Mark Travers spent years studying couples to arrive at a conclusion your grandmother could have told him for free. The happiest couples don't fight about who does more housework. Groundbreaking stuff. Next he'll discover that people who share bank accounts sometimes disagree about purchases.
The problem isn't the chore scorecard. The problem is that one person is definitely doing more and the other person is definitely lying about it. Travers wants you to stop fighting about this verifiable imbalance. Just accept it. Move on. Focus on the relationship. Solid advice for anyone who enjoys being a doormat.
Here's what he won't tell you. The person doing less housework is running the same mental accounting system as a retail trader who refuses to sell at a loss. They're convinced if they just wait long enough, the other person will forget about the three weeks of unwashed dishes. They're bagholding dirty laundry. They're diamond-handing the trash that should have gone out Tuesday.
The happiest couples stopped fighting about chores because one person gave up. That's the secret. Capitulation. The same move retail traders make when they finally sell their positions at a 60% loss and swear they're done with the market forever. Except couples can't close their positions. They're stuck rebalancing the dishwasher portfolio for the next forty years.
Travers probably charges $300 an hour to tell people this. He wrote an article about it. He's positioned himself as an expert on not fighting about the most fightable thing in any shared living space. The man has found his edge. He's selling relationship advice to people who can't figure out that if you live with someone, you have to clean things. Revolutionary.
The real happiest couples never fight about chores because they hired someone to do them.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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