Reframing at Home: “Dad’s clueless, Mom’s fried.”
A chronic dynamic among married couples is captured in the title of a Harvard Gazette article, “Dad’s clueless, Mom’s fried.” One lesson from the article is that couples would do better to focus on structure than on their partner’s defects. Eve Rodsky’s “secret formula: boundaries, systems, and communication” lead to the central issues in structural design: dividing the work and coordinating once it’s divided. Clarifying roles (who does which task in this relationship?) and systems (“what rules and procedures do we follow for getting things done?”) is much more promising than trying to change your partner’s character and personality.