A little background. I just co-wrote a book called 'Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage & Dirty Dishes,' in which I take some well-established ideas from the dismal science and use them to show couples how they can improve their marriages. One of the first things people say when they hear about the book is something to the effect of, 'Isn't that kind of unromantic?' Well, yeah. But what's romantic about dishes, laundry, diapers, bills, mortgages, in-laws, TiVo, company picnics, circular arguments, BlackBerries, hamsters, PTA meetings, and all the million other little things that go into a marriage and detract from the actual romance between two people who once loved each other so much they decided to keep each other company for the rest of their lives?
All that stuff is the business side of marriage, and to navigate it successfully, you don't need chocolate hearts. You need sound reasoning. You need to be practical and efficient. You need to allocate your scarce resources wisely and make smart trade-offs, so that at the end of the day, you can enjoy the company of that person you promised to have and to hold until death (death!) do you part.
Herewith, five somewhat regressive, not very romantic, yet extremely effective lessons from economics for a happy marriage with long-term prospects:
1. Talk less.
Well okay, talk all you want about your dreams, ambitions and Egypt's future. But when it comes to nagging reminders about what your spouse still has to do after a long day working for the man—take out the recycling, walk the dog, write a thank-you letter, defrost the chicken, fix the stereo—keep a lid on it. Economists talk about 'information processing costs,' or the costs incurred from processing, absorbing and filtering information. When information processing costs get too high, we tend to become paralyzed. Like when we get to the kitchen-cabinet department at IKEA, and we're so overwhelmed that we decide to skip the whole thing and just have a plate of meatballs at the café then head home for a nap.
Overloading your spouse with what you consider to be perfectly valid information is a bad idea. One thing at a time, friends, and the most important thing first. Same rule applies when you're arguing. Stick to the point—he didn't call to say he was running late—and don't tick off the long list of sins he's committed since last Tuesday.
2. Lose weight.
Married people exercise less than single people do. I know this because married couples have told me so—56% of people we surveyed said they gained weight after they got married. Everyone has their excuses: They're too busy with their demanding jobs, too exhausted by their demanding children, too lazy to get off their demanding couches. But the real reason is moral hazard, or the tendency to take more risks and behave more irresponsibly when there are no consequences. Moral hazard is one reason the country's biggest financial firms bet the house on subprime mortgages—they knew if worse came to worst, Uncle Sam would be there to bail them out.
Similarly, why bother working out and staying fit when you've already snagged your man—or woman—and you've got a license from the state to prove it? After I got married, one of my single friends told me I was lucky because I didn't have to go to the gym anymore. I was no longer 'posin' to be chosen.'
So go ahead, challenge your own moral hazard and try losing that post-marriage weight. While you're at it, don't wear sweatpants around the house all the time.
3. Do the dishes.
Here's where I'm really going to get skewered by my sisters for setting women back 50 years: Do the dishes because you just might be better at them, and faster, and less likely than your spouse is to leave them out overnight. You might think a 50/50 marriage is the way to go, but if you're like so many other couples in the year 2011, your quest for egalitarianism means you're more likely to pick a fight when you sense things are getting into the 60/40 range—or worse.
Better to have a system where each of you specializes in what you do best, relative to other chores. It's a system based on the notion of comparative advantage, which (as every Wall Street Journal reader knows) is the foundation of free trade. And what's marriage, if not a union between two trading partners? So if you really are better at the dishes than remembering to call the in-laws, then that should be your job. It'll take you less time than it'll take him, and it'll take him less time to have a quick chat with mom than it would take you, which means in the end, you've saved quite a bit of collective time. Use that time for fun stuff, like, for example, sex.
4. Put out
Which brings me to my fourth point: Put out. I know, it seem ridiculous to tell married people they should have sex (with each other)—but then why do so many people seem to forget this is a key part of the job of being married? Some 54% of married people, according to our research, wish they were having more sex, and the people who are doing it more also report being happier in their relationships. Not saying one causes the other, but there's a definite correlation, for what it's worth. The #1 reason people say they don't do it more: They're too tired.
The only solution to this problem is to wake up and do the job—the same way you wake up every morning and go to your actual job. No reason why you can do one and not the other. In 'Spousonomics,' we suggest people lower the costs of having sex in order to up demand. Keep it simple, fast and fun. Some people even say the more they get in the habit of doing it, the more they want to do it. Kind of like flossing.
5. Scheme
And finally, start scheming, or thinking strategically. Being strategic might sound cold and calculating, but it's something you probably already do with your spouse, whether you admit it or not. For example, if your friends invite you for a weekend away, no spouses, and you want to go, you naturally start thinking about how you can make this happen with minimal fuss, what you can offer your spouse in return, how to bring it up, when to bring it up, and what type of flowers to present as graft when you're in the midst of bringing it up.
Thinking ahead, learning from past experience, putting yourself in your spouse's shoes—these are all strategies straight from the game-theory playbook (game theory being the study of behavior in strategic situations). In fact, if you think like a game theorist, you'll find that marriage is really just a two-person repeated game. In the game, each person is trying to achieve the best results possible, given the limitations that there's another person involved. Think of that other person and you're being strategic. You're also being pretty romantic.
Paula Szuchman
婚姻幸福的五大秘诀 2011年 03月 03日 08:21下 次过情人节时，不要送巧克力、时尚内衣和珠宝首饰；相反，尝试少唠叨，主动洗碗，过过夫妻生活。这也许不浪漫，但很可能是婚姻幸福的秘诀所在。 所有这些 都得在婚姻中实践和经营，而要做好这些，你不需要心形巧克力，而是一种理智的处理方式，既不脱离实际，又能有实际效果。你需要睿智地配置好稀缺资源，做出 明智的妥协，这样才能履行你的婚姻承诺，享受另一半陪伴着你的生活，直到死亡把你们俩分开（这样才叫终生不渝！）。 要想拥有一个长久而幸福的婚姻生活，有五点从经济学中提炼出来的经验可供参考。它们看似倒退，不太浪漫，却极其有效。 1、少说。 当 然，你可以畅谈自己的梦想、事业规划，或埃及的未来，但当你的配偶在外劳累一天回来后，不要喋喋不休地提醒他还有哪些家务没有做——扔垃圾、出去遛狗、写 感谢信函、把鸡块拿出来化冻、修理音响——最好把自己的话匣子关上。经济学家谈到有一种“信息处理成本”，即在处理、吸收和过滤信息过程中产生的成本。当 信息处理成本过高时，人们会对信息变得麻木起来。比如我们去逛宜家(IKEA)的厨具餐具部门时，会看得眼花缭乱，最后决定什么都不买，去餐饮区吃上一盘 肉丸子，然后回家睡觉。 你可能觉得很多信息跟配偶说说理所当然，但其实不然。要记住，一次只说一件事，而且先说最重要的。当两人发生争执时，也要遵循同样的原则。只谈眼前的这件事——比如丈夫加班但没打电话回来——不要把他上周二以来答应做但还没做到的事都扯出来。 2、瘦身。 已 婚者比单身人士更少锻炼身体，我知道这一点，因为这是已婚者自己说的——在我们调查过的夫妻中，有56%的人说他们结婚后体重增加了。每个人都有各自的理 由：工作太忙，带孩子太累，懒得从沙发上起来，等等。然而，真正的原因在于一种道德冒险，即当不用承担后果时，人们倾向于冒更大的险，做更不负责任的事 情。正是道德冒险让美国最大的一些金融公司把赌注押在次级贷款上——因为他们知道，一旦崩盘，美国政府会来救他们的。 同样，既然已经找到了另一半——而且政府还发给你一张结婚证明，那为什么还要健身和减肥？我结婚后，一个单身朋友说我很幸运，不用去健身房了，因为我已不再“处于求偶状态”。 让我们振作起来，挑战自己的懒惰心理，试着把结婚后长出来的肉减掉。不过，即使在瘦身期间，也不要整天穿着运动裤在屋子里转悠。 3、洗碗。 你 们可能觉得承担洗碗的义务是在倒退50年，但我还是要冒着风险提出这一点：主动洗碗，因为你可能洗得更好、更快，别让你的另一半把碗撂在那里一晚上。也许 你认为结婚后家务应该对半分，但如果你跟2011年的众多夫妻一样都在持这种平均主义的态度，那么当家务分配进入60/40的区间时，争吵就会发生，甚至 更糟。 最好建立一个制度，让每个人做自己最擅长的家务。这种制度依据的是经济学中“比较优势”的概念，（相信每个《华尔街日报》的读者都 知道）比较优势是自由贸易产生的基础，而婚姻不正是两个交易伙伴形成的一种联合吗？因此，如果你真的更擅长洗碗而不是给另一半的父母和亲戚打电话，那就主 动承担洗碗的任务好了。你洗碗所花的时间要比他少，而他更擅长跟母亲聊会儿天，这就意味着从整体来看你们俩可以节省不少时间，而你们可以利用省下的时间做 点有趣的事，比如过夫妻生活。 4、灭火。 这就是我要说的第四点：欲火的解决。我知道，告诉已婚人士应该经常（跟对方）过 性生活似乎很荒谬，但为什么那么多人会忘记这是婚姻生活的一个关键环节。根据我们的调查，约有54%的夫妻希望过更多的性生活，而性生活更多的人也表示自 己的婚姻更美满。这两者并没有直接的因果关系，但肯定具有一定的相关性。人们说夫妻生活不多的最大原因就是：他们太累了。 解决这个问题的 唯一方法是醒过来，过夫妻生活——就像你每天早上醒过来去上班一样。没有理由你可以去上班而不可以过夫妻生活。在《夫妻经济学》这本书里，我们建议降低性 生活的成本，以鼓励需求。让性生活变得简单、快速和有趣。有些人甚至表示，他们越养成过夫妻生活的习惯，需求就会越旺盛。这有点像用牙线剔牙一样，会上瘾 的。 5、规划。 最后一点是，开始规划自己的生活，战略性地思考问题。战略规划听上去有点冷酷和过于算计，但不管承认与 否，你可能早就在这么对待自己的另一半了。举个例子来说，如果你的朋友邀请你周末出去玩，不能带家属，而你很想去，你会很自然地开始考虑，怎样在最不容易 引起配偶不满的情况下成功出行：你能给配偶做些什么作为回报，怎么跟另一半提起这件事，以及在讨论这件事的过程中，该准备些什么东西来顺顺对方的心。 提 前规划，从以往经验中汲取教训，从配偶的角度来考虑问题——这些都是从博弈论（一种研究竞争环境下各方行为方式的理论）中直接拿过来的策略。事实上，如果 你能像一位博弈理论家一样思考，你会发现婚姻其实就是一个双人重复博弈游戏，在双方都参与的条件下，每一方都想取得最有利于自己的结果。考虑对方可能采取 的行动，这就是战略性的规划；而且设身处地从对方的角度考虑，这也是一种浪漫。 |
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