Before you settle down with that person you love, here are 7 marriage mistakes you must know about and avoid.
*Photo used for illustrative purpose*
Authors Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, who write for The Wall Street
Journal and the New York Times, have applied the market rules of cold
hard capitalism to the economy of your marriage to help you efficiently
allocate limited resources such as time, money, sanity, and, yes, even
your s*x drive. Prevention.com chatted with the authors to learn the top
seven marriage mistakes even smart couples make.
1. Splitting the housework 50/50. This is often
considered the "fairest" way to split the chores, whether it's washing
the dishes or walking the dog. But aiming for 50/50 means you're
constantly keeping score, making sure that neither of you is getting the
short end of the stick, and bickering every time you think you are.
Spend too much time fixating on fairness today, and you risk not making
it to the long run when things often balance out.
It's better to use a system similar to what economists call "comparative
advantage," where each of you is responsible for what you're best at,
relative to other tasks. You might handle all the bills, grocery
shopping, and laundry, while your spouse sweeps and mops and fixes
things when they break. Some weeks, you'll end up doing more, other
times it might be 75/25 in his favor—but you don't keep track because if
your husband handled the grocery shopping, you might end up with a
pantry full of Tostitos.
2. Waiting until you're in the mood to have s*x. Unless
you're both extremely hot and share an obsessive addiction to
monogamous s*x, odds are you're not in the mood as often as you were
when you first met. So if you wait 'til you're turned on, months might
go by before it occurs to you that maybe s*x would be a fun thing to do.
The economist George Loewenstein developed a theory called the hot-cold
empathy gap, which says we have two selves: a cold, clear-headed
rational self that might say, "I will have s*x with my husband when I
come home tonight because I love him and I will enjoy it and heck, it's
good for my marriage" and a hot, impulsive, emotion-driven, irrational
self that says, when the time actually comes, "I've had such a bad day, I
feel fat and bloated, my husband is annoying tonight...No way am I
having s*x. I'm going to watch the Real Housewives and go to bed."
When the time actually comes, we may not be in the mood, but we need to
listen to our "cool" selves, the voice before we had a bad day. You're
not in the mood NOW, but you were THEN, when you were thinking about it,
and you'll enjoy it—so just do it. You might not be in the mood, but
you won't regret it, either.
3. Assuming a rough patch is the end of the world. Relationships
go in cycles. There are ups (booms) and downs (busts), just like in the
economy. They're not only inevitable, but they're actually healthy.
They force you to see where you've let things slide, taken each other
for granted, or just lost sight of what's important. Embrace the rough
patches and borrow a concept from economics called "creative
destruction," or innovating in the face of crisis, and think up a novel
solution to an issue that keeps dividing you.
4. Staying up to resolve an argument, even if it takes all night. Bad
idea! At a certain point—and we've all been there—we just want to be
right, whatever it costs. And because someone at our bridal shower
advised us to never go to bed angry, we beat up ourselves and our
spouses into the wee hours in the name of "resolution." But the more we
try to resolve (aka, win), the later it gets and the more exhausted and
resentful we become. So yes, go to bed angry sometimes. Get some rest
and sleep on it. Reconvene the anger summit in the morning when you're
both more open-minded and less riled up. This is the economic concept of
"loss aversion," which, in simple terms, means we hate to lose.
Recognizing how much we hate to lose, we need to take actions to
minimize the damage we do attempting to win at all costs.
5. Trying to mind-read—or expecting your partner to do so. This
one should be obvious, and yet again, we all assume our spouse knows we
need a hug (or a cocktail) after a bad day at the office or figure that
he'll wash the car on his way past the car wash because it's so
obviously dirty. The solution: the economic principle of transparency.
Give your spouse the information he or she needs, rather than expecting
him to know the unknowable. Information is the grease that keeps your
little economy functioning.
6. Putting off kind gestures. We think we'll give him
that well-deserved back rub, or watch the kids so she can get out the
door for a child-free afternoon, but then we flake. The time never seems
right. The to-do list remains too long. We think we're great spouses
but sometimes we're just not. The best solution to our procrastination
is to devise something economists call "commitment devices"—ways to
force ourselves to commit to things. Send your husband a text promising a
back rub and you sort of have to do it. Arrange a personal training
session for your wife and the kids are all yours for the afternoon.
7. Underestimating the power of small changes. Long
commute and big house, or shoebox in the city and more time with the
kids? When you start to think about one person quitting a job because
the demands of housework and childcare are too overwhelming with both
partners working, consider the smaller changes that might help first.
What if you cooked more meals on the weekend? Or hired an occasional
cleaning service so neither of you has to spend your free time scrubbing
the sink? Instead of grand solutions, look for the incremental changes
that can improve situations.
Source: Prevention
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