Speaker 1: Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space,
Speaker 1: activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator,
Speaker 1: and I doctor Aditi naru Kar, a physician and medical
Speaker 1: correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience,
Speaker 1: mental health, and burnout. We're here to peel back to
Speaker 1: layers around why it's so easy for society to guard
Speaker 1: men's time as if it's diamonds and to treat women's
Speaker 1: time as if it's infinite like sand. And whether you
Speaker 1: are partnered with or without children, or in a career
Speaker 1: where you want more boundaries, this is the place for
Speaker 1: you for all family structures. We're here to take a
Speaker 1: time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim
Speaker 1: our time. We've been talking about this for a while,
Speaker 1: me together to not just be our professional personas, but
Speaker 1: really talking about why it's so hard for women to
Speaker 1: treat their time as if it's finite. And so today
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about all of that. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about burnout, We're gonna be talking about how
Speaker 1: it starts with really, really small things. Like blueberries that
Speaker 1: are much bigger things. As a mediator, one of the
Speaker 1: first things we're taught add is that the presenting problem
Speaker 1: is never the real problem. So today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: unpacking the presenting problem, which is tiny betrayals. And so
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with us telling our stories about
Speaker 1: where we are, what struggles have you had to put
Speaker 1: fairness into place. So even my tiny betrayal came one
Speaker 1: month into my motherhood journey. So I'm a physician and
Speaker 1: I married a man who also had a career. He
Speaker 1: works in finance. When we were dating and through the courtship,
Speaker 1: we just assumed it was never just discussed, but we
Speaker 1: assumed that it would be equal because he is a
Speaker 1: progressive man and in many ways a feminist, and so
Speaker 1: am I. Then we got married and had our daughter,
Speaker 1: and wow, I couldn't believe it. So I had three
Speaker 1: months of eternity leave. He had two weeks, and that
Speaker 1: first month, when I was breastfeeding and just so deep
Speaker 1: in it, he had to travel. He was in London
Speaker 1: for an annual meeting. He had met up with all
Speaker 1: of his business school classmates one evening after the meeting,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about being dad's and parents and
Speaker 1: how great it was, and he was sending me pictures
Speaker 1: of being in this nightclub. It was just like really
Speaker 1: cool place, and he was like, you'd love it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm at home. Wait wait, wait, at nightclub, at nightclub
Speaker 1: when you were postpartum. I would let me, I would die.
Speaker 1: He's amazing. But it was a night that they all
Speaker 1: met up, and I remember thinking, God, that would be
Speaker 1: a fantastic split frame movie where there's this dad talking
Speaker 1: on how great it is he's had an infant for
Speaker 1: a month, is traveling and here I am with a
Speaker 1: burp cloth and breast milk all over my shirt and
Speaker 1: trying to just get through another day. So that for
Speaker 1: me was the huge wake up call I had never
Speaker 1: even imagined. I mean, the reason your work resonated so
Speaker 1: deeply with me is because these are things that we
Speaker 1: never talk about. We marry men who are feminists, who
Speaker 1: are progressive, who have all of the shared values that
Speaker 1: we do. But somehow somewhere in there, once you have children,
Speaker 1: there is such a split and it's almost the societal pressures.
Speaker 1: But it was just shocking to me. It continues to
Speaker 1: shock me when you go into a marriage have certain
Speaker 1: ideas of how it will be, but then the realities
Speaker 1: are so so different, often with forces that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily in your control. Absolutely, you made me think of
Speaker 1: my good friend who's a law firm partner, very successful
Speaker 1: like you as a physician, when she had her first
Speaker 1: child and a partner meeting her partners said you know,
Speaker 1: how are you going to be a good mom and
Speaker 1: still be a law firm partner? And she looked at
Speaker 1: them and said, well, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: good mom. I just want to be a great dad.
Speaker 1: I love it, And it was so good because that's
Speaker 1: what they are. And so you can still be dancing
Speaker 1: on tables with old friends when your baby is one
Speaker 1: month old and still be considered a great dad. But
Speaker 1: we are shamed into oblivion until the day we die.
Speaker 1: And so I think what we're gonna be unpacking is
Speaker 1: a lot of the unsaid things that I wish I knew.
Speaker 1: And I will say that I feel like I want
Speaker 1: to dedicate this episode to the women that are coming
Speaker 1: up behind us. This is, of course a place for
Speaker 1: you to come stay and hang out with us if
Speaker 1: you are partnered with children, but this is also a
Speaker 1: place if you are in any career where you want
Speaker 1: to eventually have some boundaries one day, regardless of your
Speaker 1: family structure. So your nightclub is my Blueberries. I want
Speaker 1: to tell you a story about my tiny betrayal moment
Speaker 1: that crystallized everything for me. It was right after my
Speaker 1: second son, Ben was born ten years ago. Today it's
Speaker 1: my Blueberries breakdown anniversary, a d D thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: where my husband sent me the text that started me
Speaker 1: on my fair play journey, and that text said I'm
Speaker 1: surprised you didn't get Blueberries. That text I got from
Speaker 1: Seth changed the trajectory of my life. So I was
Speaker 1: postpartum like you were talking about, definitely had burke cloths
Speaker 1: all around. I had a breast pump and a diaper
Speaker 1: bag in the passenger seat in my car. Seth had
Speaker 1: sent me the I'm surprised you didn't get Blueberries texts
Speaker 1: out a minute before that as I was getting into
Speaker 1: my car, So I was now automatically texting and driving
Speaker 1: through seething resentment. So the breast pump and diaper bagger there.
Speaker 1: I have gifts for a newborn baby to return in
Speaker 1: the backseat in my car. I have a client contract
Speaker 1: in my lap. I'm a lawyer. I had opted out
Speaker 1: of the traditional workforce. I started my own firm because
Speaker 1: I thought flexibility came with entrepreneurship. That's also a fallacy
Speaker 1: will unpack. But I remember I had a pen in
Speaker 1: between my legs that day, d D and I remember
Speaker 1: I was racing to pick up Zach, my older son,
Speaker 1: he was three at the time from his toddler transition program.
Speaker 1: But you know, in America, costs our entire salaries. And
Speaker 1: I still remember that every time I would hit the
Speaker 1: brakes as I was texting and driving, as I was
Speaker 1: starting at the breast pump and diaper bag and all
Speaker 1: the ship in the back of the car, that this
Speaker 1: pen would stab me in my vagina. But I remember
Speaker 1: the thoughts in my head that day where I cannot
Speaker 1: believe my marriage is ending over being the fulfiller of
Speaker 1: my husband's smoothie needs. Like if my marriage is going
Speaker 1: to end, it was going to be like a dramatic
Speaker 1: fight in the Caribbean, or I don't know, an affair
Speaker 1: with an NFL player. But something so cliche as offseason
Speaker 1: blueberries led me to this place of a reckoning for
Speaker 1: myself that I did not have the career marriage combo
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to have, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: I had become the defaults or as I call, as
Speaker 1: you know in fair play, the she fault for literally
Speaker 1: every single household and domestic task for my family. And
Speaker 1: that was a surprise. I did not think I was
Speaker 1: going to be there, and I wonder what was happening
Speaker 1: to me? Then for me to sob on the side
Speaker 1: of the road over this text, Gosh, what a poignant story.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure nearly every woman who is postpartum and
Speaker 1: partners can relate. You know, biologically, it was postpartum, so
Speaker 1: there was, of course the hormonal shift happening, but also
Speaker 1: you were highly stressed. You had a newborn, you were
Speaker 1: running to go get another child, and then you have
Speaker 1: these demands. He did it in a very innocuous way.
Speaker 1: It was a very simple request, but it was just
Speaker 1: the straw that broke the camel's back. We are all
Speaker 1: wired for survival and self preservation. Under periods of stress,
Speaker 1: we are on high alert and there's a sense of
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance. So even something small like blueberries can feel
Speaker 1: very triggering. It's a normal reaction to an abnormal situation
Speaker 1: and gosh, I can tell you so many instances where
Speaker 1: that I have felt the same. You know, knowing the
Speaker 1: science behind stress doesn't always change your relationship to stress
Speaker 1: during those moments. Well, that's such an important piece versus
Speaker 1: awareness knowing that relationship to stress. And then there are
Speaker 1: other things we have to do. We can't just acknowledge
Speaker 1: that we're in stressable situations. And I think over the season,
Speaker 1: we're going to give people a lot of practical tips
Speaker 1: and solutions to take agency in your own life. And
Speaker 1: so I think the other thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you is what happens when the presenting problem is not
Speaker 1: the real problem. So I want to say, as a mediator,
Speaker 1: to get to the real problem, It's something that I've
Speaker 1: been taught. I've taken all continuing legal education and mediation
Speaker 1: and difficult conversations and still a d D. The presenting
Speaker 1: problem wasn't like, oh wow, I should speak to Seth
Speaker 1: about the fact that the gender division of labor is
Speaker 1: showing up in our marriage. It wasn't anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was just sobbing to myself on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, blaming myself that I had done something wrong.
Speaker 1: I didn't connect it to any of these broader issues,
Speaker 1: and I have the privilege being trained to use my
Speaker 1: voice for difficult conversations. So what tools do we have
Speaker 1: to fight against this? Even I'm saying like someone who
Speaker 1: should have had all the tools didn't even have one
Speaker 1: in my toolbag. Then to move forward, my only option
Speaker 1: I thought at that time was to leave my marriage.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because ultimately, regardless of our education or experience,
Speaker 1: biology is biology. So when we're not very stressed, we
Speaker 1: are in resilient mode, governed by the prefrontal cortex, and
Speaker 1: that has been highly highly developed with your education, organization, planning, memory,
Speaker 1: things we call executive functions. But under periods of stress,
Speaker 1: our brains are no longer governed by the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1: They're governed by the amygdala, or the limbig part of
Speaker 1: our brain. The amygdala is our powerhouse and it's our
Speaker 1: emotional center, and during periods of stress, we are governed
Speaker 1: by the amygdala we often called the amigzilla and the
Speaker 1: underlying structures around it the lizard brain. It is our
Speaker 1: primordial reptilian brain that just hasn't changed. So we are
Speaker 1: no longer cave people running away from a tiger in
Speaker 1: the forest, right, we still have that stress response. They
Speaker 1: are no more tigers, we aren't necessarily living in forests,
Speaker 1: but we have lots of tigers, metaphorical tigers all around us.
Speaker 1: When you were driving that day, the blueberry was the tiger.
Speaker 1: Your stress response was on overdrive and it was the
Speaker 1: amygdala that was taking over. So even as a Harvard
Speaker 1: trained mediator, with all of this knowledge and background and
Speaker 1: incredible ability under periods of duress and stress, we go
Speaker 1: right back there to that amygdala. There's many things we
Speaker 1: can do to help modulate that stress response over time,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about. But it's not you. It's your biology.
Speaker 1: It's not any of us mythology. And when we learned
Speaker 1: to work with our biology rather than compete against it,
Speaker 1: that's when real change can happen. Well, I love that
Speaker 1: so much because one of the early mediation phrases I
Speaker 1: learned was you don't want to take actions or mediate
Speaker 1: through a family when emotions are high and cognition is low.
Speaker 1: And so I think the beauty of today is Our
Speaker 1: guest is Matthew Frey, and he had a viral article
Speaker 1: that was called My wife left Me because I left
Speaker 1: dishes by the side of the sink, and again, I
Speaker 1: think that the stress response of seeing that dish there
Speaker 1: for the hundredth time. These small things and how we
Speaker 1: react to them are really what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be talking to Matthew after the break
Speaker 1: about all of these things, and I cannot wait for
Speaker 1: you to hear what he has to share. We're so
Speaker 1: excited to welcome Matthew Frey. Matthew currently works as a
Speaker 1: relationship coach as well as writes and speaks about marriage
Speaker 1: and divorce. He followed this path after his wife left him,
Speaker 1: as he said, because he left dishes by the sink.
Speaker 1: His experience forced him to examine what went wrong and
Speaker 1: how he inadvertently sabotaged his marriage. He recently finished writing
Speaker 1: his first book that comes out in March, titled This
Speaker 1: Is How Your Marriage Ends and Adity. I love that title.
Speaker 1: He recounts the story and all that he's learned so
Speaker 1: that other people don't make the same mistakes. Hi, Matthew,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Adda has some great questions
Speaker 1: for you, but I did want to start off, if
Speaker 1: you'll let me, this great couple of sentences from the
Speaker 1: beginning part of your book, which touched me so much.
Speaker 1: You right, even though I barely touched my wife in
Speaker 1: the previous two years, the thought of someone else doing
Speaker 1: so wrecked me. My young son, not yet in kindergarten,
Speaker 1: would now be raised by a dick bag, or this
Speaker 1: dick bag, the guy she was dating. I thought I
Speaker 1: would no longer have any agency over who gets to
Speaker 1: look after my son. I imagined a future where he
Speaker 1: would run off the field after little league games and
Speaker 1: jump into the arms of his mom, an evil stepdad
Speaker 1: who would look to everyone else like a beautiful little family,
Speaker 1: and I'd be some distance away, forcing a polite smile
Speaker 1: as if everything were okay, but secretly wishing I were dead. Wow,
Speaker 1: So that I don't think and encapsulate how much we
Speaker 1: make short term decisions that end up having long term consequences,
Speaker 1: And so I would love if you could just start
Speaker 1: out telling us, Jesus, how did you get there? So
Speaker 1: that paragraph largely summed it up. I had to figure
Speaker 1: out the story of my marriage, and I went to
Speaker 1: work on it, and you put it together one bit
Speaker 1: at a time, and it took many years, and I'm
Speaker 1: still not there. But we're approaching the nine year mark
Speaker 1: of my marriage ending next April, and um, I still
Speaker 1: don't know all of it, but I think I have
Speaker 1: a much closer understanding today. And then as I discovered
Speaker 1: some of these answers, I realized, Wow, a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know this. A lot of just like guys
Speaker 1: like me out in the world, don't know this. And
Speaker 1: I thought I discovered a subtle and nuanced explanation for
Speaker 1: how it happens, which to me, is the most logical
Speaker 1: explanation for how half of all marriages can fail. As
Speaker 1: I read your work, I want to quote you here.
Speaker 1: You say, I don't think the average guy wearing his
Speaker 1: college football sweatshirt and drinking canned bud light on a
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon while his kids play in the backyard and
Speaker 1: his wife does all of the work required to keep
Speaker 1: a household afloat is going to spend much time reading
Speaker 1: the Five Love Languages. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about why you're the perfect messenger for this story
Speaker 1: and how can we reach both men, women and other
Speaker 1: family structures to do this kind of reflection and work,
Speaker 1: And why do you think this kind of work is
Speaker 1: so important to do? During a marriage rather than at
Speaker 1: the end of a marriage. I think I'm an adequate one.
Speaker 1: I sort of average out to be like so many
Speaker 1: of the guys that are in situations as I was,
Speaker 1: And when I talked to them, I don't trigger that defensive,
Speaker 1: resentful feeling that a lot of men report having in
Speaker 1: their relationships, this notion that their wife's always complaining about him,
Speaker 1: or like moving the goalposts further or finding some new
Speaker 1: way to point out how he's failing her or the family.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of really really deep, painful feelings
Speaker 1: that a lot of men possess about that. And I
Speaker 1: have those conversations a lot, But when I talked to them,
Speaker 1: they just don't have that experience because I was in
Speaker 1: that same situation with them. You know, you talk a
Speaker 1: lot about judgment. You say that men invest their enter
Speaker 1: g in one of three ways. They dispute the facts
Speaker 1: of the story their partner just told, or they agree
Speaker 1: with the facts but believe their partner is overreacting, or
Speaker 1: defend their actions by explaining why they did it. In
Speaker 1: all three cases, the partners feelings are invalidated. Talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that. You know, we've all
Speaker 1: felt it. I mean, as a married woman, I have
Speaker 1: felt it. Eve writes a lot about this, but from
Speaker 1: your perspective, can you talk to us a little bit
Speaker 1: about judgment and the invalidation of feelings? I can try so, right,
Speaker 1: It was early during the pandemic, and it was when
Speaker 1: like a lot of restaurants had shut down. It was March,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of businesses were closed, including restaurants.
Speaker 1: And so I had a client who was a real
Speaker 1: estate guy, and he had a work emergency and he
Speaker 1: hadn't been able to eat that day, and so he
Speaker 1: went and got a fish sandwich for lunch. But because
Speaker 1: none of the vegan restaurant were Hope and him and
Speaker 1: his wife were vegans, and his wife sent him a
Speaker 1: text while he was on his afternoon call with me,
Speaker 1: asking him what he'd had for lunch, just checking in,
Speaker 1: just being his wife, and he, you know, immediately got
Speaker 1: really defensive and he didn't answer her. And he's on
Speaker 1: the phone with me and he's like, Matt, what do
Speaker 1: we do? He's like, if I told me the truth,
Speaker 1: she's gonna get pissed. He's like, because I ate fish.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why is that a problem? Because we're vegan.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where are you? Vegan? Goes, well, we have
Speaker 1: this a goog agreement to be vegan. It's like a
Speaker 1: health decision that we made. And he was like spazzing
Speaker 1: out because his wife was going to get mad at
Speaker 1: him for eating a fish sandwich, which he perceived to
Speaker 1: not be a big deal. So his thought process was,
Speaker 1: you're going to yell at me for eating a fish sandwich.
Speaker 1: You know that that's crap. That's a gross misunderstanding of
Speaker 1: the situation A and B. It's like an unfair emotional
Speaker 1: reaction to the crime committed, which so many men feel
Speaker 1: this notion of like an overreaction, and then they, you know,
Speaker 1: get defensive. It's like I had a work emergency. All
Speaker 1: the restaurants were closed because of COVID, and he was
Speaker 1: talking about how he's going to go home and feel
Speaker 1: his wife's wrath because he ate a fish sandwich. And
Speaker 1: that's when I had to have a conversation with them
Speaker 1: about this notion of perspective. And the thing that I
Speaker 1: said to him is, your wife is not mad at
Speaker 1: you because you ate fish. It's the same thing I
Speaker 1: might have said about my wife leaving me because I
Speaker 1: left the dish by the saying it's it's nonsense. His
Speaker 1: wife was upset with them because he broke a promise
Speaker 1: to be vegan with that was a promise hed and
Speaker 1: then he didn't even have the decency to like check
Speaker 1: in with her and be like, hey, here's the situation
Speaker 1: if I do this, is this like dishonoring the code
Speaker 1: we have. You hear stories like this all the time,
Speaker 1: People who cheat on their partners by like watching like
Speaker 1: two episodes ahead on the Netflix show they're watching together.
Speaker 1: Went through these like tiny betrayals that happened all the time,
Speaker 1: And it's so easy for us to write off having
Speaker 1: an emotional reaction about it. But betrayal can be betrayal,
Speaker 1: even when it's about Netflix shows and even when it's
Speaker 1: about fish sandwiches. And I think it's a really important
Speaker 1: idea that people can't trust you when you don't keep
Speaker 1: your promises to them, and it's not really relevant what
Speaker 1: the promises. And I think that's a reasonable question for
Speaker 1: for someone to ask in a marriage, and it's about
Speaker 1: this is important to that person. I love them, Therefore
Speaker 1: I'm going to treat it with importance. And it's not
Speaker 1: a skill. I possessed in my marriage, and I fundamentally
Speaker 1: didn't know how to calculate for what that betrayal would
Speaker 1: mean to my marriage over time, done over the course
Speaker 1: of a twelve year relationship, These tiny trust betrayals they
Speaker 1: paper cut you to death, you know. But there's that
Speaker 1: moment right before that betrayal, right, Like with this fish
Speaker 1: sandwich story, the guy could have sent his wife a
Speaker 1: text saying, Hey, there are no restaurants open, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bind I'm going to eat this fish sandwich. But he didn't,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of got himself into a hole.
Speaker 1: So why do so many people feel like they can't share?
Speaker 1: Why is it not easy for that particular person to
Speaker 1: just say, hey, heads up, I want to let you
Speaker 1: know what I'm thinking. I mean, why does everyone do this?
Speaker 1: That's a great question. The guys that I've talked to,
Speaker 1: there's like a fear of not not literally, they resent
Speaker 1: that they have to be afraid of it, right. They
Speaker 1: believe they won't be allowed and they don't ask permission
Speaker 1: to do an adult thing that they should be allowed
Speaker 1: to do, and so they just do in like this
Speaker 1: like sneaky way, calculating that the thing isn't harmful. I
Speaker 1: don't know where that comes from. I'm assuming the condition
Speaker 1: exists because of a fundamental lack of trust and respect
Speaker 1: in the relationship, which is sort of the thing I'm
Speaker 1: advocating in the first place, because this is exactly the
Speaker 1: sort of decision making that produces the lack of trust
Speaker 1: and intimacy in a relationship where two people are going
Speaker 1: to respect one another and not feel any sort of
Speaker 1: anxiety about Hey, if I were to do this, how
Speaker 1: would it make you feel? Because I want to factor
Speaker 1: that into my decision making process, and that really feel like,
Speaker 1: foundationally needs to be a condition in a relationship designed
Speaker 1: to go to the distance. But many relationships aren't. They
Speaker 1: have these tiny secrets that the people that have them
Speaker 1: calculate it's not a relationship breaking secret, and the idea
Speaker 1: eludes them that having the secret in the first place
Speaker 1: is what breaks the relationships slowly over time. What I
Speaker 1: love about that is it's like the what's the big deal? Right?
Speaker 1: And and it's so invalidating to hear that. One of
Speaker 1: the ways it came out when I spoke to men
Speaker 1: who are married to women. So many men said to me, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I can get on board with your
Speaker 1: fair play system and the hundred cards because my wife
Speaker 1: does so many unnecessary things and it was so invalidating
Speaker 1: to hear that, and I would get triggered on behalf
Speaker 1: of these women be like, what's unecessary? Okay, let's meeting
Speaker 1: your children? Is that unnecessary? I think fun and playing
Speaker 1: is that unnecessary? What about hard questions? And I would
Speaker 1: literally just start attacking. And I apologize to the early
Speaker 1: interviews I had because if you're out there listening, I
Speaker 1: was highly triggered by what you were saying. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: fair play is a love letter to men. Your fundamental distillation,
Speaker 1: Matthew that this is not about bringing home the wrong
Speaker 1: type of mustard or forgetting to pick up a glue stick,
Speaker 1: but this idea that fundamentally this is about accountability and
Speaker 1: trust as the foundations of good strong non Cortisol as
Speaker 1: a deity would say, relationships. You know, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of a quote you have written about this. You say,
Speaker 1: most guys don't know that she's not fighting about the glass, right,
Speaker 1: You talk about the dishwasher and the glass. Eve talks
Speaker 1: about blueberries, So she's not actually fighting about the glass.
Speaker 1: She's fighting for acknowledgement, respect, validation, and his love. And
Speaker 1: I love that formula that you present cared for equals
Speaker 1: and this idea that it's like these very little things
Speaker 1: that what when the partner, when the woman says, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what it means to feel cared for. It's
Speaker 1: these small things that really add up, and when those
Speaker 1: promises are not met, that's when the problem arises. You'd
Speaker 1: use a big word like betrayal, which to me, I
Speaker 1: don't think of not putting a glass in the dishwasher
Speaker 1: as quote unquote a betrayal, but over time, you know,
Speaker 1: it sure as hell feels like it when it's happening,
Speaker 1: though it doesn't necessarily match up that small event and
Speaker 1: those big feelings of what betrayal means. I didn't mention
Speaker 1: it in the book at all, but I found myself
Speaker 1: using this term a lot, This notion of leaving breadcrumbs,
Speaker 1: like leaving evidence that you don't respect and consider your
Speaker 1: romantic partner. And can I be mindful of the evidence
Speaker 1: that I leave that she's not loved, cared for, considered, respected,
Speaker 1: all these things? And I talked about it in that way,
Speaker 1: this notion of let's not concern ourselves with whether someone
Speaker 1: should or shouldn't be hurt by something. Let's not get
Speaker 1: caught up in an intellectual debate about whether something is
Speaker 1: harmful or not harmful. If somebody's reporting pain because something happened,
Speaker 1: regardless of what it is, can you accept responsibility for
Speaker 1: not leaving evidence that you're not going to be there
Speaker 1: to support and or protect. I think the mission in
Speaker 1: order to have healthy, sustainable relationships that, regardless of my
Speaker 1: thoughts or my feelings and how closely they mirror yours,
Speaker 1: I am going to accept responsibility for not leaving evidence
Speaker 1: or leaving anything that will hurt you. And the work
Speaker 1: is deciding ahead of time you're not going to allow
Speaker 1: anything to inadvertently harm that people you care about. Can
Speaker 1: you talk to us a little bit about this concept
Speaker 1: which we've loosely already discussed, but really pin it down,
Speaker 1: accidental sexism. I don't know if I'm going to take
Speaker 1: credit for for coining necessarily, but yeah, I do use it,
Speaker 1: and that's because the word sexist is really ugly to me.
Speaker 1: It sounds like other is ms that I don't want
Speaker 1: to be associated with. And I was really defensive about
Speaker 1: this notion of being sexist. It's like, I don't think
Speaker 1: men are better than women, and I never have. My
Speaker 1: mom was a single mom for a long time and
Speaker 1: she did an enormous amount. But it turns out when
Speaker 1: you have ideas in your head about men do things
Speaker 1: this way and women do things this way, and if
Speaker 1: either does things in a way that my brain doesn't
Speaker 1: calculate to be normal or correct, that it's weird or wrong.
Speaker 1: And you know that shows up in a million ways
Speaker 1: and male identity, and I think most significantly in the
Speaker 1: context of this conversation have shared domestic responsibility, everything related
Speaker 1: to the second shift, emotional labor, invisible work, parenting, and
Speaker 1: undoubtedly my greatest failing was coming home and just putting
Speaker 1: my hands up waiting for my wife to tell me
Speaker 1: what to do all the time. Right, you were so
Speaker 1: good at this. I thought you are amazing at this.
Speaker 1: I'll just wait and you can just be the board
Speaker 1: of directors aroun on here and let me know what
Speaker 1: needs done next. And I feel really awful about that.
Speaker 1: And now I see it. It's so obvious to me
Speaker 1: the people that check out of the process either of
Speaker 1: shared domestic responsibility in the context of logistics at home
Speaker 1: or the parenting process. And I'll call that accident on
Speaker 1: a sexism. We were talking earlier about the idea of
Speaker 1: the executive brain, that prefrontal cortex, which is the frontal
Speaker 1: lobe that governs organization, planning, memory, all of these things
Speaker 1: which are highly skilled in the workplace. But why is
Speaker 1: it that when men walk in the door of their
Speaker 1: home all of those skills that have been so highly
Speaker 1: refined for decades and decades in the workplace just fall
Speaker 1: to the side. I think some of it is probably laziness.
Speaker 1: Some of it is I'm tired and stressed. I had
Speaker 1: a long day of work. I'm coming home and I'm
Speaker 1: going to do with my father and my grandfather and
Speaker 1: all my best friends. Dad's, my uncle's and everyone else
Speaker 1: did and that's what you do when you come my
Speaker 1: I really do think this is changing. It's just what
Speaker 1: we saw. I don't know how to say it better
Speaker 1: than that. As you're talking, it's kind of bringing up
Speaker 1: for me, is this sense of blaming the individual, But
Speaker 1: instead it's really a systemic issue. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: the individual. It's a whole system. It's what your father did,
Speaker 1: what your uncle's did, what your grandfather did, so how
Speaker 1: can we shift that on a system wide level. I've
Speaker 1: thought about this a lot, and one of the ideas,
Speaker 1: do you remember the DARE program totally? I was like,
Speaker 1: could I try to involve myself somehow and in some
Speaker 1: like grassroots program that we tried to make big that
Speaker 1: got into schools and had age appropriate messaging. Can we
Speaker 1: start having these conversations sooner? I think it's less about
Speaker 1: what we're taughting what we're not taught. If you had
Speaker 1: the foresight to understand that some of these subtle ideas
Speaker 1: about emptying a d humidifier or flipping the clean dirty
Speaker 1: sign on a dishwasher, or eating a fish sandwich when
Speaker 1: you agree to be vegan with your wife, there are
Speaker 1: countless tiny examples that any one of them we all
Speaker 1: calculate to be so benign that there's no way that
Speaker 1: should end a marriage. But it's this steady paper cut
Speaker 1: betrayal and yes, and if we can somehow find a
Speaker 1: way to get that idea implanted inside the heads of
Speaker 1: young people prior to forming their long term relationships, and
Speaker 1: it's just taking more care. I just think we stave
Speaker 1: off so many things. Thank you, honestly, thank you. I
Speaker 1: really believe that you leaving a dish by the sink
Speaker 1: was probably a really good thing for society, even though
Speaker 1: it was not great for you personally. So thank you
Speaker 1: for what you're giving back. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Hi,
Speaker 1: it's me Eve, and I want to tell you about
Speaker 1: my latest book, Find Your Unicorn Space. So you're playing
Speaker 1: fair and have established equity in your home, but now
Speaker 1: what it's time to find your Unicorn Space. My new
Speaker 1: book will help you set personal goals, rediscover your interests,
Speaker 1: and reclaim the creative expression of self that makes you
Speaker 1: uniquely you. Find your Unicorn Space is a mix of
Speaker 1: research space, how to advice, and big picture inspirational thinking.
Speaker 1: I hope it can show you a clear path to
Speaker 1: reclaim your permission to be unavailable and manifest your own
Speaker 1: unicorn space. Find your Unicorn Space is available now wherever
Speaker 1: books are sold. So every episode of this podcast will
Speaker 1: be ending with an action item for you. Are listeners
Speaker 1: that we call a time out. This is really a
Speaker 1: time for you to focus on yourself and reflect on
Speaker 1: what you're hearing today. And we're starting the conversation first
Speaker 1: with ourselves and then ultimately with our partners and others.
Speaker 1: So one thing I wanted to ask you that would
Speaker 1: be really helpful to have through our entire season is
Speaker 1: a time out journal. So what I'd love for you
Speaker 1: to do is to go to Target or whatever your
Speaker 1: big box store is and start to browse browse some
Speaker 1: of the journals. I did find a journal that I loved,
Speaker 1: a d D that I use for my own time
Speaker 1: out exercises, and the front cover had a radio head
Speaker 1: lyric on it that said, for a minute there I
Speaker 1: lost myself. And why I thought that was so important
Speaker 1: is because we're here to take the space to communally
Speaker 1: find ourselves again and to tell the stories that we
Speaker 1: often don't get to tell when we pretend they were
Speaker 1: all perfectly productive and perfectly perfect, which we're not. And
Speaker 1: so I'm excited for you a d D to tell
Speaker 1: our list and ners what they will be doing this
Speaker 1: week once they have their journals. You know, as human beings,
Speaker 1: we all just want to be seen, heard, understood, and loved,
Speaker 1: and as Matthew taught us, when we are faced with
Speaker 1: tiny betrayals, we often feel none of those things. So
Speaker 1: what was your tiny betrayal? How did you not feel
Speaker 1: seen or not feel heard, not feel understood, and ultimately
Speaker 1: not feel loved. How could that have been changed? Write
Speaker 1: down your reflections, think about what's going on underneath the
Speaker 1: surface of that tiny betrayal, that huge, big thing that
Speaker 1: you're trying to unpack, And think a little bit more
Speaker 1: about your tiny betrayal and what the huge ramifications of
Speaker 1: it are and what it actually means. Because we know,
Speaker 1: in truth there's no such thing as a tiny betrayal,
Speaker 1: And I will add to the d D and say,
Speaker 1: in truth, there's no such thing as tiny issues around marriage,
Speaker 1: unpaid labor, women doing more in the home time. And
Speaker 1: so we'll keep unpacking these things throughout the season. But
Speaker 1: the most important thing to recognize is that if it
Speaker 1: feels tiny to you, it's probably because somebody shamed you
Speaker 1: to make it feel that way, or because society has
Speaker 1: shamed you to not care about these issues, or to
Speaker 1: feel that these shouldn't matter, or that you should be
Speaker 1: able to be perfectly perfect. And we're not, and we're
Speaker 1: going to be here to unpack the fact that nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing about what we're talking about this season is tiny.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening, Thank you Eve for all
Speaker 1: your wisdom. Next week we're going to dive a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper into time, what it means, what it stands for,
Speaker 1: and how we can change it to serve us better.
Speaker 1: We hope you join us. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Time Out, a production of I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine.
Speaker 1: I'm Vrodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair
Speaker 1: Play and find your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social
Speaker 1: media at ev Rodsky and learn more about our work
Speaker 1: at fair Play Life. And I'm Dr Addi Narukar, a
Speaker 1: Harvard physician with a specialty and stressed resilience, burnout, and
Speaker 1: mental health. Follow me on social media at Dr add
Speaker 1: Nerucar and find out more about my work at dor
Speaker 1: add dot com. That's d R A d I t
Speaker 1: I dot com. Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda farrand
Speaker 1: Aaron Stover and Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team
Speaker 1: is Ali Perry, Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Krinschitch. We hope
Speaker 1: you all love taking a much needed time out with
Speaker 1: us today. Listen and subscribe to Time Out on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.