Imagine that it’s been one of those days.

You’re tired, cranky. You feel stressed and irritated. And, on top of it all, you feel like you’re the one doing everything -- at work, with the kids, and at home.

Then, your partner casually strolls through the door and says, “I thought you were planning to have dinner ready by 6 PM?"

In an instant, a tidal wave of thoughts and emotions washes over you. You feel the piercing sensations of anger rising through your belly...

In the early days of a relationship, you go on these things called "dates." You don’t live together. You don’t share finances. So dates are the only time you see each other.

Then you get married, add a kid or three to the picture and, all of a sudden, you start to have the opposite experience. You're now together. All. The. Time.

You eat together. You sleep together. You spend hours and hours planning the logistics of life together.

So now you need to bring dates back into...

Last week, we had a conversation with a recently married younger couple. They told us about the challenge of transitioning from those early days of dating, where everything is fun and fresh, to the early days of marriage, where you end up spending way more time on navigating conflict and life logistics.

In that moment, something clicked. We uncovered an insight that was always there but that we had never seen with such clarity.

We call it The Fun-to-Logistics Ratio.

Here’s how it works....

A woman in distress recently sent us a DM on our 80/80 Instagram account. She told us that her husband is withdrawing. He’s less interested in spending time together. He’s contributing less. And their marriage is suffering.

Why?

That’s where things get interesting. He’s withdrawing because she has made a commitment to self improvement. She’s reading new books, listening to new podcasts, and building new habits to improve her life.

You would think her partner...

The theme of this summer is change.

If you have young kids, you're experiencing the change from the academic calendar to camps, vacations, and unstructured time.

If you've spent the last year holed up in your house, avoiding large crowds, airplanes, and social gatherings, you may be experiencing the change to a more packed social calendar.

With these changes comes an essential question: what are your priorities?

Of course, you don’t have to answer that question. You can just let random...

During an event we did with ParentMap last week (click here for the full video), we received a great question, "How do you keep mindfulness alive in the heat of the moment?" someone asked. “It seems much easier when things are calm but it’s needed more when situations are stressful.“

This question reminded us of one of our favorite quotes from the Austrian psychologist Victor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to...

Earlier this week, we talked to Anna and Greg McKeown on The Essentialism Podcast. Greg is the author of one of our favorite books, Essentialism, and the newly released book Effortless.

We will let you know when the episode is released. But for now, we wanted to explore a question inspired by our conversation: how can marriage become more effortless?

This is one of the key moves in McKeown‘s new book, a tool that he calls “inversion." In his words, “Instead...

“You don’t understand what I’m going through,” Nate said.

“Well, you don’t understand what it’s like for me,” Kaley told Nate.

After two years of marriage, we found ourselves caught in this trap. It's a predicament that so many couples find themselves in, a conflict that boils down to this: you don’t understand me.

For us, an unexpected accident triggered these feelings of misunderstanding. Thirteen years ago, Nate had a serious...

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...

Have you ever had a single line of text change your life? 

We have. Here’s a line that changed ours from two of our mentors Gay and Katie Hendricks:

“In all times and every way, we are getting exactly what we are committed to getting.”

Take a moment to sit with this idea. 

Take a moment to let it in.

Consider the idea that, somehow, you are committed to getting all the problems and challenges you experience throughout the day.

Most of us recoil at the very...