Marriage Improves When You Share The Load
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There was a time men and women entered into matrimony with specific ideas about how the division of chores would be handled: he would go off to work and "bring home the bacon;" she would stay home, cook, clean, and raise the children. Things are different now. Roles in the marriage are no longer gender-based, as may have been the case in your parent’s generation.
It is more common today for both spouses to work full-time jobs.
Marriage has changed from a union in which two opposites worked together to make up for each other’s weak spots, into a union based on shared interests, activities and emotions. Sharing chores is one of the keys to a thriving modern relationship.
How Do You Divide Up the Chores?
Couples don’t need to divide chores exactly equally in order feel happy. It doesn’t matter who does what, but how satisfied both spouse are with the division of labor. Every couple is different. In one marriage, the wife may be the better cook while the husband may be better at yard work. In another relationship, the reverse might be the case. In the most successful marriages, when wives are doing work together with their husbands, they are more satisfied with the division of labor.
There are a many ways to divvy up chores. Take dishwashing for example. You wash, I'll dry. You do the plates; I'll scrub the pots and pans. You load the dishwasher; I'll unload the dishwasher. You do the dishes on Monday; I'll do them on Tuesday.
Talk About It. Talk about what chores need to get done regularly and who should do what. Take into account each other’s gifts and talents.
Agree on a system. Once you have discussed what and who, it’s time to agree on how and when. How will each of the chores get done? One spouse will do these sets of tasks, while the other spouse will do a different set of chores. Some chores you may decide to both do on alternating days, and both spouses should do some tasks together. Example: Tammy is a bit of a neat freak, so she does the dusting, wiping down of counters and bathrooms. Reggie is more of a big area kind of guy, so he sweeps and mops the floors and vacuums. Neither one of them likes to do yard work very much, so they both pick a day to go out and prune bushes and do yard clean up.
Decide which chores or services you can hire out. If both spouses work full time, you don’t want to spend all of your free time doing chores. In a Harvard study, researchers found that couples that paid for services to free up their time had happier relationships. Think about tasks eat up a lot of time like mowing the lawn, washing windows, weeding the bushes and flower beds. Hire those chores out and watch your relationship blossom.
If you are not spending your time on big, time-consuming chores or fighting about who needs to do what tasks, what else could you be doing together? In a published study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, couples that shared chores more evenly, reported having more intimacy and time for sex.
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