Life is unpredictably short, and you and the person you have chosen to be with for the rest of your life are arguing about housework. It's not worth it." When I told some girlfriends I was pregnant after the squeals of delight, they warned me that inevitably, during the newborn phase, I was going to hate my husband. This made me nervous because…. I like my husband, and I like liking him!! I mean, the man already has to compete with my fictional boyfriends on a daily basis. Must we throw in post-baby hatred? Honestly, I was scared of who we were going to become once the baby came. When our baby arrived, I began to understand all the conversations I’d heard about a woman’s mental load & the invisible labor of running a household. I won’t go so far as to say I hated my husband, but I will say steam came out of my ears once when he remarked how tired he was after I had spent the night up with the baby. But what, you ask, if your husband doesn’t want to do any domestic labor? What if he’s content to let you be the maker of the grocery lists and the keeper of the pediatrician appointments, summer camps, play dates and special laundry instructions? Then, Dunn, says, you are going to have to learn to ... Five weeks after giving birth, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression. "I just was not loving any of it. I was missing a lot of my old life, and realising what I've lost," she says.

On the brink of marital Armageddon, Dunn plunges into the latest relationship research, solicits the counsel of the country's most renowned couples' and sex therapists, canvasses fellow parents, and even consults an FBI hostage negotiator on how to effectively contain an "explosive situation." Instead of having the same fights over and over, Dunn and her husband must figure out a way to resolve their larger issues and fix their family while there is still time. As they discover, adding a demanding new person to your relationship means you have to reevaluate -- and rebuild -- your marriage. In an exhilarating twist, they work together to save the day, happily returning to the kind of peaceful life they previously thought was the sole province of couples without children. I was 50% of the problem," says Dunn, adding that she developed a temper that "still causes me a lot of shame". She would yell at her husband; he would retreat into his phone, "traumatised", which made her angrier. Frustrated and finding that attempts at communication only seemed to lead to fighting, she considered separation. Children benefit, too, in surprising ways: research has shown that when men share housework and childcare, their kids do better in school and are less likely to see a child psychiatrist or be put on behavioral medication.” Any thoughts like “your relaxation is more important”, “it has to be clean in the house before time I want it to be”, “partner has to do what I say”, “stop disrespecting me”, “i have to do everything by myself”– are toxic and unnecessary. In our heads primarily, let alone in the communication.After that, the book is divided into sections about the major areas of conflict in marriage. First, there is housework (surprise! to no wife ever). Then a whole chapter on how to fight so that it’s both effective and doesn’t destroy your relationship or scar your children. And using accusations doesn’t bring up sympathy or compassion for our situation in the partner, but defense mechanisms instead. After all, he is relaxing because he is tired. So he gets accusations, his relax time away, just with a sauce of fake feeling talk so he can’t respond, depriving him of possibility to talk about his feelings. Dunn begins her efforts to change her situation when she realizes that she's reached a breaking point. "Our daughter is now six, and Tom and I still have endless, draining fights. Why do I have the world's tiniest fuse when it comes to the division of childcare and household labor? I am baffled that things have turned out this way." loc 158. In cringe-inducing honesty, Dunn admits to being verbally abusive to her spouse. My stomach actually churned when I read the sorts of things that she'd call him during fights. That part of the memoir made me very glad that she decided she didn't want to live like that because I know that I wouldn't have wanted that either.

time out, photo, and "I know that what I'm about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are." (<\3) I think the author was trying to meet a real need in the market of marriage/parenting books, which are usually written for those in breadwinner/homemaker roles, and I think that's why this book gets recommended so frequently in circles without a traditional configuration. It seeks to help couples work through things like how to divide household jobs if both spouses work full-time. It challenges the idea that chores are gendered, which is a worthwhile conversation to have, even if you disagree with her. We are about to enter into a 3-month phase where our roles will shift pretty dramatically, and I'm interested to see how it will go. Though, if anything, I think Christian should have read this book to figure out how to deal with *me*, as I tend to be the one who doesn't see household tasks until they've hit DEFCON 5. I would be very calm when it came to my son," he says, but when their child was in bed, his anxiety surfaced, sometimes causing him to be "impatient" with his wife. She'd think he was being short and get defensive; he'd argue that he wasn't, and "the whole evening would devolve", he says. They'd never fought so much in their six-year relationship.As my baby is only two months old and my first, our life is still pretty easy. I feel like this book helped me navigate my changing relationship with my husband and laid the groundwork as my son grows up. Find ways to get Dad involved and continue to encourage and reward his engagement with the baby. This means stop criticizing the way he dresses the baby, feeds the baby, or changes a diaper. Dad feeling competent is more important than the baby wearing coordinating outfits. a Pew Research Center survey found that sharing household chores ranked third in importance on a list of nine items associated with successful marriages.” This book was not what I anticipated. I expected a funny, light book and I got a self improvement book. Not that I minded. In a commencement speech at the University of Texas, Admiral William H. McRaven, commander of the US Special Operations Command, said that when he was training to be a Navy SEAL, he was required to make his bed every morning to square-cornered perfection—annoying at the time, but in retrospect one of the most important life lessons he ever learned. “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day,” he told graduates. “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another.” Making your bed, McRaven went on, reinforces the fact that the small things in life matter. “If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if, by chance, you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”