Collaborators and Privates

Women are from academia, men are from Army

The other day in a Note, I was speculating on answers to a question from

John Williams PhD

: why breadwinning women might divorce their spouses. I offered that I think when women work harder, they expect certain behavior from men based on their own labor division strategies. In cases where these behaviors aren’t forthcoming from their husbands, women may leave.

James Horton, PhD.

replied with a reference to male understandings of labor division, heavy on leadership - that men see relationships as a hierarchical dyad with one person in charge. If the woman signals that she’s the authority, even using behaviors that she doesn’t think of as claiming authority, a lot of men will cede the leadership position to her. This includes things from decision-making to initiative-taking to responsibility for relationship outcomes writ large. This model maps to some of my observations well enough that I wanted to write my own post exploring the idea.

I’ve noticed this average difference in labor division styles between the sexes, particular with regard to paid and unpaid work, apparent and expended effort, and relationship strategizing in general. As with pretty much all gendered content, this applies to up to 75% of men and women leaving out a pretty massive chunk in a best case scenario, so if you do not feel that this describes you or even most of the people you know, I believe you. Thank you for your patience with my speculations and discussion of averages.

Collaborators

Women approach relationships and marriage as a project with a capable collaborator, like academics working on a shared research project. Tasks are to be identified and delegated appropriately, preferably with all parties agreeing on how this is done. All labor is to be completed between members of the unit, and the ideal is that no group member allows any other to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the labor (broadly defined).

It’s universally understood that letting someone else do all or even most of the work on a research project is crappy slacker behavior. Part of a collaborator’s responsibilities involves paying attention to both what the group at large is doing and what they themselves are doing. This allows a flexibility in execution: they can increase effort to match other group members, take over if someone can’t or refuses to participate, and monitor how close the project is to being done.

Privates

Men approach relationships and marriage as a command chain, like a military hierarchy. In a standard hierarchy, one person is in charge, one person executes the other’s vision. Orders flow from higher to lower, not the other way around, although there’s room for discussion and amendment using feedback from the lower. There are perks to being on the lower end of the hierarchy, like not shouldering equal responsibility for outcomes and getting to relax so long as the boss man hasn’t sent down any orders recently. You do exactly what you’re told to, when you’re told to, and the plus side is that you don’t have to do anything at all if no one’s told you to do anything lately. You do not pay attention to what anyone does but yourself, barring cases where your commanding officer is an unusual dickhead.

Pros and Cons

These differences make men in general better at leading, but sneakily, they also make him better at following. When it comes to letting someone else take charge as defined by “doing what the boss man says”, men are undeniably at an advantage. Once men have identified someone else as leader, they sit back and follow orders as they come down.

This has downsides: if the leader hasn’t said anything recently, that means there’s nothing that needs to be done. It has advantages too - there is a sense of duty around executing on “what you were told to do”. To some degree, men comply with the assumption that there will be reprisals for not following orders. Men also aren’t great at offering suggestions for what their leader should do or how the decision making should work if they like, trust, and generally agree with the leader.

Women, as collaborators, have different advantages. Someone may take charge in a group setting, may even delegate tasks, but the implicit assumption with delegated tasks is that the person in charge will not be enforcing the outcomes. By extension, it’s assumed that the person in charge will be forced to do your work for you if you fail to deliver. The enforcement comes from you respecting the person enough to save them the discomfort of doing your work for you.

There are disadvantages to this too. Some women - often the types that want a prince to sweep them off their feet and give them a gentle life - are good at letting someone else take charge if what is meant by that is letting someone else pick the direction, make the decisions, and hold all of the responsibility for the outcomes. They’re often less good at following someone else’s instructions without questions, negotiation, etc - those quibbles are normal in a collaborative group setting where no one is technically in charge. They’re not always good at leaving their group members alone and allowing them to complete tasks however they see fit.

Thesis:

Women in marriages benefit from learning to lead as well as follow better. Men in marriages benefit from learning to collaborate, matching energy and effort better (in the upwards and not just the downwards direction), not just leading or following.

Knowing that men aren’t always the ones who need to learn to collaborate and women aren’t always the ones who need to lead or follow better, I have simply organized these into three distinct and intentionally non-gendered sections: Lead better, follow better, and collaborate better.

Lead Better:

Assign tasks, communicate expectations around the task clearly, leave the person alone for task completion.

If they prove inadequate for the task you have assigned, give them a different task more suited to their limited abilities. Assume responsibility for the end-to-end partitioning of a task and take note of bottlenecks, including resolving them, yourself. Be concise and clear in instructions, and err on the side of ending instruction entirely once the task has begun. Intervene only in cases where serious negative consequences will result if you do not.

When instructions are not carried out correctly, look for ways you can make following your instructions and adhering to your framework easier for the people around you.

If something goes wrong, analysis begins at “where in my setup and system did we have a break down and what can be altered by me next time to improve this”. If schedules, charts, or other structured labor divisions aren’t working, look for ways to make them easier to notice, take part in, and check off.

Recognize the value of morale boosts and incentives.

Tell your people they’re doing great. Incentivize good behavior by calling attention to it, offer praise as often as it can honestly be given.

Follow Better:

Take instructions without negotiation from time to time.

If you trust this person, trust that they know what they’re doing on a specific subject, try occasionally following their lead without questions about whether something else would be better. If it goes well, tell them that they gave you good instructions.

If someone else is in charge, relax. Slack off, even.

Try to turn off the part of your brain that looks for things to do or things that need adjustment from time to time. If this is difficult, look for ways to foster opportunities to practice this that you can live with, whether that requires visits from relatives who can provide free childcare or a service you can pay for, like cleaning.

Trust someone else’s decision-making and praise them when that trust is rewarded.

Using your best judgment, look for opportunities to let them take the responsibility as well as the credit for good moves, and relax about the outcomes. When this turns out well, or even when it was clearly made with good judgment and the best information available, offer encouragement, support, and praise for the decisions made.

Collaborate Better:

Pay attention to what needs to be done and who is doing it.

What is your spouse usually doing throughout the day? If you don’t know, you have an opportunity to improve your collaboration abilities. What tasks throughout the house can be visually identified as something that needs to be done? How many of these are your spouse’s doing? How much time are they spending after work (yours or theirs, whether they’re stay-at-home or working) addressing these tasks? Get in the habit of identifying regularly-completed workflows in your life outside the ones for which you are solely responsible. Look for opportunities to complete them without being asked.

When your teammate steps up, you step up - without specific instruction.

If your spouse starts doing more work, consider starting from the assumption that this means you also need to do more work unless there is a very good reason for this not to be true (example: you are deathly ill and physically cannot). Use your knowledge of life workflows to put in more time, with special attention to arenas your spouse can’t get to and cares about.

Accept correction.

When stepping up to do something that you noticed needed to be done - rather than were asked to do - recognize that this good gesture includes the possibility of getting it wrong. In an ideal scenario, you will be given instructions on how to do it correctly in a gracious, loving manner only after someone has thanked you for noticing something that needed to be done and stepping in to do it. In the real scenario, this is less likely. In these cases, it’s in your best interest to gently - and I do mean gently - ask for a softer startup while communicating that you care about getting it right.

Conclusion

I’d expect that at least one of these items from at least one of these lists sounds like a bad idea overall to you, or at minimum a bad idea in your specific marriage. Only you know yourself and your marriage, so I’m not going to tell you to completely ignore your intuition and good judgment, ever - they’re the best arsenal you have in the squishy, complex, shifting world of relationships. If trying a new strategy that you don’t often try sounds scary or goes poorly, consider that this is how your spouse likely feels about doing something that seems like the natural best order of operations to you, where they can’t get with the program. If you don’t change your behavior because of this post, consider changing your framework just enough to accommodate the possibility that your way isn’t the only way, and that your spouse is simply doing a different execution strategy than you are.

Something that often intrigues me: I know more than one successful couple who frames their relationship as classically traditional, whether in a conservative sense, a stay at home mom sense, even one¹ that invokes concepts like female submission, while clearly having a father figure who is a very competent collaborator as I’ve defined it here. Similarly, I know apparently very functional couples who value egalitarianism with a wife and mother who is very good at the kinds of following I’ve described here. I have a hypothesis that you can put a left wing or a right wing sheen on good marriage tactics but that a lot of the best relational practices look very similar under the hood, whatever narrative you use to describe them.

1. I emphasize that I know only one couple who appears to be happy, fulfilled, successful who would explicitly use this wording outside the bedroom