6.

RULE #4:
ESTABLISH YOUR VALUES AND STANDARDS

Level the playing field.

ESTABLISHING YOUR VALUES

You’ve invited your partner to the table, but before you both actually sit down to play, it’s essential to comprehend Rule #4: Establish Your Values and Standards. This concept is such a hot-button issue for couples that I want to really focus on it here, before you start negotiating cards.

Let’s start with value setting. If you’ve been shouldering the brunt of the grunt work in your household—and especially if you’re a New Superwoman—grab hold of this mantra and repeat it again, and again, and again.

I do not have to do it all.

“Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level,” suggests thought leader Greg McKeown in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, “because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.” 

Chew on that for a moment. What if everything isn’t important? What if you let some of it . . . go? What if you choose with intention what you want to do in service of the home and your family based on what’s most valuable to you and your partner? Rather than doing more, or continuing to believe that you should do it all, save yourself from burnout and what the millennial generation has termed “errand paralysis” by engaging in a process that systematically lightens your load and allows you to live the life you truly want. In other words, give yourself permission to do less!

You won’t actually trim your deck (i.e., take sh*t off your plate) until Chapter 8: Playing the Game, but now is the time to begin taking stock of your domestic ecosystem. When you consider the cards you’re currently holding, are there any you want to throw out? And I don’t mean hand over to your spouse, but throw out with the bathwater entirely? As an example:

“I’m done. No more classmate birthday parties.” As soon as she said it, Sara expected pushback or at least a critical look from her husband.

Instead, her husband, Clark, shrugged and said, “I’m cool with that.”

Of course he was cool with that because he rarely attended these weekend events at the jumpy gym or the video arcade that sucked up the majority of Sara’s daylight hours and left her feeling nearly deaf and drained.

“I mean,” she hoped to clarify, “I don’t want to attend another kid’s birthday party for as long as I live, unless,” she conceded, “it’s for one of Bennie’s very close friends or a family member.”

“I agree with you,” said Clark. “Those places make me crazy. Why do you think I don’t go? And Bennie doesn’t really like them either. He’s not into big crowds. He always comes home crying because he didn’t get ‘his turn’ or he’s melting down from all the sugar and the strobe lights.”

Then why am I spending my time and our family’s valuable weekend time doing this? thought Sara, although she knew the answer. Because I should . . . because I’m expected to . . . because that’s what “good mothers” do. But with the time she could gain back from opting out of the frenzied kids’ birthday party circuit, she began to imagine other aspects of her and her family’s life that were much more meaningful to her and that she’d willingly give her attention.

“Let’s be controversial.” Clark winked. “And take birthday parties off our list.”

“Rebels.” Sara smiled back.

Once Seth and I zeroed in on the cards that were truly adding value to our lives, and what cards didn’t hold similar importance, we trimmed our deck. We threw out a handful of cards and began the work of splitting the remaining deck between us. With only those cards left in hand that we both deemed valuable, Seth never again accused me of doing “unnecessary stuff,” nor did he make “I don’t have time for that” excuses. Not only did the majority of pervasive Toxic Time messages stop driving our daily tit for tat, but my husband was also much more willing to take the lead on many more cards because he recognized their value in our home.

Once more and then we’ll move on: You don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to play with a full deck of Fair Play cards. Ditch the peer pressure and societal expectations, and instead make intentional choices about how you want to spend your time and thoughtfully create your life.

Then, after you and your partner determine what cards are in play because they hold value to your family, it is an imperative must-must-must that you agree on how those cards will be played. Whether it’s showing up for the kids, tidying the house, or managing the family budget, each task card requires a mutually agreed-upon Minimum Standard of Care that is aligned with your shared values. And the more you invest in unpacking the details, the more you will be rewarded by the Fair Play system.

THE FAIR PLAY MINIMUM STANDARD OF CARE

The Fair Play Minimum Standard of Care is inspired by something I learned in law school and that is implemented by judges around the world: Any action taken by a citizen should reflect the shared values and traditions of that specific community. Killing an ant is hygienic in the value system of one community and barbaric in another. Wearing shoes indoors is acceptable in one community and considered disrespectful in others. Addressing someone as “Mr.” is the rule in one community but considered overly formal in another.

Depending on where you live, your community assigns a Minimum Standard of Care based on its shared societal standards. When a conflict arises in our legal system, judges help people resolve disputes by using a Reasonable Person Test that simply asks: “Given our community’s agreed-upon standards, would a reasonable person have . . . stepped on the ant . . . worn shoes indoors . . . addressed the nice gentleman as ‘Mr.’?”

As I was creating the rules for Fair Play, I thought, why not borrow this idea to create agreement about the standards within our individual homes? Couples are forever arguing and disagreeing over how things ought to be done!

Husband: Why do we have to do it this way?

Wife: Because that’s how we do it.

Husband: No, that’s how you think we should do it.

Wife: That’s right. So do it my way!

In my interviews, many men gruffed that their wives had inflated, often perfectionist standards where women readily expressed disappointment in their spouse’s far-from-perfect and sometimes “low” standards. (And in some cases it was the reverse.) What if couples could meet in the middle by creating their own Minimum Standard of Care? And how is this done? By having a collaborative discussion about what is reasonable in your own home. To this end, I added into the system the following step: For every card a person holds, how you Conceptualize, Plan, and Execute the domestic task at hand is governed by this question: Would a reasonable person (in this case, your partner, spouse, babysitter, caregivers, parents, and in-laws) under similar circumstances do as I’ve done? If the answer is yes, you are adhering to your family’s agreed-upon Minimum Standard of Care. If the answer is no, you’ve got a problem.

Here’s an example:

Your One Step Forward, Two Steps Back husband holds the “school breaks (summer)” card. For the upcoming summer break, he signed the kids up for YMCA camp. When the last week of camp rolls around, you overhear the kids talking excitedly about Friday’s “color war day” and you ask your husband what that’s about. “Oh, I think the kids are supposed to wear a certain color,” he says offhandedly. “It was in a camp email. I’ll go back and reread it.” Then late on Thursday night, he admits to spacing on the assignment. He’d forgotten to reread the email, until now, and the color combo requirement is a bit more detailed than he’d realized. “But don’t worry,” he assures you. “We’ll work it out.” We? In the 15 minutes we have in the morning to get the kids up, dressed, fed, out the door, and onto the bus to camp?

You know this is highly unlikely, not only due to time constraints, but also because the colors your children have been asked to sport—canary yellow and lime green—are not wardrobe colors your kids happen to have. At this point, there’s no way to improvise without putting your son in his sister’s pajama top, and your daughter in a rainbow shirt with a stripe she must point to. (“Look, there’s yellow in the rainbow.”) You think: If I were holding this card, there is zero chance this would have happened. (Old Navy, with its sea of $4 shirts in every color under the sun, is literally around the block, like actually.)

This is a purely hypothetical example, of course.

Because you have a moon rising in My Way or Move Out, you spend the next hour with a flashlight looking to see if there might be something in the back of their closets that will work in a pinch. You feel bad for the kids, who have been looking forward to this fun day, and who are old enough to notice that they don’t have the called-for colors when other kids likely will. At the same time, you feel increasingly hostile toward your husband for putting the kids in a position of feeling singled out and embarrassed. Also you begin to worry: If I can’t trust him to pick out the right color T-shirts, how can I trust him with our healthcare directive?!

Applying Rule #4, did your husband meet the Reasonable Person Test?

It all depends on what you and your partner deem reasonable. Except . . . what if you can’t agree? In this case, he says, “It’s just a T-shirt. What’s the big deal?” To which you say, “It is a big deal!” So how do you decide? Ask yourselves: Would a reasonable person outfit them in the required clothes? If you’re still tangled up over the answer, apply the objective test as outlined by Caroline Forell, gender and legal expert on the Reasonable Person Test and whom I tracked down by phone.

“Judges and juries consider two basic questions—did your unreasonable actions (or in this case inaction) cause harm? If so, how bad was the harm?”

In the Case of the Color War, the next day at camp, every kid except yours is wearing the assigned colors. Later that night, your children tearfully express their embarrassment for being in the wrong clothes and feeling left out from the day’s fun. The kids were hurt—harm done. What’s more, if supporting your children to feel included within their peer group holds value (and only you and your partner can determine this for your own family), then your partner’s oversight and inactions were not only unreasonable but also did not meet your Minimum Standard of Care.

Starting to see why establishing a standard is much bigger than a T-shirt? Here’s another:

Your family is headed to the beach on a sunny summer day. Your Giant Kid partner accidentally grabs a tube of tush cream instead of sunscreen from the bathroom drawer. Though he can read a label, he applies it to the baby’s face anyway, figuring the zinc oxide in this product can double as sunscreen, right? Not quite. This particular brand of tush cream includes additional ingredients that cause the baby’s cheeks to burn. An argument ensues when you pull the tube out of the beach bag and ask with disbelief: “You didn’t use this as sunscreen, did you?”

How do you and your partner resolve this? Again, ask yourselves: Would a reasonable person use tush cream in the place of sunscreen? Furthermore, what’s the harm? Tush cream and sunscreen are different products, used for different purposes, and applying the former on your baby’s face in the hopes that it will prevent her skin from burning isn’t reasonable. (And your baby’s burnt cheeks prove it.) If you and your partner can agree that using sunscreen to prevent a nasty burn, and presumably to avoid skin cancer later in life, is important to your family, then your partner’s actions don’t meet your family’s Minimum Standard of Care, and you can feel comfortable asking him to step up his game in the “medical and healthy living” department.

One more: Your partner is a professional chef who absent-mindedly threw his knife set in the backseat of the car after a late night at the restaurant. “I swear, they were all in the case,” he argues when you ask him about the razor-sharp paring knife you found wedged in the folds of the car seat that transports your eighteen-month-old. An honest mistake? Perhaps. Was there harm done? Potentially. Reasonable? F*ck no! The woman who told me this true-life-is-stranger-than-fiction story made the following argument: “Hey, I’m not an unreasonable control freak; I just don’t want my baby playing with knives! That’s fair, isn’t it?”

WHAT’S REASONABLE?

Of the couples I coached through this process, many were encouraged that they already had agreement and a shared standard in place for many of the childcare and household responsibilities, even though they’d never explicitly discussed or defined expectations. That’s fantastic! But before you go congratulating yourselves, I want to spend a few more minutes on the disagreements and the cards that do upset the balance in many households. (Big surprise: These tend to be the time-sucking Daily Grinds that must get done on a specific timetable.)

Before we put a minimum standard into place, “garbage” was our most contentious card. Seth agreed to hold this card and yet, on many mornings, I’d walk into the kitchen and find garbage overflowing onto the floor. I’d silently fume at him for ignoring this responsibility, but rather than confront him directly, I’d place a clean garbage liner on the counter next to the coffeemaker. And wait. When he’d pad in to fill his morning cup, I’d glare at him and then very slowly avert my steely gaze toward the bag.

Did this passive-aggressive strategy work? It sometimes stimulated Seth into Execution mode but not without muttering a few PG-13 obscenities as he walked the overflowing can out the back door.

I was frustrated that this one card continued to trip us up. I would nag him for his “unreasonable threshold for filth” and he’d counter that my expectations were too high. Really?

And then on the morning I stumbled over an empty pizza box that had fallen off the kitchen counter onto the floor, I remembered a story from Seth’s college days. As he told it: In the middle of Seth’s freshman year, his roommate Kevin moved out of the dorms to an off-campus apartment. This quickly became home base to watch weekend sports, and Seth and his buddies would cram into Kevin’s tiny studio until the beer was gone and the game was over. That spring, they started a friendly competition. How many Domino’s pizza boxes could they stack on Kevin’s front steps by the end of March Madness? They set a goal of 100 boxes. (Understand that to stack this many boxes meant first eating the pie inside. An extra-large at 8 slices x 100 over 30 days. You do the math.) Did they reach their goal? Of course they did, and Seth still loves to tell the tale. Conjuring the image of 100 boxes stacked on Kevin’s front steps, I finally got it: My husband and I didn’t share the same standard of kitchen cleanliness. For Seth, a single empty pizza box on the floor is reasonable. I further understood that until we established an explicit Minimum Standard of Care within our postcollege home, we’d continue to disagree on how a “reasonable person” behaves on trash day.

Recognize that you and your partner may currently have very different definitions of what’s reasonable and acceptable in and around your home. And until you can agree on a Minimum Standard of Care, frustration and disappointment will likely continue to rule the day. To be very clear: I’m not advocating you elevate your expectations, demanding your partner reach them. Nor am I suggesting you lower your standards and settle for less than you’re comfortable with or believe is fair. Rather than debate whose standards are better or right, collaborate on what is reasonable within your own home.

FAIR PLAY MSC TEST

If you cannot come to an agreement over the Minimum Standard of Care (MSC), ask yourselves:

1. Would a reasonable person (in this case, your partner, spouse, babysitter, caregivers, parents, and in-laws) under similar circumstances do as I’ve done?

2. What is the community standard, and do we want to adopt this standard within our own home?

3. What’s the harm for doing, or not doing, it this way?

4. What is our “why”?

WHAT IS YOUR “WHY”?

Later, when you and your partner discuss the Minimum Standard of Care for the cards you choose to hold, thoughtfully consider the long game for you and your partner, and for your family. This is where you dig deep and ask: Why do we do things the way we do them? What are our values, and are we creating a set of standards we want our children to also buy into? When I look into the future, what’s the picture I want to see within our family frame? Most important, are we still in the frame together?

According to the bestselling book Getting to Yes, the best win-win negotiations begin over shared interests aimed at achieving a greater goal, such as safety, health, happiness, and building long-term trust. Going back to the garbage disparity in my own home, Seth and I easily arrived at a new standard when we asked ourselves not only what is reasonable but also, “What do we want for our family and why?” Our answer: We want our family to live in a clean house. We want our kids to value cleanliness. We want to trust each other to create a clean environment for our family.

The more nuanced discussions come into play when you and your partner focus on the details that are often driven by personal predilection. In our case, what does “clean” mean? Does it mean the garbage goes out every day? If not every day, then at what point, exactly, does the bag need to be tied off and hauled out? (I crossed my fingers that Seth’s answer would not be when five pizza boxes are stacked on top of it.)

If this sounds like a lot of nitpicky negotiation, let me assure you that the time you spend with your partner establishing when the garbage needs to head out the door will add hours to your future lives. Once you change the conversation by introducing a standard, you eliminate the need to argue over the garbage ever again. OK, maybe that’s overshooting a bit. The topic of garbage will come up far less frequently in your household because you’ve set mutually agreed-upon expectations and standards, and whoever holds the card knows exactly what, when, and how to do it. And why you both agree to do it that way.

Today, Seth and I adhere to the following MSC for garbage: It goes out every night by 7 p.m. How does this new standard work? No more silent brooding or passive-aggressive reminders from me. No more frustrated “get off my back” huffs from Seth. Simply, the garbage goes out every night by 7 p.m.

For real. Change can happen. In your home, too.

CONSIDER: THE CASE OF THE KITTY LITTER

Emily and Paul fought endlessly over cleaning the kitty litter box. When the couple met, Paul had two tabby cats for which he assumed full responsibility. The problem was that once they became a “we,” and later after kids, a “three” and then a “four,” Paul loosened his grip on the “pets” card. Quite actually, he forgot he was holding it. When I spoke with Emily privately, she complained, “If I’m not there to remind him to buy cat food before it runs out, change the water dish daily, and empty the damn litter box, it won’t get done. Which means I usually just do it.”

I asked Emily, “Why is it important to you to have clean kitty litter?”

She gave a look like duh. “Because cat poop stinks!”

I said: “Any other reason?”

“Well, yeah.” She thought. “Because it’s not safe for animals or humans to leave it dirty and piling up. The smell can become toxic and make the cats sick if they eat it. And God forbid one of our toddlers stumbles into the garage and decides it’s a sandbox worth exploring.”

“It sounds like, for you and your family, the most important reason to keep it clean is safety.”

“I would agree with that,” Emily said.

“And do you think Paul would also agree?”

“Yes, I think he would, but day to day he’s not thinking big picture. He sees it as a chore he doesn’t want to do, or he doesn’t ‘remember’ to do because there are five minutes left in the game and he thinks, ‘It can just wait until tomorrow.’”

I may have audibly gasped when she said “big picture.” I flashed back to what author Dan Ariely said to me about long-term thinking. “Consider the long-term goal,” he said, “a happy marriage where both people take fair turns at emptying the kitty litter.”

Ariely was speaking in the context of valuing each other’s time, and now I realized: Time is only one component of the fairness equation. Establishing a Minimum Standard of Care—where both partners align with a long-term goal like family safety—encourages a long-term commitment rather than long-term resentment. Instead of regarding it as a daily annoyance, if Paul could shift his thinking and consider the task of emptying the kitty litter as future insurance that his family and pets stay healthy, clean, and safe, he’d be more willing to wield the scooper.

This was my theory, anyway, and I invited Emily to help me test it.

“The next time Paul ‘forgot’ to clean the litter,” Emily reported back, “I held my breath and, when I was calm, I imitated Darth Vader and said something like: ‘This is bigger than kitty litter. It goes beyond cat turds. It’s about—the future of our family and MY TRUST IN YOU.’ Paul laughed at my lame attempt to sound like James Earl Jones, and because I hadn’t put him on the defensive, I was able to calmly explain why this one responsibility was important in a big-picture sort of way—to stay healthy, clean, and safe. And save me from killing him.”

As soon as Emily outlined the long-term benefit of performing this Daily Grind, Paul’s actions and attitude changed. He emptied the kitty litter without reminders or being nagged by Emily because he now appreciated why he was doing it.

TRUST WINS

Rule #4 asks you and your partner to make expectations explicit to minimize disappointment and maximize trust in the relationship. For every card that you and your partner deem valuable and worthy of playing (that is, once you start playing in Chapter 8), you will mutually agree upon a Minimum Standard of Care that you both believe serves the best interests of your household short- and long-term, and that you can both trust each other to reach. “It all comes down to trust,” asserts Professor Forell. “If you can’t trust that the car will stop at the stop sign, you can’t feel safe crossing the road. Similarly, if you can’t trust your partner to care for the home by meeting your family’s minimum standards, then you’re not going to feel safe, heard, or met in the relationship.”

When I was an Accidental Traditionalist with a moon rising in My Way or Move Out, I used to fall headlong into the “it’s just easier for me to do it” time trap because I couldn’t imagine my husband CPEing a task in a way that would meet my expectations or standard of care. Many women who served as my early beta-testers also admitted a reluctance to release control for fear that the cards they handed over to their partners wouldn’t be done well enough or done at all. As a natural consequence, many of the men I spoke to conceded defeat; they stopped offering to help because they feared being criticized for their efforts. “I stopped asserting myself or taking action without the direction of my wife,” admitted Carl from Arkansas, “because however I do it, she’ll just redo it.”

Establishing a Minimum Standard of Care alleviates this. No more “I didn’t know what to do” excuses. Instead, you can trust your partner to take a CPE lead and follow through with care. No more “why’d you do it that way?” nagging and scorekeeping. Instead, when you drop the control and replace it with trust, your partner can act with confidence, knowing that a new agreed-upon standard has set him or her up for success. This is what it means for you both to win.