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The New York Times Review

We're thrilled to report that The New York Times did a review this week of our book, The 80/80 Marriage. They linked radical generosity in life to what happens in the bedroom. Read the article and ask yourself: "How does the way I do life show up in sex?" Click here to read the full article.

Now for the real question: Is your relationship 80/80?

If you've read our book, followed us on Instagram, or kept up with these newsletters,...

COVID-19 has brought most married couples closer, but not in the way you might think.

We now live our lives closer together: traveling less, leaving the house less, and working nearer to each other during the day. We also do more of the daily activities of life together (parenting, cooking, cleaning, etc.).

We're close. But we are often not connected.

Here’s what this marriage paradox looks like for us. We get to the end of the day and realize that -- even though neither of us has left...

Here’s one way to approach sex in marriage. Call it the “wing it” approach.

Sex should be spontaneous, wild, and free, like something out of a teenage fantasy or romance novel. You can’t make it happen. You have to just allow it to happen organically. That’s what makes it so amazing, mind blowing, and erotic.

Here’s another way to approach sex in marriage. Call it the “planned eroticism" approach.

Sure, it would be amazing to hook up on a...

At long last, we've launched our new book The 80/80 Marriage.

So we thought we would break from our usual format this week and use this as a chance to reintroduce ourselves and this idea of the 80/80 marriage.

So who are we anyway? Well, we met each other 24 years ago, during our senior year of high school. Ironically, we met in chemistry class, where the two of us shared the same lab table. We dated for a short while, went to senior prom together, and even got into the same college. But...

As the authors of The 80/80 Marriage and this newsletter, we have a confession to make. We've talked here about all sorts of tips, strategies, and tools for improving your marriage. But, when it comes down to it, working on yourself might just be the most powerful way to enhance your marriage.

The reason?

Something happens several microseconds before you can even begin to utilize these marriage tools. It’s what the Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl...

If you were to distill down the learnings from the thousands of studies conducted on the psychology of marriage, you're likely to end up with a conclusion like this: Communication is good. Not talking to each other is bad.

But that's only part of the story. Because open communication and feedback in marriage is a lot like eating kale or broccoli in a balanced diet. It's good -- to a point. The moment you start overdoing it, new problems emerge. 

No, we're not talking...

The other day, we had an argument that got pretty heated. It was over how to prioritize our time on a Sunday afternoon. Kaley wanted to meet up with a friend. Nate wanted to do an activity together as a family.

The conversation started out well. But then, it went off the rails. At some point, we both felt frustrated and angry. We both felt like the other person wasn't really hearing us.

In that moment, we realized we had a choice between two very different paths. The first...

Power.

It’s the marital equivalent of the Wi-Fi network in your house. It’s an invisible force and yet it’s always there, operating in the background. And, just like your Wi-Fi, when power goes out of whack, you feel an instant surge of irritation, anger, and sometimes even rage.

When we started writing The 80/80 Marriage, one of our primary goals was to better understand the dynamics of power in marriage. We had both experienced first-hand the sting of resentment that...

There are so many ways to describe 2020. But we think some of the most accurate descriptions come from the various T-shirt memes circling the Internet...

In just about every conversation these days, someone, at some point, says something like, “2020 has been a horrible year."

And, of course, there are valid reasons for viewing this last year as a social, political, and public health dumpster fire. Racial unrest. A divisive election. And the global pandemic that has kept us...

Here are two common traps in marriage.

The first is getting so lost in errands, to-dos, and the thousand or so other demands of domestic life that you forget about caring for yourself. At the end of the day, you feel scattered, tense, and exhausted. You’ve been carrying the weight of your family system but you haven’t been caring for yourself.

The second is this problem in reverse. It's overdoing self care. Instead of following through on important logistics or doing the things...