54. EVE RODKSY: Creating Better Balance at Home

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Eve: That’s what I’m hoping each partner starts to understand that when you naturally take ownership, you’re gonna hold the mental load.

[00:00:08] Megan: Hi, I am Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:09] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller,

[00:00:11] Megan: and you’re listening to The Double Win Show.

[00:00:12] Joel: We’re excited to share with you today our recent conversation with Eve Rodsky.

[00:00:18] Megan: You may have noticed we have a new co-host for today.

[00:00:21] Joel: Just temporary.

[00:00:22] Megan: Just temporary, but it’s because of who Eve is. Yep. We’re really excited actually to, I, I booted my dad out, actually, it was his idea, but I brought Joel in today, especially because Eve is the author of a book and a system called Fair Play.

[00:00:36] Joel: Yep.

[00:00:36] Megan: That has been really meaningful in our life, in our partnership at Home Together, and it’s basically a whole system that she developed for helping husbands and wives to more equally share. The totality of the labor that it takes to run a family. Yep. To just kind of put it simply, her background is that of a lawyer and an organizational management expert who has advised hundreds of families and organizations and so she actually used that.

[00:01:03] It’s really fascinating. I didn’t know that part of her story. Yeah. Until this interview, she used that to inform the system that she created with Fair Play and you know, I think she is the originator of the concept. I think, at least for me. Of the mental load that women often carry, regardless of what their professional role is, the mental load for conceptualizing and planning all the work that it takes to manage a family, when normally what we think of is the doing part of that work, right?

[00:01:32] That needs to be fairly divided. She’s a mom. She is a wife. Her most recent book, it’s called Find Your Unicorn Space on Personal Fulfillment Beyond Roles. But the, I think the big idea here is that, um, winning at work and succeeding at life. Obviously includes the home

[00:01:48] Joel: and it’s not something that we typically think about.

[00:01:50] We

[00:01:50] Megan: haven’t talked enough about it on the show, just

[00:01:52] Joel: to be candid. Yeah. When we think about winning at work and succeeding at life, it’s like professional and personal, and yet the domestic sphere, while it is part of the personal, doesn’t actually come into that very much.

[00:02:02] Megan: Right. It’s not personal, like singular.

[00:02:03] Right. For many of us, you know, we know that most of our listeners are. Are married and many of you have children, certainly not all, but we don’t think a lot about the domestic sphere as being part of the equation of winning at work and succeeding at life and needing to be thought about strategically.

[00:02:18] Yeah. And instead we sort of just like default to these sort of implicit archaic notions of how it should work and we’re just gonna try to figure it out. Well, I mean

[00:02:26] Joel: that’s,

[00:02:26] Megan: it doesn’t work well.

[00:02:27] Joel: That’s what Eve says. Yeah. That there’s this tendency to just kind of play it by ear, basically.

[00:02:32] Megan: Right.

[00:02:32] Joel: And what that practically means is that women take on an excessive load,

[00:02:37] Megan: right?

[00:02:37] Joel: Even if men are helping out. And it’s not something that we set out to do necessarily. It just kind of defaults to that, what she calls the she fault parent, the mom or the woman of the house, and. What that means is that there’s just a burden placed on women that actually works against the ability to flourish, the ability to have work-life balance and all the other things, because women are shouldering so much more than men, even at home.

[00:03:04] So regardless of what happens at work, there’s like all the extra that happens at.

[00:03:08] Megan: I just wanna encourage you, if you’re a female listener, you’re gonna feel really validated by this, and I think you’re gonna have a path forward maybe. But I also wanna say, if you’re a male listener, this is not a male bashing

[00:03:21] Joel: no

[00:03:21] Megan: episode.

[00:03:22] This, I think, also will be encouraging to you because I think both men and women suffer. When there isn’t a clear path to finding a way forward that is, that feels fair and equitable and clear, like, like a setup to win for both parties.

[00:03:36] Joel: I, I think the clear thing is really important. Yeah. We talk in the interview about like visible work and invisible work, and the truth is men don’t even know a lot of what’s going on in their own home in terms of how things get done.

[00:03:48] Megan: Right.

[00:03:49] Joel: The assumption sort of is, well, I’m doing a lot, therefore it must be sort of equal. And that’s not necessarily so because of some of the stuff that he talks about

[00:03:57] Megan: and not, ’cause you’re a bad guy, not ’cause you don’t wanna be helpful. And I think that’s really important and we talk about that a lot.

[00:04:02] So I just wanna say that to say don’t tune out, like listen to this episode, this is for you too. And what’s on the other side of it potentially, I think is a, a deeper, richer partnership with your spouse, whichever end of the equation you’re on. Yeah. And less stress.

[00:04:18] Joel: Right.

[00:04:21] Joel: I wanna say one word is patriarchy. It comes up, hear it, and just take it for what it is and listen to the context because the context for this conversation really matters if you want to have a flourishing home life.

[00:04:35] Megan: So without further ado, here’s our conversation with Eve.

[00:04:41] Eve. Welcome to the show.

[00:04:43] Eve: It’s so great to meet you virtually Megan and Joel. Good to meet.

[00:04:47] Megan: Well, it’s so great to meet you. Your name has been invoked many a time in our house over the years. Um, I think it was probably 20 20, 20 21. So in there that we read your book. Fair play. Yep. We got the cards. We, I remember distinctly, we were at the golf course where one of our.

[00:05:03] Kids was at a golf lesson and we were sorting the cards on the console

[00:05:07] Joel: Yep.

[00:05:07] Megan: Of the car

[00:05:08] Joel: suburban

[00:05:09] Eve: section

[00:05:09] Megan: in the Suburban, yeah. Trying to figure out our life and it was super helpful, but not everybody knows. So what is fair play and why is it necessary for men and women?

[00:05:19] Eve: Well, first of all, thank you for finding the book.

[00:05:22] Uh, I always feel like it is sort of this word of mouth movement. Yes. Even though ironically, we are translated and we’re in 27 countries.

[00:05:31] Joel: That’s

[00:05:31] Eve: amazing. And we now have millions of people who have given us data that they play. So it’s actually a lot bigger, even though it’s still under the radar, if that makes sense.

[00:05:41] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:41] Eve: So I’m still out there every day preaching the gospel because we just have our. First big study with USC to show that fair play actually works.

[00:05:49] Megan: Hmm.

[00:05:50] Eve: And so I’m excited as a practice, you know, not if you do it once, but we’ll talk through that. So what is it? What are we even talking about? I think it’s important to understand what we’re talking about by just backing up for a minute.

[00:06:01] And if I could just give you a little context Please of where this came from. So what fair play isn’t, uh, let’s just say I didn’t start out to be an expert. On the gender division of labor, like that was not a term I’d ever heard. Meghan and Joel, like I am resolutely Gen X. I was told that Gloria Steinem’s generation did everything for us, that women were graduating from college at rates that were ever unknown, that in 1973, women got access to their first credit cards and bank accounts.

[00:06:34] So that by 2000 when I sort of was in law school, I was told the world, you know, the world was. It was our legally blonde oyster. And so I’ll say that in third grade. If they asked me what did I wanna be when I grew up, it didn’t say, I didn’t say gender division of labor expert. I probably said veterinarian in law school.

[00:06:54] When Elizabeth Warren, who’s now a senator, but she was our professor, asked what we wanted to do with our law degree. I absolutely did not say I wanted to be an expert on the gender division of labor. But this is something that, especially after kids research becomes me search. And as you may know from reading the book, right, this all stemmed from my husband Seth’s text, and it’s just the simple text that he sent me that said, I’m surprised you didn’t get blueberries.

[00:07:21] And I’m sure Joel, you’ve maybe sent some texts like that before, but I think what was happening to me in that time, can I have you picture the scene with me?

[00:07:28] Joel: Yeah.

[00:07:29] Eve: So I’m surprised you didn’t get blueberries if it was. At any other time, or I was in the fair place system and I held the groceries card, that would’ve been fine.

[00:07:38] But at the time, we had no system for the home. We were using the three most toxic words that anyone can use for a relationship with kids. We were figuring it out, and what figuring it out meant was that by our second child, I ended up with this blueberries breakdown. I ended up crying on the side of the road over this text on my way to my son’s.

[00:07:58] Toddler transition program. But if you picture the scene with me, I had a newborn baby at home. I had a breast pump and a diaper bag on the passenger seat of my car. I had gifts for a newborn baby to return in the back of the car. I had a client contract on my lap ’cause I had left the workforce. Now I say I was forced out and I’d started my own law firm.

[00:08:17] So it was amid that chaos that Seth sent me that text, and I think the way it hit

[00:08:23] Joel: mm-hmm.

[00:08:24] Eve: Was. Instead of, oh, you know, I’m responsible for groceries and I miss an item. The way it hit was, oh wow. You know, Seth truly believes that I’m not his partner, that I’m, I’m the fulfiller of his smoothie needs.

[00:08:38] Joel: Right.

[00:08:38] Megan: Wow.

[00:08:39] Eve: That’s how it hit

[00:08:40] Joel: on

[00:08:40] Eve: top of everything else didn’t Right. I didn’t wanna be, his smoothie needs fulfiller on top of literally everything else I was doing, which was, now I know. All the unpaid labor for our home, all of the cognitive labor, we’ll talk about that. And then most of the execution labor. So, and losing my career in the process and my identity.

[00:08:59] So there’s too many things going on that nobody, if we’re all the ghost of your Christmas future, we’re here to tell you that there’s a different way to live. And I think that context is important because what Fair Play became. Was an antidote to my own burnout. And really the only two types of women I could see who were not burned out were people either who had a fair division of labor or people who had, what I say is like the three opposite words to figure it out.

[00:09:26] They had court ordered custody and those women were doing really well, and I kept writing that down in my early, like iPhone 11 notes or whatever. But remember this is 2011, and there wasn’t podcasts like you, there was not. Books. There was just what to expect when you’re expecting, where I found out my son was a jellybean size, but nothing about unpaid labor.

[00:09:50] The mental load. And I think if I just had known that amazing men like Joel, because fair play really is a love letter to men. If I knew that amazing men like Joel and my husband s. They did five to 15 hours a week, less after kids came. That was just sort of the nature of the patriarchy and expectation.

[00:10:09] If I had just known that, then I think I would’ve been able to write that imbalance earlier.

[00:10:14] Megan: Hmm.

[00:10:15] Eve: And that’s what Fair Play was. It was an attempt to rewrite that imbalance.

[00:10:20] Megan: Wow.

[00:10:20] Joel: When you talk about what Fair Play isn’t, let’s shift into what Fair Play is because. That was not something intuitive for me at all when we first started talking about this book.

[00:10:33] Megan: Like we both have Boomer parents,

[00:10:35] Joel: right? Yes.

[00:10:35] Megan: Right. So like, we’re Gen Xers, but we have Boomer parents. Yeah. So this is like not a concept that we certainly witnessed in our own families of origin. No, really? Maybe you a little more than me because both your parents worked. Yeah. Growing up. Um, mine, both of mine did not.

[00:10:49] My mom stayed at, both of them worked, but my mom was a stay-at-home mom. But like this is like a totally foreign concept. And here, here I am, you know, at this point, a CEO, we have five kids. Three of our kids have special needs like. It’s just kind of a hot mess. Yeah. You know, there’s a lot going on. Yeah.

[00:11:05] And I think, yeah, like a lot of people, we didn’t know that there was an alternative to, we’re just trying to figure it out.

[00:11:11] Joel: Let me just hear you describe what you mean by fair play.

[00:11:14] Eve: I think what made me different was. I was looking at this with not just a researcher hat on, but I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a therapist, I’m a lawyer.

[00:11:24] And why I think that made a difference is because I’m a lawyer that works for families that look like the HBO show succession and Megan, and go, you should feel bad for me ’cause it’s as bad as it looks on tv. But I think what I did for those families was I had, I’m trained as a lawyer, but I’m also trained in a very special type of governance that’s about complex organizations and how they make decisions.

[00:11:48] So what, what I remember was when court ordered custody felt like I, I wasn’t ready to go there and I grew up with a single mother, and divorce was really hard on our family and all the things that came with it. And I thought, okay, let me do one thing. Let me become my own client.

[00:12:04] Joel: Yeah. Because a family is a complex organization.

[00:12:06] Eve: Exactly. If every man understood that, then there would be no 2000 years of religious patriarchy. I’m serious because. It is a very simple insight, but it’s also, like you said, not anything we’ve ever thought of before. Right. We’re used to figure it out. We’re used to expectation. We’re used to hearing the home is love, but once you understand and you believe me, which it sounds like Joel does.

[00:12:33] That the home is a complex organization, then it became so easy because I could use the 50 years of organizational scholarship before me that I’d used for my complex families that I worked for, and I could use it for my own home. That was the beauty of it. What I realized was that it was gonna be hard to get people to the table.

[00:12:52] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:53] Eve: Because lemme explain something that is not maybe as clear in terms of this fair. What is fair play? What is fair play? It looks like a game. It looks like an organizational system for the home, but really what it is, is it’s teaching you to rebuild the two most important things that most organizations, family organizations have lost, especially ones where there’s a woman and a man, and that is accountability and trust.

[00:13:18] Fair Play is a system to restore accountability and trust, and the way you do that is by using very, very simple organizational principles. I use a card game because it helped me. Gamification has always helped with very complex patriarchs in my business, and so I realized this card game was an easy way to introduce.

[00:13:41] The concept of of, you know, the home as an organization. And so really what it is, it’s a card game. That’s a system. But a successful organization actually has three things to restore accountability and trust. It has boundaries, systems, and communication. So the system to me is a no-brainer. We can go into that, but I think what was really hard was why, duh, this is a Trello.

[00:14:03] It’s in the sauna. It’s like the best system for the home, but why weren’t people coming to the table? It’s ultimately because. Women don’t have boundaries. We have different expectations. Society punishes us for different things. And also couples have lost the ability to communicate because the figure it out type of style, the opposite of fair play that figure it out style leads to only communication when emotion is high and cognition is low.

[00:14:30] Megan: Yeah. Hmm. And

[00:14:30] Eve: that’s what I was trying to avoid.

[00:14:32] Megan: I think that’s really true. I mean, I think that that was our experience is like the times that we previously, the times that we had conversations about this. Who’s, who’s responsible for what at home? How is it all getting done and with five kids and special needs and business and blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:47] Like, there’s a lot of things to get done. Yeah. Usually that stuff comes up when, when something didn’t get done,

[00:14:53] Joel: something breaks down,

[00:14:54] Megan: something has a, it’s a breakdown, and then you get in a conversation, the other person feels attacked. Yeah. And then it’s just like a, you know, it’s a, it’s a full meltdown of, of anything productive at that point.

[00:15:04] Yeah. You know, then it’s just like, defend. Defend your own, you know yourself at that point. And I think what I love about what you’re, what you’re doing is saying like, what would it look like to think about this in a different way and have both people partner together. I mean, when we get married, like we say, you know, we’re partnering in our life, but we don’t really have, like no one tells you how do you partner?

[00:15:26] How do you actually partner in your life? Not just big decisions, but like how do you partner in the work of your life, especially if you’re raising children and there’s just. So much to manage with that even without children. There’s a lot to manage, but like, how are you going to partner and divide up all the work that there is to do?

[00:15:42] And I think we’re sort of given this implicit script, you know, that like, especially if you’re a Gen Xer or millennial, you know, and you kind of inherited this from your parents in a more maybe traditional dynamic or whatever. And if you’re both, especially if you’re both working, like, it just, it just doesn’t work.

[00:15:57] Right. You know, like it literally, like, there’s not enough hours in the day. And I, I was telling Joel before we got on, I said. Steve is the first person that I ever heard explain the concept of the mental load. Like I didn’t know how to put words to why I felt and still sometimes feel burned out and exhausted.

[00:16:17] It’s not just the, the work you can see, it’s also the work you can’t see. So will you talk about. The mental load, the invisible work, like those kind, those two concepts. ’cause I think they’re foundational to, to the rest of our conversation. Yeah.

[00:16:32] Eve: I think Joel and Megan, given that you are business owners, to me the mental load is having employees in your home.

[00:16:39] Like imagine just every employee you ever hire, the nightmare that they came into your office every single day and said, Hey, what should I be doing today? I’m gonna wait here or two, tell me what to do.

[00:16:49] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:50] Eve: I wouldn’t wish those employees on anybody. Literally.

[00:16:52] Joel: Yeah,

[00:16:53] Eve: I’m my worst enemy. Hi, it’s Tuesday.

[00:16:56] What should I be doing today? I’ll just wait here to tell me what to do. Hi guys. It’s Wednesday. I’m just gonna wait here till you tell me what to do. That type of person is often what happens to men in the home, and it’s not necessarily their fault. I’ll explain this, but what happens when you have a someone in your home that’s supposed to be your partner, and they start to say things like, if you’re so overwhelmed, just tell me what to do.

[00:17:21] Then what happens is the person who has to tell the person what to do is highly resentful, but the person being told what to do loses psychological safety and they don’t wanna do anymore because there’s zero context, and we call that in fair play. The rat, I don’t like the word nagging, it’s too gendered, but the idea of is you don’t want your home infested with rats.

[00:17:41] When you get random assignments of a task as a man, which we saw over and over again in all these countries, men said to me, it’s not that I don’t want to be a partner, but I wouldn’t even know where to step in. So how do you fix that dynamic of somebody who’s overwhelmed and somebody who’s lost psychological safety in the home?

[00:17:58] There’s only one way and it’s ownership. That’s it. You restore accountability and trust through ownership. So, because I knew that. I started to ask people an important question, as you may know from the book, and I’ll get say this to your listeners. I didn’t have the insight that the home was an organization right away.

[00:18:17] My insight was from my therapist, who was toxic at the time, who said, if you’re so overwhelmed, make a list. So I soon learned that lists don’t work. Lists alone don’t work. I did make this amazing spreadsheet. It was 98 tabs. It was 2000 items of Invisible Work. It was how Fair Play started. And it was a salvation to me because in 2011, after the blueberries breakdown.

[00:18:39] Just being able to talk to women that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t the only one shouldering two thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family, which is the, the statistic that we all know. I felt better, but I wasn’t content with just taking the spreadsheet. And I, I did send it to Seth. He did not react in any, you know, great way.

[00:19:00] He sent me a monkey emoji, like the pixelated emoji with that monkey covering its eyes. And so when I realized like no matter how great your lists are, unfortunately they’re just not. It’s just not how organizations are run. You know, we don’t do things by just sending people random lists, right? We do it through onboarding and ownership.

[00:19:22] So I think what I did was I took the spreadsheet. I realized I wasn’t getting accurate data and I’m only telling you both this because you’ve played before. So I wouldn’t necessarily intro. This is like fair play 2 0 1, but the data I was getting from Joel, I would say, Joel, are you involved in the family meal planning or groceries?

[00:19:41] And they and men would say, yes I am. Or you know, do you help get the kids to sports and to school? Yes, I am. So I wasn’t really getting accurate data because both of the couple was saying that they do things. So instead, this gets back to the mental load. The premise of Fair Play was just one question that changed my life because instead of asking who handles groceries, and I’m just looking at some of the fair play cards, there are a hundred of them who handles bedtime routine, who handles the dentist for kids.

[00:20:13] That wasn’t helpful. The question that was being the most helpful was, instead of who handles groceries, it became, how does Mustard get in your refrigerator?

[00:20:21] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:22] Megan: Huh.

[00:20:23] Eve: Because when I finally asked that, and it was cool because, and again, I think why men also appreciate fair play is because it’s data driven.

[00:20:31] Right? It’s not just me giving you my rant, even though the, the beginning of the book is angry, but the system is really based out of. Anybody whose kids play sports understands systems. Any military person understands systems. We understand why systems are important, but to get to a system, you have to ask the right question.

[00:20:51] So once I understood. That in the 27 countries women married to men were the ones telling me that they had yellow mustard that was in the refrigerator because the doctor told them their son was iron deficient and their son only eats protein if they douse it in mustard and yellow only. That conception, if you’ve mapped that onto a RACI framework or a project management framework.

[00:21:17] Conception planning execution is pretty standard, a version of that, so I can understand. Oh, the conception is with women, and then I was hearing from women that they get the stakeholder buy-in from what Joel and the family needs for the grocery list, and they monitor the mustard for when it runs low.

[00:21:35] Didn’t actually say stakeholder buy-in, but I’m, this is what I was listening for. And then I said, oh, I can map planning also on women. And then men were saying, right, I’m the one who actually goes to the store. I bring home spicy Dijon every time and my wife hates me and now she won’t let me work on our living will.

[00:21:55] And so it made me really mad and sad for men. I felt like all these men were trying and getting everything wrong. ’cause they had no conception and planning. They were just coming in at execution. The way to solve that in an organization, whether it’s the home or a workplace, is by putting the C and the P and the E together.

[00:22:14] So that’s really the premise of Fair Play. It’s an ownership framework where there’s a hundred cards. I don’t care who holds what. As long as there’s perceived fairness between both parties. It’s not rocket science, but it is a diff a very different way of thinking about that.

[00:22:36] Joel: I think what I found surprising about it for myself is I had no concept of the mental load part of it, the cognitive labor that you talked about earlier. I just knew I helped out around the house. Yeah.

[00:22:48] Megan: And like way more than your own dad did. You know what I, I mean like, I think if you look generationally, like my mom will say to me sometimes, I can’t believe all the things that Joel does.

[00:22:57] Like, right. It’s ama like she’s just like so impressed. You know? Like he puts our daughter, our youngest daughter to bed every night, for example, and she’s just like, wow. You know, because like, that was not a thing in her generation. My dad’s great, but like he wasn’t doing nearly as much stuff as Joel was.

[00:23:11] Like that was just not the expectation back in the early eighties. Right. You know.

[00:23:15] Eve: Question from you. Did you? Yeah. So when, when you heard, or when you listened to the book or when Megan explained to you the idea of a conception planning execution framework, was that intuitive to you? Like did you understand it from other areas of your life, or, I’m just curious how it it landed for you.

[00:23:31] Joel: It was tricky to tell you the truth because I think on top of the gender dynamics, there are personality differences at play here. I am much more a laissez-faire than Megan is, which is a fancy way of saying that I don’t think about anything. Right, right. And Megan is hyper aware of all the needs of our family, and so it’s easy for me to just kind of let her handle all the worrying and I can handle the doing.

[00:23:59] And. I just kind of default to that position. But of course, like you talk about, there’s a she fault happening there too, which is that I’m kind of passing off everything else to Megan without even thinking about it.

[00:24:11] Megan: And I think one of the things that happens in that scenario, if you’re listening and you’re like thinking about your own dynamics in your relationship when you’re measuring fairness, like when the, when the conversation about fairness comes up, you know, I feel like you’re not doing enough.

[00:24:24] Right? Say for example, you know, this is a dynamic of people will recognize mm-hmm. Right. Course you’re measuring against what you see me do versus what you see you do.

[00:24:33] Joel: Right?

[00:24:34] Megan: Right. Like, it’s the visual of

[00:24:36] Joel: the doing that is

[00:24:36] Megan: visible. It’s the doing versus the doing. What you can’t see is that I’m up at night sending emails to people or making lists or thinking, or I can’t sleep or, you know, because I’m, I’m like.

[00:24:47] Three weeks ahead, we’ve got a CT coming up, we’ve gotten this and that done and whatever, and we got the football, you know, recruiting trip coming up and who’s gonna take him? We’re outta town. And you know, those kinds of things. Yeah. Like those are invisible. And so in the balancing of the scales between men and women, I think often men are, are measuring.

[00:25:06] What I can see that I do versus what I can see that you do. And those seem like reasonable, you know? Right. It’s just that there’s this whole other category that’s, that is invisible. Right.

[00:25:15] Eve: Absolutely. And I will say that that’s a really, really wonderful way to put it because I think that’s how the misunderstandings grow.

[00:25:24] Megan: Yeah.

[00:25:25] Eve: The other thing I think that Joel is mentioning, and so that’s why I love the the cards, and again, we’re a nonprofit. We’re not here to sell you anything. Taking this across the world as a movement. You can find everything hopefully in the show notes@fairplaypolicy.org. We’re here to give you all the tools.

[00:25:42] The tools of the cards are helpful because, so two things. One is, remember I said earlier, this is about boundary systems and communication, so the system can feel straightforward. But if somebody is not used to asserting a boundary, saying like, this isn’t my job. You’re not used to communicating, then even if you have a great system, it’s not gonna work, right?

[00:26:06] Because this is a practice where you have to sit down and to implement a system, you actually have to have emotion is low and cognition is high conversations, and that requires a communication practice. So I think that’s what’s the hardest part, is actually getting people to the table. Because really what I’m asking people to do is a heavy lift in the beginning when you onboard into the Joel and Meghan organization, right, or the Eve and Seth organization.

[00:26:32] Even if we have nannies or helpers or parents or in-laws, we really have to get to know the cards. And I think what Joel was saying, right, is that we can rent women’s brains because we’ve been punished by society for not doing these things. Women have learned really early to do these things, to care about these things in a way that men haven’t had to.

[00:26:52] So that’s what I love about the cards, because you can actually say to each other, what is our minimum standard of care? What does it mean to own dental? And so I will say to Joel, well, to me, my minimum standard of care is that they don’t have cavities. Or if they do their genetic and you know, they’re filled at appropriate times and that they go to their every six month cleaning.

[00:27:14] But then what’s good about that is now Joel is also up next to you, Megan.

[00:27:18] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:18] Eve: Texting the dentist, trying to figure out when the dentist is open, trying to figure out how you’ll get to the dentist, even though your kids have practice every day after school, and the dentist would closed on weekends.

[00:27:28] Trying to figure out when the last appointment was for cleaning. That’s what I’m hoping each partner starts to understand, that when you naturally take ownership, you’re gonna hold the mental load.

[00:27:38] Joel: Right.

[00:27:38] Megan: I think the place where we have struggled, this is where we start to do just therapies. This is so great.

[00:27:43] I love it. You know my, I love it. The reason everybody should have a podcast is because you can. Yeah. You know, you can get great experts on and like do free therapy. It’s so great.

[00:27:51] Eve: That’s

[00:27:51] Megan: no, but seriously, I think the place where we have struggled that you have said a lot to me, first of all, like what I know for sure is.

[00:27:58] Is your heart is like, I want this to be equal. I want this to be shared. I don’t believe in inequity as a concept. I don’t believe that’s acceptable. Right. So like all that is true. I think philosophically we’re aligned and I think that’s huge. But I think where sometimes it breaks down for us is you will say, I just don’t see things.

[00:28:17] Like, I don’t notice things like your brain is different than mine. You notice things that I will never notice. Like I just, I could walk through the house a thousand times and I would never see that fill in the blank, you know, needs to be done. And so I think one of the areas where we have struggled, and I love your advice on this and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too, Joel.

[00:28:35] Yeah. But is, um. I mean, this is probably pretty typical when, when the wife, like in my case, you know, I mean, I got like a high standard. I, I like to run a tight ship. I like it, like I like things, you know, I like to be on top of things. It’s hard for me to rest until things are done. Type A, CEO, fill in the blank, all the things.

[00:28:53] Joel: And I have, it should be said, benefited from that for sure.

[00:28:57] Megan: That’s true. You benefited from that. Right?

[00:28:59] Eve: Love it.

[00:28:59] Megan: Right.

[00:28:59] Eve: Thank you Joel, for just acknowledging that I love it. Yes. There’s some

[00:29:02] Megan: totally

[00:29:03] Eve: trust restoration in that. Yep.

[00:29:04] Megan: Yeah, and and you have, and you do acknowledge that I, I appreciate that. But I end up taking.

[00:29:12] On the ownership and the planning. It like just de going back to that, like backsliding into that. And I think we both backslide into that. And the ownership is hard because I don’t think we have the same standard

[00:29:25] Joel: Yeah.

[00:29:26] Megan: Of care that we, that like where you hold yourself accountable to that standard of care and I hold myself accountable.

[00:29:33] It’s like if I don’t hold you accountable to that, then it’s. Not gonna happen necessarily. Right? Right. Is that too much to share on a podcast? Is this awkward?

[00:29:40] Eve: Well, no. What I’m gonna say is, yeah, you said no. Joel, you go.

[00:29:43] Joel: I was just gonna say thank you for throwing me into the lioness den.

[00:29:48] Eve: Yeah. There’s no lioness den here.

[00:29:49] This is all about the restoration of accountability and trust, which we love.

[00:29:54] Joel: I think that’s true, actually. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,

[00:29:56] Megan: and I’m probably a part of that problem too, because in my mind I’m like, it’s just easier to just do it myself and knock it out, which by the way, is the same mistake sometimes I make at work.

[00:30:06] PS just to say it, you

[00:30:08] Eve: know? Yeah. But let’s, let’s talk about that. Yeah. Let’s talk about, we just said a successful home requires boundary systems, communication.

[00:30:14] Megan: Yeah.

[00:30:15] Eve: Boundaries is the hardest thing for women because we’ve all been conditioned in a patriarchy. And I don’t say that to just lecture you like, I’m a feminist.

[00:30:24] ’cause like I told you, I wasn’t, you know, I told, I grew up in Gen X not even understanding anything about gender. But when you grow up in a patriarchy, what that means is that women’s time is sand. It’s infinite and men’s time is diamonds. It’s protected by society. And you know, Joel and Meghan, if you don’t believe me, um, one of my favorite things to do is to go to health systems.

[00:30:46] And in 2025, there’s many health systems that still say that breastfeeding is free. So that’s an 1800 hour a year job for women, right? So breastfeeding is only free in a country that thinks women’s time is infinite.

[00:31:00] Joel: Yeah.

[00:31:01] Eve: And so I’ll give you another one. Occupational segregation. Women enter a male profession, guess what happens?

[00:31:07] Salaries automatically go down. Pediatricians, were were men in the seventies and their residencies, their stipends for residency were twice what they are now because most pediatricians are women now. So I think if we can just understand that that’s what we’re dealing with. Not to mention that any religious system will tell you that women are help mates and you know, men are the head of the household, right?

[00:31:32] So it’s not like you guys are not normal. Like we’re all living in the same systems. Right. So that’s why I never say it’s never on Joel. These are just the systems we’re brought into. And again, if Joel, he’s allowed to have lower standards because if he had the kids for the night. Say this happens all the time with divorced couples.

[00:31:52] Teachers will say, oh, we know when Frank has the kids that they’re gonna come to school without their lunchbox and with their hair knotted, but they’re not punished for it because they’re still good dads because they have joint custody. Right. But women we’re used to being punished for not having these high standard.

[00:32:10] So that’s why what I decided to do was introduce, and this is where I would say I would diagnose you both. I’m gonna, my homework assignment for you is when emotion is low and cognition is high, which with five kids, it’s gonna be hard to find time. So maybe another date night where you, I have you in my ear.

[00:32:27] I would like for you to go back to the table and just talk, not just about the minimum standard of care, but I’m just curious. About your own upbringing. It’s a really fun exercise to start really getting to know the cards. Because what Megan, you were saying earlier was that Joel doesn’t notice things.

[00:32:47] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:48] Eve: But there’s no noticing for the dentist. If you own the dentist, you just own the dentist, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:32:54] Megan: So

[00:32:55] Eve: the noticing thing doesn’t work for me. That’s like more about tidying up. What I think I’m hearing is Joel may not be still fully in charge of the dentist because I don’t trust Joel, that the kids are all gonna get there every six months.

[00:33:07] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:08] Eve: And so I want Joel to be trusted because there’s only one scale that you’ll learn in organizational management. There’s trust over here, and guess what’s on the other end control.

[00:33:18] Megan: Hmm.

[00:33:18] Eve: So it’s not great for anybody to be in a, and that’s why I’m saying this to you for your. What you just said about delegating to your work organization,

[00:33:26] Megan: right.

[00:33:26] Eve: I give this talk to many work organizations because the more you inch over to control, the more those people don’t wanna be in that Megan organization. Right. So we have to move the ruler back to trust.

[00:33:39] Joel: Yeah, that

[00:33:39] Megan: makes sense. Yeah, that’s a good

[00:33:41] Eve: word. Yeah. So that’s all I would say. Say so this is my fault.

[00:33:43] Megan: That’s what we know.

[00:33:44] Eve: No, it’s not at all. It just means that you, you haven’t played with the cards enough.

[00:33:48] Megan: Yeah.

[00:33:48] Eve: Because it takes so much time. And so what I would just say is play with them. Take like 10 cards and just start playing like, what does dentist mean to you, Joel? You know, and or you guys can talk about.

[00:34:00] What does first aid and safety mean? Like do we need an EpiPen in the house? Obviously you have a wild card, you have special needs.

[00:34:07] Megan: Yep.

[00:34:07] Eve: That adds a lot more work onto your plate. So the person who’s handling the mental load for special needs, we like to say the other person can hopefully take on some more daily Glip grinds.

[00:34:17] So maybe Joel is the morning, you know, always the morning routine person. But I think it’s really about understanding what that minimum standard of care, that’s where I think you may have missed that step. And again, most people do because that’s the hardest step. It’s easy to understand ownership and hard to really understand what.

[00:34:34] Trust means. So can I give you just a little story because I know, yeah,

[00:34:38] Megan: yeah.

[00:34:38] Eve: And I’d love to come back to do like a part two after you do this homework, and I’m gonna give you one more assignment.

[00:34:43] Megan: Okay, good.

[00:34:43] Eve: I want you both just one night to discuss memories about the groceries card growing up. Either that or homework.

[00:34:51] Who did it? What do you remember about it? Did you unpack groceries? Did you ever go to the store? Do you remember cutting out coupons? I want you both to talk to each other about that. Okay? Because I think we can get some really fun stories, but I wanna just end on like a little story. I love this couple so much and I keep kicking myself because I, I haven’t asked permission to use the story, so I’m gonna still conceal their names with my typical Richard and Amy.

[00:35:14] That’s what I came down to for all the names I have to conceal. But I wanna bring this up ’cause I think it shows all the things we’re talking about. So Megan and Joel, you could probably picture yourself ’cause I pictured myself in this couple, so. They started to practice fair play. But what they noticed was they really started, like as we I said, to go into the cards and what they learned was that there’s 50 cards that are not outsourceable.

[00:35:41] And so what do I mean by that? It means that in 27 countries, people circled these 50 cards of the a hundred fair play cards and said that they, even if they had a full-time nanny or full-time help with grandparents, they would never outsource that to you. The, um, nanny or helper. The reason why I bring that up is ’cause those are called the caregiving and the magic cards, and often women are shouldering that because that’s more what we call emotional labor.

[00:36:06] So, Richard understood this. He was very helpful. He did garbage, he did dishes, he did laundry with good ownership, you know, putting the clothes back in the drawers and the garbage liner back in the, in the bin. But the hardest part was those 50 non outsourceable cards. So he tells me he picks one of them in the magic suit and that is the Magical Beings card.

[00:36:29] So he decided to take on, oh, today’s St. Patrick’s Day. So happy, lucky Leprechaun, he decided to take on Lucky Leprechaun. And what else did they do? ’cause they’re an Irish family, so they did like the traps. They did Santa and definitely tooth Fairy. So what happens is they tell me that. Richard takes accountability for the tooth fairy card.

[00:36:54] Their second child is a daughter and he takes it over. When her second tooth comes out, what do you think happens the night? The first night he has the tooth fairy card.

[00:37:05] Megan: No money.

[00:37:06] Joel: Yeah.

[00:37:06] Eve: The tooth fairy doesn’t come.

[00:37:07] Megan: Yeah.

[00:37:08] Joel: Yeah.

[00:37:08] Eve: So what I loved about the story was I asked them to reflect to what they would have done, but for fair play if they hadn’t found the system.

[00:37:18] So what they said was honestly. Was that Richard would’ve blamed Amy for not reminding him to put the dollar under the pillow.

[00:37:27] Megan: Hmm.

[00:37:28] Eve: When he did that and did not take accountability back to our first two words, we started this podcast with accountability and trust. When he would not take accountability, Amy said she would’ve become a verbal assassin, which is her communication vulnerability, and she would’ve said, I don’t trust you, Richard, to do anything for this family.

[00:37:47] You’re the worst father, like I knew you would be like, I’m never letting you do anything again. So like that’s the word she said she would have done.

[00:37:55] Megan: Wow.

[00:37:55] Eve: So I thought they were very self-reflective. Okay. So what, what does actually happen? What actually happens is Richard takes accountability because they had decided in advance, he was the owner of the Magical Beings card.

[00:38:12] So she comes into the room in the morning and she says, oh, the tooth fairy never came. And she’s distressed the daughter. And Richard says to Amy right away, I messed up.

[00:38:22] Joel: Hmm.

[00:38:23] Eve: Because he says I messed up. She knows part of the fair play system is carrying through your mistake. She doesn’t speak ’cause she knows her emotion is high and her cognition is low.

[00:38:32] She keeps her mouth shut and she says, okay, I expect you to carry through your mistake. That’s all that happens, Richard. Then emails in front of his daughter, tooth fairy@gmail.com. You cannot make this up. Apparently while she’s at school, he gets a response. Tooth fairy gmail.com is a real thing. It’s a person, so whoever you are, we love you.

[00:38:54] And they say, oh, I’m having a backlog of teeth. You know, there’s supply chain issues. This was like, you know, right after COVID and I’m gonna come tonight. Bless that person. So Richard prints out the email from tooth fairy gmail.com, shows his daughter. And that night he gave her double the money. He’s still her tooth fairy.

[00:39:16] That’s it. You know, there’s so many dynamic changes in that relationship in that small story, but I love it so much because I think it shows how the second Richard took accountability. ’cause he already had ownership. It changed the entire dynamic.

[00:39:29] Joel: Yeah.

[00:39:30] Megan: Yeah.

[00:39:30] Eve: In that entire, and not only that, he gets the beauty of still being the tooth fairy.

[00:39:35] Joel: Right.

[00:39:35] Eve: Amy would’ve ripped that away from him and said, I’ll never trust you again. He’s now very into the tooth fair and he loves talking about tooth fair@gmail.com, and it’s become sort of a family lore story.

[00:39:46] Joel: You can multiply that across all the other domains that the cards represent and

[00:39:51] Eve: yeah,

[00:39:52] Joel: what the amazing thing to me actually was when we started pulling out the cards.

[00:39:55] Was how many things, speaking of invisible stuff, that even is visible. I didn’t know. Right? Right. And so there’s just, there’s so much there. There’s

[00:40:02] Eve: so much. And so that’s what I mean. This is a practice. I wanna just say to you both that if you said to me today. Instead of our, you know, earlier what you were saying about, you know, working together on your standards.

[00:40:14] If you had both said to me today, we exercised in 2022 once together in this, you know, personal training session, and now we’re fit forever, I would think you’re both like insane, right? Yeah. I mean, so we have to treat the home the same as we would treat any other practice. You’re not going to gain muscle without.

[00:40:36] Continuing repetitive exercise. This is a muscle and so, and a practice. And so what I would say is there’s no failing at the practice. There’s just coming back to the table. If you both have the goodwill to keep coming back to the table, then that’s the number one sign that we’ve seen in stable relationships over 27 countries.

[00:40:56] Megan: I love that.

[00:40:56] Eve: And, and, and Joel, I just, you know, the fact that you’re here and you’re billing, you’re willing to be vulnerable and show up, you know, so publicly. It was very, very hard for us to find men who are willing to do that. So I just wanna thank you for that as well.

[00:41:09] Joel: Yeah,

[00:41:09] Megan: well he’s a pretty special guy, so you know, you can use him as a good example.

[00:41:14] Anytime

[00:41:15] Eve: I have one request besides the homework. Mm-hmm. And hopefully we can come back and do a part two is we’re doing this amazing series, Joel, and since you’ve been willing to be open here, I was wondering if you’d be willing to record for me just like three minutes of. What it felt like for you to be in the delivery room with Megan.

[00:41:32] Joel: Ah, interesting.

[00:41:33] Eve: Putting you on the spot.

[00:41:35] Joel: Well, to kind of like reverse the on the spot ness. Our kids are adopted.

[00:41:39] Eve: Yeah.

[00:41:39] Joel: So I wasn’t in the delivery room. I was, however, in the NICU with our very youngest. Who was born super premature.

[00:41:48] Megan: Yeah.

[00:41:49] Joel: And

[00:41:49] Megan: 27 weeks, 1.2 pounds. We got to her when she was

[00:41:52] Eve: five

[00:41:52] Megan: weeks

[00:41:52] Eve: old.

[00:41:52] That is even more important and interesting to me.

[00:41:54] Megan: Yeah.

[00:41:55] Eve: Because we’re trying to represent all family structures. Yeah. And this came out of a, some men saying online that we’re saying, you know, babies should be delivered. With a cigar and a bow and, um, they’re too annoying when they’re little and women should take care of them.

[00:42:10] So we have this really beautiful series now. Um, this guy Jimmy on Relationships did one. And, uh, we have all these wonderful men just telling us what it felt like to be with a newborn.

[00:42:21] Joel: Oh my gosh. It’s

[00:42:22] Eve: amazing. Yeah. So if you wouldn’t mind even like 90 seconds and I would love to share it with our.

[00:42:28] Joel: I would very happily do that.

[00:42:29] Megan: What I will say about Joel is he is the baby whisperer man. He is so good with babies. He’s better at babies than I am.

[00:42:34] Eve: Babies

[00:42:34] Joel: are amazing.

[00:42:35] Eve: That’s actually the best thing I’ve ever heard in terms of, in terms of counteracting what these sort of, um, negative narratives are online, the

[00:42:44] Megan: bro narrative,

[00:42:45] Eve: how women.

[00:42:46] Yeah. Just how,

[00:42:47] Megan: yeah.

[00:42:48] Eve: You know, men shouldn’t have to deal with babies ’cause they’re not, um, equipped for them, which by the way is, there’s zero signs for that. Babies actually literally changed father’s brains.

[00:42:57] Joel: Yeah.

[00:42:58] Eve: And my good, my research partners coming out with a book called Dad Brain to show that, so

[00:43:01] Megan: Oh, I love it.

[00:43:02] Eve: I appreciate that so much.

[00:43:04] Megan: One of the cool things about having, um, adopted kids that are babies is that you don’t, because you’re not breastfeeding. You really can share. Joel did all the nights. Yeah, with our youngest daughter and it was such a gift. ’cause I’m ter I’m really good in the day and really bad at night.

[00:43:17] So thank God for that. Well Eve we know you’ve gotta run literally to job number two, so thank you for being with us. This has been fantastic. We’ve learned a lot and I can’t wait to debrief. But, um, thank you for your time.

[00:43:30] Joel: Uh,

[00:43:30] Eve: where can people

[00:43:31] Joel: find you?

[00:43:32] Eve: They can find me at Instagram Fair Play Life is our Instagram.

[00:43:36] Uh, we have lots of tips and tricks, and we also, like I said, are a nonprofit, so you can find us@fairplaypolicy.org. All of the cards, all of the CPE checklists. If you don’t understand ownership of a card, if you’re like, what does it mean to own magical beings? We teach you, we walk you through conception, planning, execution.

[00:43:56] For every card we give you minimum standard of care questions. So really there’s a whole toolkit that are there for your listeners.

[00:44:03] Joel: That’s great.

[00:44:03] Eve: So I appreciate that so much and thank you again for having me.

[00:44:08] Joel: Yeah, thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

[00:44:20] Megan: Okay, so that was the first time ever we just did therapy in public. Yeah, I mean like, are you ever gonna come on a podcast with me again?

[00:44:25] Joel: Oh, of course.

[00:44:26] Megan: Okay. Seriously though, I’m excited to hear like what your, your takeaways were, because I feel like this system has simultaneously been. Really helpful for us, but we’ve also gotten stuck in some places.

[00:44:40] Joel: Sure,

[00:44:41] Megan: yeah. And I’m curious, like what do you think?

[00:44:43] Joel: Well, a few months ago, as you know, I read a book by Stewart Brand called Maintenance.

[00:44:48] Megan: Yeah. Yes.

[00:44:48] Joel: And I found myself really convicted about what he calls in the book, a maintenance mindset versus a neglect mindset. And I hadn’t realized. How often I drift into a neglect mindset until I read that book.

[00:45:04] Megan: This book, to be clear, has nothing to do with marriage or managing your home as married people or anything like

[00:45:10] Joel: that. No. He’s talking about motorcycles. It’s philosophical, the Statue of Liberty, firearm pieces, I mean, all kinds of things.

[00:45:16] Megan: It’s a really cool book. You should get it.

[00:45:17] Joel: Yeah, it’s great book.

[00:45:18] Megan: If you’re inclined, we’ll link in the show notes,

[00:45:20] Joel: but I had a similar experience in being involved in this conversation because we’ve done the fair play thing, we’ve.

[00:45:27] Got the book, got the card deck, and we didn’t really get into that in the conversation, so I should actually just kind of say what this is. Yeah. It’s a box of cards that has like everything that happens more or less in a house,

[00:45:38] Megan: right?

[00:45:39] Joel: And the couple sits down and kind of divs them up, right? And what it does is it allows things that are kind of invisible to become visible, including the things that are truly invisible, the conceptual stuff, the planning stuff and all that.

[00:45:54] And. I found that really helpful when we first did it, but what I think I’ve realized in going through this conversation is that that neglect mindset is still part of it for me. That I’m kind of doing the bare minimum in certain instances. And I’ve just kind of drifted into that. And so I found that kind of convicting.

[00:46:15] Megan: Okay. Like laundry is the thing I think of like that comes to mind. Yeah. The most, um, because this happened, we were home this week from, for spring break, one of the things you have ownership of is taxes.

[00:46:26] Joel: Yep.

[00:46:26] Megan: And you were working on getting all of our taxes stuff together and you did a really great job of that.

[00:46:30] And I was like so thankful I didn’t have to go through that freaking huge file of

[00:46:33] Joel: crap. It was fun people. It was really

[00:46:35] Megan: fun. I mean, I just, every time I walked into the laundry room and saw the file folder, I was like, ugh. Um, so I was really grateful that you were doing that. But normally you’re responsible for laundry and you know, it’s a little hit or miss sometimes.

[00:46:45] And so I was like, I’ll just move this laundry over like one, one time. You know, like I’ll just move the laundry from the whatever for the washing machine to the dryer. Well, before I knew it, I had done laundry all week long. Yeah. I mean, I was on the laundry and I think that’s a perfect example of what she was talking about, about me.

[00:47:02] Having poor boundaries and not communicating. Because the reason I did the laundry was because that day you were consumed with like, you know, 25 piles of paper on our kitchen table. And I was like, oh, you’re not gonna get to the laundry today. I’ll just help you out. ’cause you did a lot on your plate

[00:47:15] Joel: to be clear.

[00:47:16] It was 27

[00:47:17] Megan: piles. Okay. Okay. Good. Thank you. Stated, noted for the record.

[00:47:19] Joel: Yeah.

[00:47:20] Megan: And so I was just gonna help you out because I knew you were slammed doing that thing and there was some laundry that needed to be done and then I was just like. I just kept going.

[00:47:29] Joel: Right?

[00:47:29] Megan: And then what happened was I took ownership of it and I was conceptualizing, meaning, I was thinking about does it need to be done or not?

[00:47:36] I was planning when it needed to be done and I was executing it. And those are the three parts of her framework. Yeah, I was doing all of that. And you never said anything about it and I never said anything about it and I just kept going.

[00:47:47] Joel: Well, to be totally honest, I didn’t actually even notice that you were doing it, which, which is horrible to admit, but as long as we’re airing all this dirty laundry, we might as well say.

[00:47:57] Megan: Yeah. Well, I then was like at some point. Maybe Saturday, you know, we’re coming back to work on, we’re recording this on Tuesday, so like we’re, you know, it’s about to be back to work after spring break.

[00:48:06] Joel: I remember exactly what

[00:48:07] Megan: I said and I was like, Hey, I’m turning the laundry back over to you. Yeah,

[00:48:10] Joel: I’m handing it back.

[00:48:11] Megan: I’m handing it back. And that was like my, I really was saying that for myself of like. Megan, stop it. Like you’re not, why are you doing the laundry? Like you are responsible for other things, which you’re also doing and you’re over functioning because you’re not having good boundaries and you’re not communicating.

[00:48:26] And you were under functioning. Yeah. And not communicating. And I think that like a lot of couples get in that dynamic and they never do anything about it.

[00:48:34] Joel: Well, because with the figure it out model, the problem is it just means whoever does it, does it. It doesn’t act.

[00:48:41] Megan: And it just turns out to mostly be in many cases.

[00:48:44] Wife.

[00:48:44] Joel: Right.

[00:48:45] Megan: Or the The woman,

[00:48:46] Joel: which, when we’re thinking about the double win, when we’re thinking about winning at work and succeeding at life, if you already are in the workplace putting in a full week’s work,

[00:48:56] Megan: right,

[00:48:56] Joel: where you’re doing the conceptualization, the planning, and the execution, and, and then you go home and you have a massive load of the same thing,

[00:49:04] Megan: well you have a whole organization to run.

[00:49:06] Joel: Right?

[00:49:06] Megan: That was the thing I think. I don’t think she talks about that in the book. I think that that aha for her must have come after she wrote the book. I, I have to go back and read it. Yeah. ’cause it’s been a few years now, but the, I was like, yes. I feel like sometimes I’m, I’m the CEO of work. Right. And then I’m the CEO and the whole staff, we do have some help at home.

[00:49:25] So that’s not to, I wanna be honest about that. We are fortunate to, to not have to do everything by ourself, but still, like I’m, I’m the CEO at home too.

[00:49:34] Joel: Right? Yeah.

[00:49:35] Megan: And that. Stinks.

[00:49:38] Joel: It’s just a lot.

[00:49:39] Megan: It’s just a lot.

[00:49:40] Joel: It’s too much.

[00:49:40] Megan: It’s too much. And I think what I took away from this is, part of that is on me for not holding the boundaries.

[00:49:50] What I tell myself when I’m doing the laundry, and I don’t remember to hand it back to you, is just, well, I guess I have to do everything and then I just keep doing it

[00:49:58] Joel: right

[00:49:58] Megan: with resentment. And that’s ultimately on me. Like, I mean, I’ve gotta have enough. Gumption to say to set boundaries.

[00:50:06] Joel: Yeah. I also have to notice that you’re doing it and say, Hey, don’t take my job.

[00:50:11] Megan: Yeah. Okay. So what are we gonna do now?

[00:50:13] Joel: Well, we have a homework assignment, so I think we should do the homework assignment and then I think we should hit Eve up for a repeat on the show and just see if we can talk through what happens with the homework.

[00:50:24] Megan: Yeah,

[00:50:25] Joel: it could be an interesting episode.

[00:50:26] Megan: It could be an interesting episode.

[00:50:27] Well, I hope all of you listening. I hope, first of all, you hear yourself in our conversation and know that we’re not perfect. We’re still working this out. We’ve been married, we’re in our 18th year of marriage. Yeah. We just celebrated our 17th anniversary in January, so we’re in our 18th year of marriage.

[00:50:42] We have five kids, ages 25 to seven. And if you’re wondering why that math is the way it is, it’s because I married into two, um, and we adopted three together. But you know, like it’s a journey. Yeah. And it’s, I think we love each other. We, we have deep respect for each other. We, we wanna truly be partners in all areas of our life and just like any good partnership, like we have to work at it.

[00:51:05] And I think this is a part our,

[00:51:07] Joel: but what she said about practice,

[00:51:09] Megan: yeah.

[00:51:09] Joel: Also hit home for me, I just, you sort of think like you like it’s a system. You set it and forget it, you just do the thing and No. ’cause there’s like a creep that happens. Yeah, there’s some, yeah. There’s contextual changes that happen, life changes happen and you just need to keep coming back to the system.

[00:51:25] Yeah.

[00:51:25] Megan: To make

[00:51:25] Joel: sure they still

[00:51:26] Megan: operate. It needs maintenance.

[00:51:27] Joel: It needs

[00:51:27] Megan: maintenance. The, the system needs maintenance. Just like any other part of our relationship. We would never just think, well, I told you I loved you once at the altar, and like, that should be good for the next 18 years. You know, that would be silly.

[00:51:37] So it just kind of gave me a renewed enthusiasm for working on that. But if you’re listening. To this and you’re like, this part of my life is not working. Well, first of all, you’re in the vast majority.

[00:51:48] Joel: Totally.

[00:51:48] Megan: And second of all, I think this can really be helpful. And it’s helpful not to frame it if you’re a wife to your husband, like you know, you totally suck and you need to get, get it together or else.

[00:52:00] But just if you frame it like I need you, right? Like this is a two person job to run this enterprise called our family the most important work we’re probably ever gonna do. Humans, if you have children, you know, like literally that’s the most important work I think any of us will ever do if, if we’re called to that

[00:52:17] Joel: you hear people say all the time, like, I can’t believe they let me walk outta the hospital with a baby.

[00:52:21] You know?

[00:52:22] Megan: Right.

[00:52:22] Joel: And yeah, that’s a surprising thing that they let you do that because it truly is a monumental job that you’re undertaking

[00:52:30] Megan: and you have no idea at that point, point, idea, idea what it’s gonna take. And I think it’s gonna, it is gonna take. Both of you, if you’re fortunate enough to, you know, be married for the long haul and in it together, like it’s worth working on.

[00:52:42] And it’s worth not falling into like the kind of old tropes of who does what and, you know, old resentments and all like, just to, to come at it clean and fresh and say like, what would this mean to our life if we could do this well together? Yeah. Because I think it is doable and I’m really grateful to Eve for giving us a path.

[00:53:00] Yeah. So, um, I encourage you to order the book, order the cards. Set a date to do it and then do the thing that we haven’t done well, which is to come back to it regularly so that you can get good at it. Like you’re learning a new skillset. No one taught us this. Yeah. They don’t give this to you in marriage, you know?

[00:53:16] Joel: Well, and that’s an important reminder too, just because you’ve seen marriage and family life done one way the way you were raised, doesn’t mean that that’s the only way to do it, and this is a really fruitful and interesting way to do it.

[00:53:27] Megan: Yeah, I think so too. Well, anyway, what a great episode. If this has been helpful for you.

[00:53:33] I don’t wanna ask you to rate the show or leave us a comment, which we have done a lot in the past. I actually want you to share this with someone. I mean, start by, if you’re a, if you’re a wife, maybe sharing it with your husband. Share it with your girlfriend, share it with, you know your male friends.

[00:53:46] Share it with people that you go to church with. Share it with people in your neighborhood. Like share it with somebody who needs this paradigm. I can think of 10 people off the top of my head who need to hear this conversation, including all of my sisters. I’m sending this to, you know, like all of my sisters are gonna be, this is so helpful.

[00:54:01] Some of whom are married, some of whom are not yet, you know, but. That’s what we want you to do with this show is if it’s helpful to you, help somebody else by sharing that. Right. So anyway, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening. And my dad and I will be back next week. But Joel, thank you for joining us.

[00:54:16] Yeah, this has been so fun.

[00:54:17] Joel: This was great. Thanks.