want to get
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: better at golf, make sure you have that fifteen minute
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: check in a week. Right, Well, you say we're in,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: we're highly We have a lot of cognition right now
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: and very little emotion.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: So you're kind of saying when you recognize it, it's
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: kind of like my brain imagines things like it's like
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: a snow globe.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: You know, in that moment, kind of get shaken up.
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: Yes, your triggers are flying all over the place and
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: you're trying to manage him as best you can.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: But maybe in that moment.
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: If I fail at my reaction to what she's asking me,
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: is it like we're saying, like take a time out, Well,
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: let's get to this later.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: You can even use the word snowglo. I love that,
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: Like this was not I need a snow globe moment,
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: or really just what Seth and I did in the
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: beginning to practice this and now we're better, except for
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: you know, you can always regress. I regressed yesterday. I
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: have a teenager. Seth's ownership is of his all the homework,
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: and he wasn't on his tutor, and I like lost it.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: I was like you're the worst. You know, Dad, that
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: I went verbal assassin like you know, but typically we're
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: you know, we've been practicing fair play for a long time.
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: So typically I said, I did my tone thing, I'm sorry,
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: you know, and then I took a break. But typically
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: what I like to do is write things down so
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: the person that is going who may have that tone
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: issue or doesn't want to approach something in a moment.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: What's nice is if you know that there's going to
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: be accountability and trust in that check in later on.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: If you feel that safety and you can agree to that,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: then you if over time what happens is you can
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: write things down and not deliver that feedback in the moment,
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: which is actually really cool because it's happened to me
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: many weeks where we'll come to sit down about something
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: and I'll have things in like all caps, Like this
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: happened to me one week where just said yellow rag
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: in all caps and I literally had absolutely no idea,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: like complete senior moment, like I had zero. I had
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: no idea what yellow rag is. But I was thinking, oh,
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: that's good. It's an all caps that's like me yelling
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: on the page. So it would have avoided the yellow
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: rag argument because it obviously wasn't relevant to me two
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: or three days later. However, maybe the fact that the
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: dishwasher is never unloaded is still bothering me.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Right, It's good to have a weekly check in. I
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: think the family as a whole.
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: I think like, yes, we are four people, like sometimes
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: five with boyfriends here, but we need to have a
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: family unit check in. I mean, I'm having a staff
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: meeting next week. Need to do that for the family.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I like for you to do it both
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: with each other first and you're aligned, because sometimes when
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: the other people sort of come in, it can derail
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: what the unit your joint values are together for how
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: as Jenny said, because there's another home out there with
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: different values and you copare it. It's nice for you
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: and Dave to align each week on your priorities. And
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: then of course you can bring the other members in
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: as well. But I think saying that this is at practice.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: You know. One of the funny things to me is
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: when I do it as an analogy to exercise, Like
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: you would never go into your doctor's office and they said, like,
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: do you feel fit, and you'd say, yeah, I like exercise.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: Once in two thousand and five. But that's sort of
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: how we view the home. Like I had a conversation,
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: yeah once about the dishes.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: It's like, we talk about having conversations all the time,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: but we don't.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: We don't actually have them. Yeah right, you don't actually
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: have them.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Also, many of the comp are going on in each
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: of our individual brains, and I'm like, wait, are you
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: thinking something that you want to tell me? Because a
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: lot of the times he and I will both be
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: just going about our business, getting all of our work
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: done and having these important conversations but not actually verbalizing
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: them with our partner.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: That's really funny, the invisible conversations in the brain. And
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: it is true because you do sort of assume that
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: you've said it. I don't know. It's a very strange
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: thing about how you communicate with a partner because you
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: do sort of assume that either they should know, or
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: that you've said it already, or that you said it
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: once that you wanted the garbage liner to go back,
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: and then now I'm going to hold it against Seth
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: for the rest of his life. It's not fair. Again,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Like if I hadn't exercise for a week, I wouldn't
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: expect to get back on the treadmill and be at
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: the same level of performance as even if I took
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: a week off. But yet we have these conversations again
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: in our head and then once maybe a year with
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: our partners, and we expect that we're going to have
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: relational health health. And I think that's what's so hard.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: So many people now are so focused on functional health
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: and they're obsessed with these metrics. But I'm going to
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: just say one of the most interesting things I ever
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: learned in my fair play journey was a study from
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: Robert Waldinger's project at Harvard. He studied men, and this
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: is important for you, especially Dave, to listen to. He
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: studied men over seventy five years. They've been looking at
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: men and they control for everything smoking, poverty, ethnicity, genetics,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: and what they found was there was actually really only
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: one predictor of whether men were alive at eighty five,
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: and that was the quality of their relationships at fifty five.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: So everyone's like doctor Atilla and this and I'm going
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: to maximize my VO two MAX. What I wish men
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: especially understood was that instead of working so hard on
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: your VO two max, if you want to live, if
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: you want longevity, if you want life and health span,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: invest in the quality of your relationships.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that work is some of the time the
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: most difficult work.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: I think it is the most difficult work. People always
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: say that this work needs a trigger warning, like this
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: episode will need a trigger warning, because I think so
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: many people will say I can't talk to my partner
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: about these issues, and it seems so many.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: People it's just it's just how do we divvy up
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: the household responsibilities? But emotions can really charge the conversation
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: and cause avoidance, cause tone, all the things that we're
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: talking about. So how do we not avoid the conversation.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: Well, the first thing I just want to say is
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: back to that formula. There's a secret formula, right, it's boundaries, systems,
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: and communication. But I want to say one more thing
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: about communication, because you just brought up avoidance, and I
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: want to just say I thought this was really interesting
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: during the pandemic, given that fair Play had launched in
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, so I was arguing it vos that year,
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: right before the pandemic, that the home is an organization
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: and that our home and our work spheres are not
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: that different. And then bizarrely, like two weeks later, our
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: home and work spheres were not different at all. But
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: during the pandemic, there was a group that someone referred
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: me to out of the UK that it was called
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: the Reasons I Hate my partner and kids. During COVID
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: there's this big, like monster like graphic design. And this
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: person alerted me to this woman who wrote in this
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: chat it's twenty seven thousand members at the time. I
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: wonder if it's still active. I wonder what it evolved into.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: But it was twenty seven thousand members. And this woman said,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: if my husband dies during COVID, it's not going to
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: be because of the disease. It's going to be because
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: of me.
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there was a lot of like separation and divorce,
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: oh for a.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: Sure, for sure. But it was so funny was that
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: I reached out to her though on DM and I said, hey,
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: I'm a researcher on gender, division of labor and resentment
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: and communication. I want to know how do you communicate
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: with your partner about domestic life. And this woman wrote back,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: I don't communicate with my partner about domestics life. This
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: is my safe space, so can we just reflect on
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: the fact that publicly threatening to murder her partner in
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: front of twenty seven thousand strangers felt safer to her
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: than talking directly about these issues. Wild, that's how hard
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: this is. So I just want everybody out there to
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: understand it's not just a why can't you discuss who's
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: taking the dishes? We started with a perfect example of like,
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: is this really about who unloves the dishwasher? No, the
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: presenting problem is never the real problem. So it's not
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: about the dishwasher or anything like garbage or even the
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: hard questions. This is about how we want to relate
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: to each other and our humanity. And that's why I
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: said it's this. It has to be a secret formula
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: of investing in a practice of these systems the communication
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: check ins those Emotion is low, cognition is high, and
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: also boundaries, which is you respect each other's time enough
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: so that you're willing to sit down. That's what people forget,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: like nobody wants to be the nag or the like
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: it's time for our check in, And it sounds terrible.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: Most people have to say, you know what, we respect
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: each other's time enough that we're both there. We treat
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: it like an important meeting and we really don't miss
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: that investment time.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: You want to get that on the calendar. Yeah, yes,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: weekly check.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: We need our weekly check in.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. How do.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Now, for people that are listening, how do we find
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: the balance with household duties in our marriage like in
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: our home?
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: How do we find it? What's the key?
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: There is one important key that again I've been studying
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: this for ten years now. You have to start stop
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: looking at fifty to fifty as any sort of metric
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: for a marriage. It literally is this fifty to fifty
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: we're equal partners. I don't know where that came from,
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: but it's highly, highly toxic because it means that you're
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: in the scorekeeping disaster of like, well I did the
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: dishes last yesterday, so you should do them today. It
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: just it becomes really really horrific and toxic and so compared,
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: we have to burn this idea of fifty to fifty
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: and we have to move instead to the way that
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: it Marian and Hermazon group does it, or corporations do it.
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: And what we found over ten years and this is
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: now actually we have it in a quantitative study that's
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: published in the Journal of women's mental health, that women's
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: burnout and men's relationship satisfaction go up if you move
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: to an ownership mindset. I mean by that, Well, you
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: have the fair Play cards, and again for people who
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: can't afford them, we're a nonprofit. We have them at
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: fairplaylife dot org. You can put them the show notes.
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: People can find all of our resources. But what we
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: would do with these is understand that I'm giving you
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: the resources to have these conversations. There are one hundred
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: cards that make up a home organization. God forbid. Hopefully
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: you don't have to play with them all because some
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: of them are wild cards like death or an aging parent,
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: where you'll have to come back to the table. Most
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: people are playing with kids about seventy five cards. Without kids,
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: you're playing with about fifty fifty five cards, or maybe
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: it can be in the eighties amount of cards you're
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: playing with. So you're starting with these tasks. So the
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: goal is not, oh, you hold forty and I hold
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: forty like that is absolutely not what we're looking at.
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: What we're looking at is the key insight is how
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: did Mustard get your refrigerator? I'll give you, I'll tell
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: you what I mean by asking that question with each card.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: So that was the grocery's card, but for each card,
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: I asked how the proverbial how did mustard get in
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: your refrigerator? The old way was typically, and especially in
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: co parenting, because it's really hard when you're coming in.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Typically it was that the woman married to a man
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: was saying to me, well, I know that Johnny, my
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: second son, likes yellow mustard, not anything else with his protein,
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: otherwise he chokes. So in a project management framework, we
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: call that conception. In the workplace, we're paid big bucks
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: to notice new things, so that's the conception part. Then
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: women were the ones reporting that they monitor the mustard
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: for when it runs low, and that they get stakeholder
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: by in from their family about what they needed on
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: the grocery list. We can map that to what we
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: call the planning phase. Over ten years, what we realized
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: was that men were stepping in at the next phase.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: They were going to the store to go buy the
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: mustard day. But you're bringing home spicy djawn every fucking time.
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: And I asked you for yellow and.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: It says yellow mustard? What do you list?
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you dumb? And then all of a sudden,
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: here's my verbal assassin. Can you not read and then try.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: To make it better?
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: It's better, And so then what happens is we're losing again.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: It's not about the mustard, but we're losing the thing
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: an organization needs, which is accountability and trust. So if
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: you believe me that the home is an organization, then
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: you have to believe me that the two things you
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: can't lose is accountability and trust. And so to restore
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: accountability and trust, the one key is to move away
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: from that fifty to fifty and to move towards ownership.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: If I have dishes this week, I have dishes, as
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: my son say, that's from the secret oils that go
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: in the dish drawer, all the way to unloading that
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: dishwasher and going away and carrying through my mistake. If
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: it doesn't happen with laundry, I carry through many mistakes.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: I keep it in there, it smells like crap. I
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: forget to put it. I have to redo the cycle.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I'm carrying through lots lots of Laudroym mistakes. When it's
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: my turn, you don't hold these forever. You redeal at
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: your check in and then you just keep on going,
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: and so, like I said, I loved I'm a student
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: by heart. I love doing homework with my sons. It
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: brought me so much joy until my kids turned thirteen
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: and I looked at my husband. I said, you either
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: have two choices. Are in a low emotion and high
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: cognition conversation, not with that tone, but I basically said,
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: you can homeschool them, or you can keep them at
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: these schools, but you're I need you to take ownership
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: of the homework card. It is too hard for me.
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: It's too triggering. It's ruining my relationship with my sons.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: I'm using verbal assassin with them. I'm calling them mediocre.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: I'm saying, how are you my child? I'm doing the
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: same things that I did with with you. It is
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: not going well. I'll keep it with Anna. You can
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: always be a kid split as long as they're ownership.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: So I own Anna and he took over for the
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: two kids, for the two boys. It doesn't mean I
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: don't even know who's holding which cards right now. I
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: mean we know who's holding which I don't know who's
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: holding more cards. I just know that right now. That
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: was the hardest thing for me to hold. I said
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: to him, I will take dishes, I will take garbage,
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: I will take buying gifts, I will take hard questions.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: I will take all these other things because I know
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: how hard homework is and schoolwork is for our two sons,
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: and so that is how you have those types of conversations.
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: So right now he's owning it.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: And you're really suggesting to let go of that fifty
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: to fifty mentality.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I love that idea because.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: You know what, when I was on my book tour,
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Seth had a hundred of the cards. When you're filming,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: maybe Dave, right, yeah, yeah, Dave is holding one hundred
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: of the cards sometimes. Yeah, So that in the mornings,
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: maybe you're he's sleeping in because he worked really late,
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: you're holding more of the cards. But as long as
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: in advance you know what your responsibility is. It sounds
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: daunting at first because I'm asking you to invest in
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: looking at one hundred cards and deciding how to build
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: your deck. But it's so valuable. We call it the
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: present bias. You don't want to do it now because
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: you think it's going to be easier later, but I
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: promise you the investment now makes it so much easier
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: later because I know who's doing what in my family,
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: and I can take accountability when I drop the ball.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: Like our minimums, I talk about the minimum standard of care.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: Just make sure there's a minimum standard of care for
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: Seth and I. For dinner, it's just having one vegetable
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: somewhere around, like maybe it's an iceberg piece of lettuce.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: I grew up on Bodega food. So he said, you know,
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: when you do dining, when you do meals, I notice
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: that it's Lucky Charms. Is the only green I've ever seen.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: It's a green shamrock. And that's what our kidsy for dinner.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: Maybe make it so there's a little bit of vegetable
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: adjacent food, and when he makes dinner, he'll do like
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: the Kraft mac and cheese and just like steam broccoli.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: But we have a minimum standard, so we understand the
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: page we're on, and then you know, if you exceed it, great,
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: you want to make the gourmet meal, go for it.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: But also he's saying to me in advance, it's not
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: acceptable for you to keep feeding our kids coca pebbles
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: for dinner, which we pretty much did for a whole
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: year until we had these conversations, and I didn't know
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: he was raging about it internally because he's avoided and
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: he didn't feel like he could say anything, and he's
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: like he hated the way our kids ate.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: I think I've heard you mentioned. I think I read
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: it in the book The mental Load h that I
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: know I will go to work and I feel as
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: if I'm still fully running the household, raising the kids
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: and working at the same time. And I know, I
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: know every woman out there who is, you know, working
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: and raising a family feels the same way like it does.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: It never stops in our minds. How can we get
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: any freedom from feeling like we have to bear the
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: load of all the mental load of running the house
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: and making sure things are in the cupboards that they
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: need and that they're doctor's appointments are scheduled and handled,
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: and the orchestration of just the logistics of running a
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: family and a household.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: Well, here's the beauty, and this is what we learned
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: from the study that we just published. Ownership alleviates the
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: mental load. If you know that Dave had dishes for
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: the week, or he had dinner for the week, then
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: you're not thinking about it, right, You're not asking him
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: to go get the mustard, because you're still the one
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: getting the stakeholder buy in for what mustard you need.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: It is this, and I'll give you just a quick example.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: So we had this couple during the pandemic. She was
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: sick of the mental load for the caregiving what we
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: call caregiving and magic cards. Her partner was actually really
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: great at what we call the house cards. He was
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: great at dishes, He was really helpful with the mental
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: load of dinner. But as we said earlier, those magic
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: cards like the hard questions and whether or not your
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: child's learning to ride a bike, what we call informal education,
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: what we were talking about earlier with gifts caregiving like
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: medical adenoids or your sinuses, back to that, whether your
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: child's adnoids and their sinuses are being taken out. They
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: were falling on her, and so what she said was
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: that she needed more help with that. Those cards. Yep,
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: but she felt the mental load of taking care of
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: his in laws, of remembering the tooth fairy, of remembering
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: gestures of love, which is bringing the flowers to the recital,
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: felt too much for her. So she wanted him to
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: own some of those cards. So the first one he
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: decides to take on is the tooth Fairy, and I'll
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: explain why this is important about the mental load. He
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: takes on the tooth Fairy in advance in one of
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: their check ins. I love this man, Richard, and so
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: what happens. It was this daughter's second tooth. The tooth
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: Fairy doesn't come. So what they recognized was that she
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: had been holding the mental load up until that point,
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: meaning before fair play. He would have said, it was
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: your fault. You didn't mind me to put the dollar
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: under the pillow. That's a mental load, right. He was
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: gonna get up and do it, but she's gonna have
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: to set the alarm. She's gonna have to remember he
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: does no no, but because he owned tooth Fairy. This
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: is what she tells me happens. He says, I messed up.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: He takes accountability. So she's like, wait a second, I
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: didn't have the mental loads. Something went wrong. But instead
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: of having to fix it, I'm hearing something different from
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: my partner. He's taking accountability. So she gives him the
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: space to say, Okay, it's still your mental load. I'm
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: gonna let you carry through the mistake. So he does
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: and this is the fun part, he tells me. He
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: emails Toothfairy at gmail dot com. He writes, like, hey,
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: what's going on? You know the tooth is still onto
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: the pillow? Like did we not put it in the
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: right envelope? Do we need more neon colors?
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: He writes this letter in front of his daughter. What
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: he didn't expect was he was actually going to get
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: a response. During the day, he gets a response from
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: Toothfairy at gmail dot com. So thank god for whoever's
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: doing that meant to load work out there saying sorry,
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: supply chain issues, I'm really late at picking up teeth. Yes,
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: please live it in a bigger envelope, and then her
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: the dad added, oh when she brings when she's late
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: because of these issues, she brings double the money and fix.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: That's just what I'm saying is these are small changes,
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: but that mental load was on him. He made a mistake,
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: just like we all do. But he took the accountability
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: to say I own this, and so I'm going to
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: correct my mistake. They have this cool story. Now we
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: now know that tooth fairygmail dot com is like a
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: real person, and that's that's what I mean, that's how
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: the mental load starts to ship when you get when
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: you empower somebody to own a task, to say I
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: trust you, and if mistakes happen for that person to say,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: I love you enough so I'm not saying, well, if
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: you you care about it more than I do, you
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: should do it. Instead, it's you care about this so
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: much so I should do it. That's the mentality that
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: sort of fair place starts to. When you practice, it
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: starts to change.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Babe. We got to get these cards.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they're fine.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: I like the cards a lot. I was down to
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: do a couple more.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: We got to.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I think they need to live like in the living room.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Where I love the idea.
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: I mean, we need to have a family check in.
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: We need to do our check in.
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yeah, and maybe do a couple more with
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: each other, please, like before you even look at them, like,
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: spend the time with the cards, just telling some more
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: stories before you say this is the system we have
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: to get into. I loved your stories. I actually thought
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: your stories were really beautiful and profound, and I feel
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: like again being with you for an hour, I would
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: know you more now than if we had been at
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: a whole dinner party together. You know, I really do
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: feel like the hard questions that we learned and those
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: dynamics and you know what it looked like to to
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: to shake your presence and to get your you know,
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: to get your Michael Jackson album. Like, those are things
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: that you know that becomes part of our joint connection
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: in humanity because we have those stories together.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: That's so true. This has been really fun.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: Really good.
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: I'd love to talk more about ownership and stuff like that. Yeah,
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: there's so much.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: There's so much.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: There's so much bay Before we let Eve go, do
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: you want to ask her the question?
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: What question?
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: The question at the end of every I Choose Me podcast?
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Oh? Oh yeah, I think I know this, you do. Eve.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: What was your last I Choose Me moment?
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Hmmm. I'm going to say it was the active putting
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: on which I do every morning of my necklace. That
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: is my initial.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: I don't have any mom charms. I don't wear my kids.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: I don't tattoo them on my body or wear them
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: on my neck. I wear one initial. It's mine, and
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: I choose me because I want my kids to know
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: that I have a life, I have a name, I
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: have an identity outside of my role as their parents,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: at outside of my role as being the fulfiller of
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: Seth Smoothie needs. And so for me that I choose
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: me as the reminder for myself. It's putting my own
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: initial physically on my neck every day.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I love that so much. I never heard that one blueberry.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: No blueberry moments here now. Gosh, thank you so much
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: for spending your time with us. We really appreciate you,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: and you're so fun.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: I love you guys.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: You're great, all right, have a great day.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: Bye,