Spousonomics: Jenny Anderson Marries Economics + Romance

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Published on Saturday, 26 November 2011 11:43

Written by Laura Blum

For a chance at a better marriage, it’s advised to consult proven figures in the field. Not relationship gurus, but quantifiable economics. So say Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, whose new book Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage and Dirty Dishes (Random House, 2011) advances solutions to domestic challenges from bickering to chores to sex.

Szuchman and Anderson -- a Wall Street Journal editor and a New York Times reporter, respectively -- may well be the first self-help authors to bring bar graphs to the realm of couples harmony. Film Festival Traveler reached Anderson for the inside scoop on how economics can offer optimal strategies for a happy union.

Q: What inspired you to leverage economics as self-help?

A: The issue that really resonated with us was the idea of economics as the study of scarce resources. With every passing day there seem to be fewer hours and more that needs to be done. There are suddenly children that need to be taken care of and, as you advance in your careers, jobs become more demanding and then parents get sick. All these things that are standard fare in life really take a toll on a marriage, and so much of navigating marriage well is allocating finite resources well -- strategically and intelligently, not just defaulting to what you've known in the past.

Q: That's assuming you even have enough sleep to think clearly.

A: Not enough sleep is one of the main causes of stress. And then there's also this sense of a loss of what you had, which we talk about in the chapter of loss aversion. You get married on this romantic high and think that's the aspiration for the next 30 years. But it's hard to hold onto that as you're sort of holding two screaming babies and trying to get on a conference call.

Q: In your book you advise thinking about romantic partners as a business of two. Why this is a good idea?

A: We've definitely been accused of being anti-romantic, but it's exactly the opposite. We're looking through the clinical lens to resolve the stupid problems so that you can get to the good stuff. Many couples fight about very serious things, but a lot are generally happily married but fight about silly crap like the dishes or who's going to make the kids lunch, who's putting in more hours at the office. These probably have more resolutions than we sometimes recognize.

So when we say, "Imagine your partner is your trade partner," we mean, "Try to diffuse the emotion of who did what." Who did the last carpool and who stayed later at the office last time and who has been spending more time with the in-laws? If you can take some of that out and say what makes the most sense for this whole economy versus what makes sense for the way you feel right now, there might be a more rational solution. The concept of fairness colors how we make decisions, sometimes not to the benefit of the long term of the marriage. You may be winning the moment but not winning the marathon.  

Q: Have you heard from readers who have incorporated Spousonomics in their lives?

A: One couple that we talked to said they were arguing a lot about their sex lives. Though sex was still pretty good, it suddenly sort of waned. They chalked it up to kids and jobs, but it was actually creating a huge amount of resentment because he was a night owl and wanted to have sex late at night and she was up early and thought of sex as a weekend thing at this junction in her life. They never really had a clinical discussion about it. It was almost taboo to touch the sex life and suddenly demystify it, even though it clearly had been demystified. So we did a cross-benefit analysis and came up with practical solutions. But that doesn't take care of the startup costs. They did that; they actually scheduled sex -- late Tuesday night and then on a weekend. They had her mother take the kids for a couple weekends. What they found is that by planning for it they did it. So it was clinical and strategic and anti-romantic and all these horrible things, but the bottom line is they ended up having sex and were much happier.

Q: Isn't that a little antithetical to the book's advocacy of "cheap" sex whenever you can get it and not to worry about the candles and the lace?

A: No, not at all. I would say it's exactly what that is. They don't wait for the moment to arrive when they're both feeling romantic. I think the expectation of natural, organic, romantic sex is like somehow at the end of the day you're both going to crawl into bed and want an hour-and-a-half of sex. But at the end of the day so many people are so tired this is not the thing that they necessarily want. So they were lowering their costs by taking out the negotiation. It was taking out his "Let's get it on" and her "Not in the mood; I have a meeting; I have to get up early; You never get up with the kids." That ends up leading into all these other arguments other than establishing "Tuesday night we're having sex."

The decision was made and then it was just "Okay, we're going to do this." There was this great research study we cite it in the book that shows once you've been married for a while you no longer feel naturally hot and attracted. When your husband or wife walks in the room you don't get that breathtaking feeling that you had when you were first dating. You've been brushing your teeth with this person for 20 years. So often you will get excited once you get started, but there isn't that initial motivation for a lot of people. This couple I mentioned thought scheduling sex was a terrible idea. They were like, "This is insane, this is depressing. I can't believe this is what it's come to; I'm putting sex in my BlackBerry." But then they saw there's some logic to it. They had been missing each other on a scheduling basis.

Q: For another facet of time management, tell us why division of labor is a good thing in a marriage.

A: Many of us think everything has to be 50/50. It's 2011; it's not even conceivable that it could be any other way, right? Men have crawled out of the caves; there's no reason that we shouldn't be dividing things completely evenly. When it actually comes down to it, economics would suggest there's a better method for this, and that's specialization. Specialization simply means that you do that which you are best at relative to other chores. This doesn't mean best at overall. It's not an absolute advantage, but a comparative advantage, and you divide things up that way. Of course you have to really avoid this concept of learned helplessness, where men or women can be like, "Oh I could never do a dish." It doesn't fly. Anybody can do the dishes; anybody can unload the dishwasher; anybody can do laundry. These are not complicated tasks in 2011.

Q: So the idea is to specialize.

A: Yes, which actually speeds up the whole process and frees up time for both of you. So instead of saying we're going to alternate on the dishes every other night, maybe I'm better at cooking and you're better at cleaning. The goal is to free up time for whatever your marriage needs -- more me time, more couple time, more family time.

My husband and I do this now and it has made a world of difference. I do almost everything related to kids' scheduling and schools and play dates and clothes and doctors. But my husband does bills. He might be able to do it in 30 seconds, but he has to deal with the mental agony of figuring out what needs to be paid when, and when something goes wrong it's his problem, not mine. We're not going to negotiate over whose turn it is to do that. If I have a meeting my husband will take the kids to the doctor -- it's not a big deal. But it's magical how specialization really can free up time if you get past the idea that 50/50 is the only way to do things.

Q: Let´s look at another stat: economists have quantified that we hate to lose twice as much as we like to win.

A: When Paula and I stumbled onto this we went, "Oh my God!" We are both very competitive, and so much of the stuff we fight about with our husbands is really about not wanting to lose ground, wanting to set a standard or a principle. But are we afraid of losing because we truly don't want to lose that thing, or do we just  hate losing? -- at which point the fight can be about the fight. You start by arguing about the in-laws and then suddenly you're arguing about the in-laws and the car, and then you're arguing about the time he forgot your anniversary, in like 1910. And you're really fighting about the sense that you're losing instead of about the original problem you were trying to resolve. It´s better to just stop and back up, erase those past 15 minutes and focus on the issue and leave out your mother.

Q: "Cut your losses" is another concept you discuss in the book. Tell us why it's actually fine to go to sleep angry if you're in this hate-to-lose mode.

A: Right. I remember explaining this to my mom, who was a marriage counselor, and she was like, "No shit, Sherlock." Of course you don't always express your emotions in the moment when you have them! You're not 15. You don't tell your partner everything that drives you crazy about them." This is the balance between too much information and transparency.

It seems counterintuitive to go to bed angry, but it also might just save you a lot of harsh words. We're not saying bury the anger; we're not saying let him get away with murder; we're basically saying reevaluate in the morning and stop hyperventilating. And if you truly can't sleep because you're so upset, maybe go for a walk, go for a drive, whatever it is that you do to calm down. Maybe you have a very strong glass of vodka. Taking it out on your partner in the moment when you're most frustrated can really lead to some very damaging interactions.

Q: Let's say things are so bad you're thinking of ducking out of the marriage...

A: If you're thinking about getting out of the marriage, you're at a very different level than what we're talking about in this book, and you need therapy before anything else. We're not professional marriage counselors and don't profess to be. I think what we're really aiming at is arguing less. So if your marriage is on the brink because she's cheated or because he's a terrible father, there's nothing in that book that is going to help you.

Q: Ok, so what if you´re just in a panic?

A: There are a lot of panics and then there's just a lot of staleness. There are just moments for many couples at which you get to the point where you think, "Wow, 20 more years of this person's set of issues." Everyone's got their issues and you marry a particular set and suddenly those become yours to bear. There's a moment at which in every totally normal marriage it becomes too much and you think, "I can't do this anymore. I can't live with his OCD nature for the next 25 years. It's going to make me completely crazy."

What's so critical to understand is that of course everybody is going to feel that in a marriage. My mother said to me once, "When you're dating you have good dates and bad dates. When you're married you have good years and bad years." Marriage is a long-term investment. It requires riding out really bad market patches. If you sold everything when the stock market crashed in 2008, you lost everything, because the market recovered. Not 100% but a huge amount. For a lot of people, their emotion is to bail at the bottom. I can't tell you the number of couples we met who told us about these crazy things they went through -- children being sick and tragedy in their lives and a real despair that they felt with each other and then sticking through it, and that being the powerful glue that they could then talk about. They're clearly at a much different level than someone who has been through a couple of years that have been really fun and they've been on some fabulous trips.

Q: So bottom line, does Spousonomics work?

A: I would not say it's a panacea -- I would say it is a toolbox. It might help you at certain moments along the way, and I for one will take any tool I can use to make my marriage better just as I will take any tool to be a better parent. This book actually has some very valuable tips and tools to help navigate some really common frustrations in marriage.

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