3. Lower your standards
Let yourself off the hook, Dunn advises, as well as your partner. “The house doesn’t need to be perfect, your kid doesn’t need to look perfect when he or she goes to school. Tom would make our kid dinner and it would be peanut butter on toast. I had to bite my tongue and not say, ‘you know, she really needs a vegetable.’ I learned to just be grateful that he made her dinner. And you know what? Peanut butter toast is great for dinner. I’d eat that.”
Lowering your standards doesn’t just decrease the tension between you and your partner — it benefits your kid too. “I think being a more easygoing parent is a real gift that you give your child. You don’t want a kid who’s horrified that you’re going to flip out if they spill their milk. You don’t want to be that mom.”
4. Demand your own time
Dunn began this book under the impression that men need more alone time. “I don’t know where I got that idea. But when I investigated, I found there was really no basis for that. Humans need alone time, really.”
Moms can find alone time especially hard to ask for — but it’s especially important.
“One psychiatrist told me, ‘Tell yourself that when you return, you’ll be a better mother.’ And it really is true. And I don’t do contaminated time” — where women feel like they have to do something ‘useful’ with their private time, like running errands or folding laundry. “Do you ever just lounge around in bed and read or binge-watch something? It’s hard to do but it does make you a better mother. It was one of the toughest lessons I learned.”
More: 11 Men on Why They Love Marriage
5. Look for the good
In her research for the book, Dunn consulted with the “king and queen of couples research,” John and Julie Gottman. (What makes them king and queen? “After over four decades of studies,” Dunn writes, “the Gottmans can assess five minutes of a marital argument and predict with over 90 percent accuracy who will stay married and who will divorce within a few years.” Pretty impressive, Your Highnesses.) The Gottmans, she told me, advised her to look for the good. “When resentment becomes your primary setting, you’re just resentful all the time, you look for the bad, you find it, it’s self-reinforcing.”
Looking for the good sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly difficult. (Seeing a pattern here?) “When I was in resentment mode, so much of the good was blowing by me. I was focusing on what my husband was not doing to help me and I really wasn’t seeing what a good father he is in so many ways, how patient he is with our kid and how he’s always running around outside with her.”
And while you’re noticing the good, don’t be shy about sharing what you’ve noticed with your partner.
Most of all, Dunn advises, know that getting along with your partner (or just not hating them) is an ongoing process. “We’re still negotiating,” she said. “I still have to control my temper. He’s still going to leave his stuff around. But don’t have these heated fights anymore and our kid is much happier. Life is messy and I don’t have all the answers, but to have some tools in place really helps things. And I don’t dread being an empty nester because I have my ally back. “
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