{"id":3515,"date":"2011-02-14T21:41:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T04:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=3515"},"modified":"2011-02-14T21:41:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T04:41:50","slug":"5-secrets-to-a-happy-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/14\/5-secrets-to-a-happy-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Secrets to a Happy Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Paula Szuchman<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"This Valentine\u2019s Day, skip the chocolate, lingerie and jewelry. Instead, practice talking less, doing the dishes and putting out. Romantic? Maybe not. The secret to a life of wedded bliss? Quite possibly.<\/p>\n

A little background. I just co-wrote a book called \u201cSpousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage & Dirty Dishes<\/a>,\u201d in which I take some well-established ideas from the dismal science and use them to show couples how they can improve their marriages. One of the first things people say when they hear about the book is something to the effect of, \u201cIsn\u2019t that kind of unromantic?\u201d Well, yeah. But what\u2019s romantic about dishes, laundry, diapers, bills, mortgages, in-laws, TiVo, company picnics, circular arguments, BlackBerries, hamsters, PTA meetings, and all the million other little things that go into a marriage and detract from the actual romance between two people who once loved each other so much they decided to keep each other company for the rest of their lives?<\/p>\n

All that stuff is the business side of marriage, and to navigate it successfully, you don\u2019t need chocolate hearts. You need sound reasoning. You need to be practical and efficient. You need to allocate your scarce resources wisely and make smart trade-offs, so that at the end of the day, you can enjoy the company of that person you promised to have and to hold until death (death!) do you part.<\/p>\n

Herewith, five somewhat regressive, not very romantic, yet extremely effective lessons from economics for a happy marriage with long-term prospects:<\/p>\n

1. Talk less.<\/h3>\n

Well okay, talk all you want about your dreams, ambitions and Egypt\u2019s future. But when it comes to nagging reminders about what your spouse still has to do after a long day working for the man\u2014take out the recycling, walk the dog, write a thank-you letter, defrost the chicken, fix the stereo\u2014keep a lid on it. Economists talk about \u201cinformation processing costs,\u201d or the costs incurred from processing, absorbing and filtering information. When information processing costs get too high, we tend to become paralyzed. Like when we get to the kitchen-cabinet department at IKEA, and we\u2019re so overwhelmed that we decide to skip the whole thing and just have a plate of meatballs at the caf\u00e9 then head home for a nap.<\/p>\n

Overloading your spouse with what you consider to be perfectly valid information is a bad idea. One thing at a time, friends, and the most important thing first. Same rule applies when you\u2019re arguing. Stick to the point\u2014he didn\u2019t call to say he was running late\u2014and don\u2019t tick off the long list of sins he\u2019s committed since last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

2. Lose weight.<\/h3>\n

Married people exercise less than single people do. I know this because married couples have told me so\u201456% of people we surveyed said they gained weight after they got married. Everyone has their excuses: They\u2019re too busy with their demanding jobs, too exhausted by their demanding children, too lazy to get off their demanding couches. But the real reason is moral hazard, or the tendency to take more risks and behave more irresponsibly when there are no consequences. Moral hazard is one reason the country\u2019s biggest financial firms bet the house on subprime mortgages\u2014they knew if worse came to worst, Uncle Sam would be there to bail them out.<\/p>\n

Similarly, why bother working out and staying fit when you\u2019ve already snagged your man\u2014or woman\u2014and you\u2019ve got a license from the state to prove it? After I got married, one of my single friends told me I was lucky because I didn\u2019t have to go to the gym anymore. I was no longer \u201cposin\u2019 to be chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

So go ahead, challenge your own moral hazard and try losing that post-marriage weight. While you\u2019re at it, don\u2019t wear sweatpants around the house all the time.<\/p>\n

3. Do the dishes.<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s where I\u2019m really going to get skewered by my sisters for setting women back 50 years: Do the dishes because you just might be better at them, and faster, and less likely than your spouse is to leave them out overnight. You might think a 50\/50 marriage is the way to go, but if you\u2019re like so many other couples in the year 2011, your quest for egalitarianism means you\u2019re more likely to pick a fight when you sense things are getting into the 60\/40 range\u2014or worse.<\/p>\n

Better to have a system where each of you specializes in what you do best, relative to other chores. It\u2019s a system based on the notion of comparative advantage, which (as every Wall Street Journal reader knows) is the foundation of free trade. And what\u2019s marriage, if not a union between two trading partners? So if you really are better at the dishes than remembering to call the in-laws, then that should be your job. It\u2019ll take you less time than it\u2019ll take him, and it\u2019ll take him less time to have a quick chat with mom than it would take you, which means in the end, you\u2019ve saved quite a bit of collective time. Use that time for fun stuff, like, for example, sex.<\/p>\n

4. Put out<\/h3>\n

Which brings me to my fourth point: Put out. I know, it seem ridiculous to tell married people they should have sex (with each other)\u2014but then why do so many people seem to forget this is a key part of the job of being married? Some 54% of married people, according to our research, wish they were having more sex, and the people who are doing it more also report being happier in their relationships. Not saying one causes the other, but there\u2019s a definite correlation, for what it\u2019s worth. The #1 reason people say they don\u2019t do it more: They\u2019re too tired.<\/p>\n

The only solution to this problem is to wake up and do the job\u2014the same way you wake up every morning and go to your actual job. No reason why you can do one and not the other. In \u201cSpousonomics,\u201d we suggest people lower the costs of having sex in order to up demand. Keep it simple, fast and fun. Some people even say the more they get in the habit of doing it, the more they want to do it. Kind of like flossing.<\/p>\n

5. Scheme<\/h3>\n

And finally, start scheming, or thinking strategically. Being strategic might sound cold and calculating, but it\u2019s something you probably already do with your spouse, whether you admit it or not. For example, if your friends invite you for a weekend away, no spouses, and you want to go, you naturally start thinking about how you can make this happen with minimal fuss, what you can offer your spouse in return, how to bring it up, when to bring it up, and what type of flowers to present as graft when you\u2019re in the midst of bringing it up.<\/p>\n

Thinking ahead, learning from past experience, putting yourself in your spouse\u2019s shoes\u2014these are all strategies straight from the game-theory playbook (game theory being the study of behavior in strategic situations). In fact, if you think like a game theorist, you\u2019ll find that marriage is really just a two-person repeated game. In the game, each person is trying to achieve the best results possible, given the limitations that there\u2019s another person involved. Think of that other person and you\u2019re being strategic. You\u2019re also being pretty romantic.<\/p>\n

Bonus: Best Wedding Cake Ever!<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Paula Szuchman This Valentine\u2019s Day, skip the chocolate, lingerie and jewelry. Instead, practice talking less, doing the dishes and putting out. Romantic? Maybe not. The secret to a life of wedded bliss? Quite possibly. A little background. I just co-wrote a book called \u201cSpousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage & Dirty Dishes,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}