How to Use the Fair Play System: A Real Couple's Journey to Sharing the Mental Load

That's interesting you mentioned that you... want to delegate something and you usually when you're doing that your anxiety is probably high and the challenge is that when emotions are high cognition is low right so the goal here is uh as we're sitting here and emotions are low cognition can be high and we can more easily create a system and that's that's every marriage right like particularly if you if you have children like you two do and you have um interesting careers and you're both working it's it's just a lot to tackle

uh

i before we go into you know kind of that goal of establishing equal leisure time um brian let's start with you how would you define leisure time

that's a

good question

um I mean, Lucy has some good friends here in town that she goes out with.

And whenever she's looking to connect with her friends, most of the time I'm usually here at the house.

So I'm not pushing back on that.

My leisure time is honestly most of the time I'm here at the house.

I'm not necessarily... going out all the time.

You know, I've got some friends that I end up coaching baseball with, you know, for our, you know, our nine-year-old and have done his basketball team.

So I'm doing a lot of sports-related activities.

Not shocking given what

I'm passionate about in

my career.

So, you know, I'm not usually pushing back when Lucy wants to go out and as far as leisure time.

So, and I don't feel like I demand a lot of leisure time because I'm at the house a lot.

So,

Yeah, I think one interesting aspect, as we talked about with our current careers, is that Brian's work is also something that he would do in his leisure time if he did not have action on it.

So I think that's where we get a little muddy is probably like in the evenings and or weekends where the kids are around and need to be fed or homework or whatever is going on, he may have games that he needs to be watching and monitoring, et cetera.

And so I think that's where we get interest because of course, like you said, leisure time isn't always leaving the house necessarily.

It could just be that you're alone in your office and I'm downstairs managing the kids.

So I think that's where we get a little probably hung up on what is leisure time when your passion is blended with where you're making some money as well.

Do you have more fun watching sports when there's money on the game, Brian?

I don't watch games if I don't have money on it.