When Picking A Fight Is A Good Thing: Making Arguments Over Housework Productive with The Fair Play Method
How many of you would describe yourselves as “conflict avoidant”? Most of us will do pretty much anything to avoid an argument. We appease, we rationalize, we excuse, we let things go. Not having a confrontation feels like a success, even if it means compromising yourself. If you manage not to fight about something, it’s not a real problem, right?
Wrong. In a partnership, little irritations have a tendency to snowball, building and building until they turn into giant cartoon snow boulders, rolling uncontrollably downhill, taking out anyone or anything that gets in their way.
The smart move, if you want a healthy, happy relationship, is leaning into those small irritations, picking the fight, and eliminating that snowball before it starts gaining momentum. The Fair Play Method helps by proactively addressing bothersome daily friction points between yourself and your partner, squashing resentments before they snowball.
A lot of snow analogies in this post.
Piddly Disagreements About Housework Can Snowball Into Worst Case Scenarios
25% of Americans going through a divorce list disagreements over household chores as the primary reason for their relationship’s demise. What start as differences of opinion, easily shrugged off, can grow into a seething avalanche of resentment that takes your relationship out.
Disagreements over household labor, whether they are about who does what or how something should be done, have staying power. Housework literally never ends, so what bugs you one day is likely to continue bothering you on a regular basis. These disagreements tend to have a cycle.
The Rumination, Resentment, Explosion Cycle
1. Rumination
Something bugs you and you roll it over in your mind.
“Arrrrrrrgh, the trash is overflowing again. Why am I the only one that takes the garbage out?”
2. Resentment
Irritation mounts and your ruminations start coming out of your mouth, usually as loud pronouncements directed at no one in particular...
“OKAY THEN. I will take the garbage out AGAIN…”
(Passive aggression! It’s super fun and an effective conflict resolution strategy. JUST JOKING.)
3. The Explosion
Your resentment boils over. You drop the passive, now you’re just straight up aggressive.
“YOU NEVER do anything! Do you not have eyes? Do you not see that the garbage needs to be taken out? Why did you balance that on top of the pile instead of changing the bag? Why is it my job to do EVERYTHING around here?”
Enter the rumination, resentment, explosion cycle enough times and it’s not hard to see why it’s a relationship killer.
How do you get out of it?
She’s ready to pick that fight! For love, dang it!
The Fair Play Method: A Framework for Fight Picking
There’s more than one way to bust out of the rumination, resentment, explosion cycle. A popular option is for one partner to “let things go,” acquiescing to their partner’s preferences to avoid conflict, gradually losing themselves in the process. That’s not an optimal strategy. Discussing why it’s so common is probably worth its own blog post. Another day, Shufflers, another day.
We don’t avoid things here at The House Shuffle! We address root causes. When there are disagreements over household labor, we want you to pick that fight.
However, running around picking fights willy nilly, whenever something makes you wrinkle your nose, isn’t an optimal strategy either.
What you need is a framework to proactively address and resolve housework disagreements before things start to snowball.
100 Fair Play Cards To The Rescue!
100 cards, 100 opportunities to hash things out!
The Fair Play Method breaks down household labor into manageable chunks. Oftentimes when partners try to discuss differences in opinion about housework, the topic is too big, too wide ranging to work things out in a way that satisfies both parties in a single discussion. You start off talking about cleaning the bathroom and end up arguing over your holiday plans or that time your partner did that thing that really irked you.
Using a single card to prompt your discussion puts boundaries around what you’ll cover in that particular conversation. When you preemptively pick the fight, away from in the moment disagreements, all of a sudden it doesn’t feel so much like conflict. It’s you and your partner against the card, not each other. You get to be on the same team again.
The method isn’t only about agreeing to who does what. It’s also about reaching consensus around the MSC and CPE for each card. MSC and CPE aren’t familiar acronyms for many people. Here are the definitions.
MSC - Minimum Standard of Care
MSC is a concept used in a variety of fields to describe what standards need to be met for something to be considered properly completed.
For example, the MSC for a clean desk might be something like:
Papers filed
Notebooks and planner stacked in trays
Loose office supplies put away in desk drawer
Pens in pen cup
Desk drawer organized and straightened
Desk top dusted and wiped down
The Fair Play Method asks you and your partner to agree to an MSC for each card in your Fair Play deck. Instead of operating from your individual assumptions, you’ll set a mutual standard, minimizing opportunities for future conflict. Your relationship will feel much more harmonious when you are both reading from the same housework script.
CPE - Conception, Planning, Execution
This acronym refers to a process. It’s the steps one takes to complete a task.
Step 1: Conception
This is maybe the trickiest thing to explain about the Fair Play Method simply because “conception” isn’t the most intuitive word choice. It’s another borrowed acronym that makes a lot of sense if you are familiar with it from another context, but it takes a second to wrap your head around if you haven’t used it before.
Basically, when you conceive of a task, you notice that something needs to be done and decide what exactly it is that needs to be accomplished. A better word choice in the context of household labor would probably be “Noticing.”
The conception portion of the CPE process is responsible for a large portion of the mental load generated by housework. When people complain about being the brain for their entire family, it’s usually because they are doing the majority of the conceiving/noticing in the household. Conception is also where a lot of emotional labor takes place.
Examples of conception:
Noticing that the ink in the printer is low and deciding that you need to get more of all four colors. (Mental Load/Cognitive Labor)
Noticing a change in your 14 year old daughter’s attitude at home and deciding that you need to investigate what’s going on to see how you can help. (Emotional Labor)
Step 2: Planning
The second step of the CPE process is when you make a plan for how you are going to complete the task that you conceived.
Some household tasks require a ton of planning, others not so much. The planning stage is the other big mental load contributor. Thinking through household logistics can take up a ton of brain space.
Examples of planning:
Comparing ink prices and looking for a coupon. Figuring out whether it’s better to buy them online or at the store. Adding printer ink to your shopping list and remembering that you really need to get the spare cartridges before Tuesday because your son has a project due and is going to want to print it out before the Wednesday due date.
Observing your daughter for a few days to figure out when she’ll be most amenable to having an open conversation about what’s going on with her. Planning out how you’ll approach the conversation and what you want to say. Researching therapists because you have a hunch talking to one will be a good idea. Checking your insurance coverage to see if therapy is covered. Guessing at the co-pay and working the increased costs into your budget.
Phew. Exhausting.
Step 3: Execution
The final step of the process and often the simplest. This is when the job gets done.
Examples of execution:
Going to the store and buying the ink.
Taking your daughter to her therapy appointment.
Creating Consensus with Every Fair Play Card
Each Fair Play card requires you and your partner to agree on three things:
Who is responsible for the work
What the minimum standards are for the work
How and when that work should be completed.
Reaching all those agreements can be hard, tedious work. Even the most agreeable couples are likely to discover hidden resentments and contentions just beneath the surface. If you’re already butting heads, these conversations can be challenging. There’s a lot to talk about!
There Is A Big Payoff When You Strategically Pick Fights Over Housework
What’s left to argue about after you’ve worked through all the cards in your deck?
Not a whole lot. You’ll have created a comprehensive agreement, covering all the different types of labor required to run your household, one card at a time.
The Fair Play Method can help you nip disagreements in the bud and resolve long simmering resentments before they build into big problems.
We want you to use a framework to pick fights with your partner now, so that they don’t snowball into a worst case scenario - a break up or divorce. A little discomfort in the present for a partnership that can last a lifetime is a small price to pay!
If that sounds like a good trade, your first step might be buying the Fair Play book and cards to learn more. You can totally self administer the method.
The House Shuffle’s System Shift Process is almost ready!
Utilizing the Fair Play Method, this process will help you rebalance your division of labor and improve your household systems.
Learn more about the process and join the waitlist here or get in touch & chat over email.
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