Have you ever noticed that being in an intimate relationship is a lot like competing in a decathlon?

A winning decathlete can’t just be good at throwing a javelin. She must also excel at the high jump, running the 1600 meters, pole vaulting and a bunch of other seemingly unrelated events.

Likewise, in intimate relationships, you can’t just excel in one relationship role. You can’t just be amazing at sex or a wildly entertaining conversationalist or a superbly...

Spring is finally here.

If you're like us, you might be cleaning out your closet, sweeping the garage, or tossing out old files from your office.

There's something cathartic about spring clean up. And yet we think this ritual shouldn’t be limited to your home, garden, or storage room.

As you transition out of the snow, cold, and long nights of winter, what would it look like to also spring clean your relationship?

Here are our three favorite tools.

Tools

1....

Sex and marriage might just be two of the most contradictory activities we humans engage in.

Sex is all about freedom, pleasure, and spontaneity. It thrives on breaking routines, novelty, risk, and experimentation.

Then there's marriage. Place that word next to sex, and it feels heavy, almost boring. Marriage, after all, is about commitment. It demands safety, hard work, and steady routines. It's less about spontaneity, more about predictability and structure.

Perhaps this is why one...

Several years ago, we noticed a strange pattern in our lives together. With marathon to-do lists, overflowing inboxes, and the constant demands of raising a small human being, we spent much of life trying to achieve "completion."

Completion might be getting to inbox zero. Or it might be finally planning out all of our daughter's summer camps. Or it might be that ecstatic feeling of having a house that's perfectly clean and in order.

What’s the problem with completion? The problem, we...

This week we're switching up the format of our newsletter. 

We're thrilled to share about our new favorite podcast (we think you'll agree) called All the Hacks, which was recently featured on The Tim Ferriss Show.

The podcast is hosted by Chris Hutchins and, on this latest episode, we had the privilege of talking with Chris and his wife Amy Fox about all the "hacks" of 80/80. 

Click here to listen.

This episode also served as the perfect opportunity to ask...

It’s still mid-winter, and yet it’s already time for summer planning to begin. Kids summer camps are filling up. Your in-laws are asking, “When are you planning to visit?" And air fares are starting to rise.

How do you plan out your summer without driving each other crazy?

Let's start with how not to do it, with the way that summer planning turns into a hot mess come July.

Partner 1, the consummate over-contributor, realizes that, if she doesn’t...

Spring 1997.

Dave Matthews Band was peaking in popularity. The Backstreet Boys were just arriving on the scene. And the two of us were finishing our senior year of high school.

In a bold collective act of defiance, the two of us, along with four hundred or so of our peers, participated in the time-honored tradition of “Senior Ditch Day." Instead of going to school, we loaded onto buses and watched an afternoon Colorado Rockies baseball game. 

It was our way of saying,...

Last year, Nate took up a bizarre practice. After reading the book Breath by James Nestor, he became convinced of the benefits of nasal breathing (breathing through your nose instead of your mouth).

The scientific case for nasal breathing is robust. A vast body of evidence shows that simply breathing through your nose improves sleep quality, reduces stress, and enhances our ability to absorb oxygen.

There’s just one problem. How do you breathe through your nose at night?

Enter...

Is it just us or does everyone seem overwhelmed and ragged these days?

Consider the last few days of 2021. The 30th of December kicked off with the terrifying news of the Omicron variant spreading throughout the world at record pace.

Then came the texts that afternoon asking, “Are you guys OK? Is your house on fire?" We soon learned that an ember storm was barreling down on the southern part of our beloved city of Boulder, a winter wildfire driven by hurricane force winds...

Fairness is the air that we breathe in modern relationships.

We breathe it in as we watch our partner failing yet again to be helpful and load the dishwasher like a sane human being. We breathe it out as we complain either out loud or in the privacy of our own minds about their shortcomings.

Like the air that surrounds us, fairness is also mostly invisible.

We discovered this during our interviews with couples for The 80/80 Marriage. We asked each couple, “How does fairness show...