How do we stop fighting about chores?
Chores. They’re one big, annoying area of life that can kill intimacy and connection in any relationship. Whether you’re cohabitating, shacking up or just sleeping over at someone’s place, how you delineate chores in the living space and other areas of your relationship will impact things in either a positive or negative way. Like taxes, the reality of chores is just something we all have to deal with, so we might as well get good at dealing with them — together.
In theory, this is a very simple concept, and when you apply the following tools, this should become very simple in practice as well. Sports team analogies work perfectly here: There are roles that people play on a sports team, and each role is connected to each person’s individual strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, each person's role is clearly delineated and defined. You don't see the right fielder pushing the pitcher out of the way so he can pitch, or a linebacker stealing the ball from the quarterback and yelling at him that he's not doing it right! And yet, this is exactly how people suffer through the reality of chores in intimacy.
In our marriage, we call chores “Areas of Accountability,” or AOAs. Examples of AOAs are as menial as doing dishes, tidying the living space and doing the laundry to as important as earning income, investing money and learning best practices in how to raise children. AOAs can either be one person's sole responsibility or shared between the two of you. Just like on a sports team, each individual in a relationship has strengths and weaknesses, things they care about/don't care about, and things they enjoy doing/detest doing. This is what you want to think about when divvying up your AOAs.
The process looks like this:
Make a list of all the AOAs in your relationship and divide them up according to who is best at the given AOA, who cares about it/enjoys doing it the most or, worst-case scenario, detests doing it the least. For example, in our relationship, one of us is more administratively organized, so they’re accountable for managing that the bills get paid on time. One of us is more financially creative and gets joy and pleasure in learning about investing and wealth management, so they’re accountable for our household investing. If both people are good at an area of accountability, enjoy that area or care about it, then the area of accountability can and should be shared. For example, if both people are good at and enjoy making money, then both should make money. Same goes with any other AOA. If nobody is good at an AOA, that AOA defaults to the person who is most annoyed about it not getting done or not getting done “correctly.”
This is all very simple in theory and even in practice most of the time, but where it gets tricky is when our humanity gets involved. Here are the normal roadblocks and how to navigate them:
"It feels unfair!" This is a complaint we hear a lot when one person cares a lot more about an AOA than their partner does and ends up having to manage it themselves. People fight about chores because they think that they need to be done 50/50. If you are in this camp, you need to understand that dividing areas of accountability isn’t about egalitarianism and equality. Your AOAs won’t ever be split 50/50 in your relationship if you are doing this correctly. Designing AOAs the right way is about creating the highest-functioning system possible. In a successful business or sports team, not everyone has an equal responsibility of roles. A pitcher on a baseball team arguably has a lot more to do than a right fielder. At the same time, the right fielder runs more than the pitcher. This is about playing to each other's strengths and natural tendencies — and supporting what is best for the relationship over each individual that is inside of it.
"My way or the highway." Couples often fight about the fact that they want the chore to be done the way that they would do it. So even if their partner tries to help, if the AOA is not handled in the manner that they would handle it themselves, they become critical or resentful. The cure for this is that if you need something done your way, then do it yourself and give up your right to complain about it. Or you can show your partner how you like it to be done and then let it go and realize that they are never going to do it completely how you would do it and that's OK. You aren’t allowed to need something done your way, not do it, and then criticize your partner for doing it their way!
"Help me please." If an AOA ends up going to you by default because you just care about that AOA more or happen to be better at it, that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to ask your partner for help with it. It just means that the accountability for that area is on you and you have to be great with your partner about how they can help you. This means being a great leader in the area versus being upset and resentful at them because they aren't as good at it as you are or care less about it.
Generally, chores are one of the silliest things that couples fight about, and the good news is that if you follow this system, it becomes easy to organize your lives so you can focus on the important parts of your intimacy.
