There’s something strange about conflicts in marriage.

Modern couples could fight about thousands of different things. Life these days, after all, is messy, complicated, and full of an endless stream of logistical challenges, to-dos, and parenting dilemmas.

And yet, when it comes to what we actually fight about, most of us have a pretty short list. The same three to five recycled conflicts just keep popping up, again and again.

For us, it's three things: balancing time spent with each set of ...

This week, we wanted to highlight a few of our favorite recent articles on marriage and relationships.

Up first, The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70. The New York Times took a deep dive into the sex lives of older couples. When interviewing them, they stumbled upon an unexpected and hopeful insight: for some couples, sex in the final decades can be the best they've ever had.

Up next, Can MDMA Save a Marriage? As scientists expand their research on psychedelic compounds like Ketamine, ...

In the dance that is marriage, we encounter a daily, moment-to-moment, choice. We can lean in towards each other up and dance like pros. Or we can lean away, awkwardly embraced, clutching each others shoulders like thirteen year olds at a middle school dance.

In every moment, in other words, we can either lean in or lean away.

Of course, the consequences of leaning away go beyond mimicking the fumbling awkwardness of a teenage romance. In long-term intimate relationships, they can be devast...

Inspired by Oliver Burkeman's recent book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, we've been rethinking our relationship to time in relationships.

One of his most provocative insights arises from the title itself: Four Thousand Weeks.

That's the number of weeks we have to live, assuming that we're fortunate enough to make it to around 80 years old.

This means that, if you're in your forties, you have somewhere around two thousand more weeks, fifteen hundred if you're in your fift...

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. Clean up your mindset.

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 of th...

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 realized,...

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 ourselves: What exactly are the...

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 start planning out vacations, camps, and day...

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, “We’re tired of bein...