Right after Jason and I got engaged, I moved to the Bay Area for a job while Jason stayed in NYC. We were long distance for over 1.5 years, and, during that time, we had a bunch of different discussions about where we wanted to permanently live - NYC, the Bay Area, or possibly, LA. After much debate, I ended up moving back to NYC, and, until the pandemic, we’d both planned to live there long-term. Since the pandemic started and I’ve been working remotely, however, Jason and I have started discussions about whether we’d ever want to move somewhere different.
In my previous post, I discussed the different financial advice men and women get and finding someone financially compatible was a high priority of mine when dating. I got more questions about how we thought about combining finances, and I wanted to share some thoughts. Especially once we began to talk about moving in together and getting engaged, a specific set of questions came up: how do you merge finances with someone else? How do you talk about money and make sure you’re on the same page financially? Here were a few pieces of advice that helped us in our financial discussions:
Something Jason and I often discuss is where unconscious biases about women come from. There are many, many sources, but something that stands out to me as infuriating is the advice men and women get about money.
When I first met Jason, he sent out his laundry and ordered takeout every night. My first thought was about how much money he could save if he just cooked a little and did his own laundry on weekends. I offered to show him some cheap and easy recipes. But Jason pointed out something that hadn’t really occurred to me - the value of his own time.
In my previous post, one of the things I discussed was acceptance and dating. I found that approaching dating with reasonable expectations has helped set the tone for acceptance throughout our relationship.
A few of my friends have asked for more details about intentional dating and how exactly it worked when I met Jason. A caveat beforehand: the approach below is what worked for me, but there are many, many ways to navigate dating successfully! Hopefully the below is helpful or maybe gives you a few new ideas to try.
This post will be a bit different. One of the best parts of writing this blog has been the conversations I’ve had with friends and family about how they’ve faced or dealt with these issues. I wanted to share a few takeaways from some of the conversations I’ve had and articles that have been generously sent my way:
I got a lot of questions on my last post, specifically, how do you know when things aren’t 50-50 or fair and needed to be adjusted?
Discussing an imbalance of labor can be tricky. Because the person who’s shouldering the heavier load changes on a weekly (if not daily!) basis, it’s often hard to assess the division of labor at any given moment. Plus, bean counting “who does what” is not only petty and exhausting but also feels contrary to the spirit of a partnership.
One of my friends and I were recently discussing what success in a 50-50 partnership looks like. Does it mean that each person does exactly 50% of household work at all times? Or, that over the course of a marriage, each partner does roughly 50% of work? Is there a world in which someone could be in an equal partnership but do more or less than 50% of household labor and/or childcare?
One of the best parts about being married is coming home to someone who can provide a soft landing at the end of a long day. One of the worst feelings, however, is coming home so drained that you have nothing left for your partner.rose
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how dividing up tasks using “domains” works in practice. Specifically, what happens when something is in one partner’s domain, but the other person has a strong point-of-view?
In my previous post, I discussed how I accepted a job in the Bay Area while Jason stayed at his finance job in New York City. We’d been engaged only a week or two, and we already had a meaty challenge to tackle: making a long-distance engagement work.
Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the most important career decision a woman can make is whether she has a life partner and who that partner is. I took this advice to heart. I had trouble putting it into practice, though: how do you figure out - early - if a someone you’re dating will be a supportive partner? In Lean In, Sheryl mentions a trick one of her friends used - she’d cancel a date at the last minute for work-related reasons and see how the guy reacted. But my need for assessment went deeper than that - I didn’t just want someone who would be cool with my unpredictable work schedule. I wanted a guy would make career and life sacrifices of his own for my career, learn about the challenges women face at home at in the workplace, and work to fight those challenges.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the “mental load” or “emotional labor” in a relationship and how that work disproportionately falls onto one partner, often the woman. That partner is the “manager” of the household who delegates work to the other partner. For example, both people decide to go on vacation, but one partner is “managing” the process (making sure hotels and flights are booked, planning an itinerary, ensuring everyone’s visas and passports are in order) while the other partner cruises along and only does the work he/she is asked to do. It’s exhausting for the first partner and can cause a frustrating dynamic. We wanted to be proactive and avoid defaulting the mental load to one person.
Lean In had a tremendous impact on me, and, ever since I read it, I’ve thought constantly about how to put it into practice. Purposely Ever After is my realtime attempt at building a 50-50 partnership with my husband, Jason.
A few weeks ago, Jason and I decided to move out to Park City, UT (I know!) Because of the pandemic, we’d been staying with my parents in Atlanta, and, eventually, we decided to break our lease in NYC. We also decided it would be fun to spend the rest of the summer and part of the fall in Park City, where there would be plenty of socially distant hiking available.
There was one problem I was worried about: in Atlanta, my wonderful mother had taken on all the cooking, so I had a ton more free time. I was able to work more (not only at my day job, but also this very blog!), and I was able to squeeze in a long workout and plenty of reading time.