Last week was about marriage and small acts of recognition.  This week is about marriage and the concept of equal effort. When I was first married, I think I wanted to make sure things were always equal.  For example, I’d handle the dishes one time, and she’d handle them the next time.  When taken too far, this created resentment.  Have you ever said to yourself, “I’m doing all the work around here.  They are a lazy punk!”?  Maybe that’s just me 😉

Over time, I realized that our relationship would never be 100% equal for a few different reasons.  First, we have different skillsets, and we should make the most of those skillsets. Second, we have different interests or aversions to different household tasks.  For example, my wife enjoys cooking and I don’t particularly like it.  My wife HATES cleaning bathrooms with the fire of a thousand suns, and while it’s not my favorite thing to do, it doesn’t trigger intense loathing for me.  The third reason is that on any given day/week/month we might have more or less capacity to handle things.  If we need 100 units of effort to run our house, sometimes we both have plenty of energy and can split that 50/50.  Sometimes, one of us might need to recharge, so they can only put forward 20 and the other person picks up the 80.  Sometimes, we are both worn down, and we agree that there is no way we can get to 100.  At that point, we just agree that we need to hunker down, lower our expectations to just making it through the night without killing everyone, and probably put on a movie for the night.  Anyone else been here?  At the end of the day, as long as we are both contributing to our greater whole, we are doing the right things.

What does this have to do with anything?   This has some parallels with other relationships we have whether it’s family, friends, or work colleagues.  It’s easy to get fixated on the idea of equal effort meaning that everyone needs to contribute the exact same amount.  Instead, contribution doesn’t always have to be exactly equal, as long as we find a way to ensure the contributions add up to the greater whole.  We can think about contribution from the other lenses we explored including skillsets, what people enjoy/dislike, and individual capacity.  Where does it make sense to have them lean more heavily into their strengths?  Where does it make sense to have them lean into their passions?  How do we adjust things based on an individual’s capacity (work, emotional, physical, and mental)?

The challenge: How will you think differently about relationships and equal effort?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry