254: From a "Fair" Relationship to Radical Generosity - the 80/80 Marriage with Kaley and Nate Klemp
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How do you steer a relationship away from being stuck battling over what's fair and instead shift to being radically generous with each other? Today's episode is full of practical advice to get you past talking about generosity in your relationship so that you can actually take practical steps to experience it.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Satin. We're always talking about how to have an amazing, thriving relationship here on the show. And yet, sometimes you can get stuck in that feeling that either you're doing all the work of your relationship, or maybe you're feeling the weight of your partner doing all the work in your relationship. Or maybe even worse, you might feel like

You're both working really hard, but things just aren't quite fair. And you're always fighting for time, time for yourself, time for each other, time for your relationship, time to actually have sex. And there's this question of like, all right, if we're moving away from like old school ways of doing relationship into something new, that's more fair and balanced. How do you do that in a way that actually feels like sex?

You're thriving. So we're not just giving lip service to this idea that two people coming together can be more than the sum of their parts, but where you're actually able to experience that for more than just glimpses at a time.

So if you can relate to any of that, you're going to love today's conversation. My guests today are Kaylee and Nate Klemp, who are the authors of the new book, The 8080 Marriage, A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship. And Nate and Kaylee wrote to me about their book. And as I was mentioning to them before this whole thing started, I was like,

You might not be surprised to find out that a lot of people write to me about their book and it was so refreshing to find one that actually talks about this new model for relationship in ways that are super practical. So we're going to get into the practical nitty gritty of how to do just that, how to have a happier, stronger relationship that's not tied up in issues of who's

who's getting the most attention or who needs things or who doesn't. It's not to say you won't have those questions, but you're not going to get caught there after you listen to today's conversation. I guarantee you.

So if you are interested in the transcript for today's episode or to find any of the links or things that we talk about today, you can visit neilsatin.com slash 8080. That's 8080. And that's where you can download the transcript and any other goodies that we happen to mention today.

I think that's it for the moment. So Kaylee and Nate, welcome to Relationship Alive. We're excited to be here. Thanks, Neil. So good to be here, Neil. Let's just start maybe with your revealing a little bit of your personal journey, if you don't mind getting a little vulnerable with how did 8080 come to be for the two of you?

Yeah, well, I guess it starts in high school, actually. So Kaylee and I grew up in the same town and we met our senior year of high school. We were in chemistry class together and we actually dated a little bit in high school. And then we both went to the same college, but broke up pragmatically and got back together seven years later.

And it was almost like a fairy tale, Instagram worthy story where, you know, we got back together in our early 20s. We got married and we went into marriage thinking that the momentum of that perfect story, that fairy tale was just going to effortlessly continue. And it didn't. Not at all. In fact, a couple of years into marriage, I had a serious bike accident and

which left me in a position of both having very little energy to work and complete life's tasks, but also in a pretty serious depression, experiencing a lot of anxiety. And all of a sudden, we were thrust into this conversation, really more of a conflict over what is or isn't fair. And we started to see that

for us and for most couples, we saw eventually that the fundamental thing we were grappling with is how can we be equals and in love? And that seemed to be a totally vexing question that we just could not answer in our marriage. So we really spent then 15 years. We've been married for almost 16 years now, trying to answer that question both for ourselves and then with this book for other couples.

Yeah. And when you talk about how to be equals and be in love, you know, that makes me think of what you mentioned in the initial part of your book, where you talk about moving from what you call the 80-20 model of relationship into 50-50 relating. And then, of course, you're making a case for the 80-80 model of relating. So, yeah.

so yeah can you describe what what we're talking about just kind of in simple terms like what's 80 20 relationship what's a 50 50 relationship and and where are we headed with 80 80. 80 20 is looking back at sometimes our parents sometimes our grandparents where

One person's job, quote unquote, is to take care of the relationship and the other person gets to kind of coast. And in 80-20, based on gender norms at the time, typically it's the woman who's responsible for making sure that we're close and that we have date night and that we have friends. And really, it's her job to make sure that the relationship is working at all.

And as easy as it is to look at that with condemnation or disdain, there was an advantage at that point in time, which was they were at least on the same team pointed in the same direction because they were really, really interdependent.

What happened though is as the 60s and 70s occur and women were given a lot more opportunity to work outside the home and pursue their own interests, there started to be a big shift where each person could look at 80-20 and say, gosh, that seems wildly unfair. And it was.

And so they said, you know what? We can do better. Let's make things even between us. Let's make things equal. And the clunky technology was let's make things fair. And so that's where 50-50 came from. This idea that if we each do perfectly equal amounts of things, then somehow we'll end up in marital bliss.

Unfortunately, and we can talk about all the reasons why 50-50 ended up being a recipe for even more fighting and even more conflict because finding that perfect midpoint where it was exactly fair seemed completely elusive. Right.

And so what we're striving for and arguing for is this notion of 80-80, where rather than keeping score and keeping track like you do in 50-50, instead, you intentionally strive to overshoot the mean, to do more than your quote unquote fair share of

from this mindset of generosity. And with that new mindset, with this intentionality around how can I show up with generosity with my partner? What are the structures that support it? How can we take that mindset and make it really practical so that in real life we can actually live it?

I think it's interesting too. I was thinking about the 50-50 model and how that way of, I want to say like privileging the individual in the best way. Like your needs are just as important as my needs. So it comes from this hopefully altruistic place where like we're going to honor each other. And yet somehow it becomes a competition between

you're not able to make that shift to as you mentioned being generous with each other overshooting the mean as you said so as a as

So as a practical matter though, what do you think helps someone actually notice when they are or are not being generous? Because some people just seem to operate from that place, right, of generosity, a sense of generosity with the world. And for others, it's more challenging. So how would you suggest being able to kind of identify when you're not being generous, I guess, and being able to make that shift?

I think it starts with mindfulness, which is something that's in the background of this entire project. We don't talk about it explicitly that often, but it really is true that when it comes to marriage, a lot of what we do is just the result of these subconscious habits that are running the show behind the scenes.

And when we're not aware of those habits, when we're just running in this autopilot trance-like state, we can start to get into this pattern of that 50-50 mindset where everything has to be fair. And when it's not, we experience resentment. So in some ways, we like to think of resentment as almost like the red flag, the inner alarm clock that tells you,

something's happening in your mindset around your relationship that if you can take a step back from and see it with a little bit more awareness, all of a sudden becomes an opportunity. And I can just give you examples from everyday life.

There are moments where we have a daughter and I'll be up getting breakfast ready for our daughter and Kaylee will still be in the shower. And all of a sudden I've just prepared breakfast and I'm now unloading the dishwasher and I'm now, you know, getting her ready, doing her COVID temperature check and

And I can just feel this little experience of anger, irritation, resentment arising. If I use that as the cue to just sort of take that step back and think, wait a minute, I'm experiencing this feeling that things aren't fair.

What if I were to shift to 80, 80? What if this was a gift to the two of us? And what if it wasn't this, this, you know, reason for me to keep score all of a sudden that moment of mindfulness can really become a powerful transition to something much more interesting. I think. Yeah. I like that. Seeing, seeing your resentment, welcoming it in a way as a, as an indication that that's time for a mindset shift. Yeah.

And you said something that's really, I think, important to your overall perspective.

approach here, which was how do I see this as a gift to us? So can you talk a little bit about this concept that has come up on the podcast over and over again, this idea of how there's an us, there's a team that hopefully we're both playing for. But how you create that entity, I think, is special in a way. And I think it helps us

make that sort of mindset shift to seeing something as a gift for us. We talk about how interesting it is that for most of us, for most of our lives, there's a push to be individually excellent. Go achieve your dreams, go to the university that you want, create an amazing podcast, write a book. But it's really focused on me and

And then you partner with someone and you get married and all of a sudden there's this expectation of be on a team, be a we. And it can be disorienting as it first happens, unless there's intentionality around it. And one of the things that we love to do with couples is make that we make that team explicit.

And we go so far as to name our team because it gives you a different set of questions to ask. So our team name is Kajona. And we've got the K-A from Kaylee. We've got Joe from our daughter. We've got the N-A from Nate. And we find that when we're in a situation and we're trying to make a decision about what to do, it changes the outcome if we ask, well, what's best for Kajona?

And a silly example perhaps might be,

I had a client who was asking me whether or not I could travel to a different location to do a talk. And for me, the right answer was I should absolutely go and do that. And as I took a step back and looked at the context when our daughter's birthday was, some of the other plans that we had, and I looked at, well, what's best for us? What's best for our team? What's best for Kijona?

the answer was to do it virtually instead of to go in person. And that can feel trivial sometimes, but asking the question, I think often, at least for us has shifted the answer. - Yeah, and I do wanna, we will end up talking a bit more about power and how that plays out in a relationship dynamic, but specifically addressing what you were just talking about,

How do you feel into when you're asking yourself that question, like what's best for Kajona right now? And how do you keep that from becoming something that ends up just being – how am I going to say this? Yeah.

perhaps a perpetuation of an unhealthy power dynamic like where well it's best for me but it's not best for the team so i'm going to sacrifice myself i'm going to come right so yeah we're give me give me some more around that for you it's absolutely true that this idea of being a team together

can lead to a problematic power dynamic where there's one partner who's part of the team, but seemingly 75% of the team and the other partner just rolls along. And so I think there are a few things you can think about in terms of how you mitigate that particular problem. So the first thing is a concept that we talk about as revealing.

which is basically this idea of revealing your full, often uncomfortable truth in the relationship. And so this means that if you have that experience of all of a sudden, every time we have one of these difficult decisions, the quote unquote team goes in a way that's totally against the

what's best for me or, you know, doesn't allow me to pursue my purpose in life. That's an important conversation. And some couples can have that conversation, just the two of them. For some couples, that conversation can be so explosive that they need somebody outside of the system.

But that's a really important conversation to have if there's a systematic power dynamic at play that's distorting that sort of team outcome. And I will just say for us, just as an example here, this shift is

When we were doing it in such a way where we were coming into it as equals and there wasn't a weird power dynamic at play was really transformative. And it really happened for us when our daughter was moving into first grade and she was going to be coming home on the school bus at 315. And we both really wanted somebody there for her at 315. That's what was best for us, for Kajona, as Kaylee said.

And the question became then, how do we do that? And that was actually a moment where I went down to 80% time, which probably wasn't best for me in my career and advancement and things like that. But it felt like a win all around. I got to spend more time with our daughter. Our daughter had somebody to greet her. Our family just was so much more cohesive. There was slack in the system, which is something that I think a lot of modern couples are struggling to create.

So that's just how I would say you can mitigate some of those dynamics. Something I would add to this conversation is on purpose, the book is 80-80 and not 100-100.

that the goal isn't my whole identity becomes our team and our couplehood, that there's still that 20 where I can have interests and goals and pursuits that are really just for me. Now, hopefully they aren't completely detrimental to the team's pursuits.

But there's real value in making sure that each person maintains an identity. So the team is, you know, it's too cheesy to say, but, you know, one plus one is three rather than one plus one is, you know, 1.25 or something. So you're both kind of leading into...

some more things that you talk about in terms of like how you figure out what your roles are and what your priorities are as a team, which I think can be helpful, right? In terms of how you, how you decide what's best for the team versus maybe what's best for, for one or both of you as individuals. But first, if you're listening to this conversation and you're thinking, okay,

This sounds great and all, but I don't, I don't see my partner showing up that way. Like I don't, I don't see them being willing to, to operate from a place of generosity like this, to operate from a place of being a team. Um, I'm thinking of your, of a chapter 14, the infamous chapter 14 where, and I'm just saying it like that because when you read the book, you'll see what I'm talking about. Um, at the,

Very early on, Nate and Kaylee say, if you think this isn't going to go so well and your alarm bells are going off, skip to chapter 14 because that's going to help you adjust to like this whole idea and how it might be possible for you. So let's talk about chapter 14 for a little bit. And this question of like, what do you do if you feel like your partner is a reluctant participant in this, if at all?

Let's skip to chapter 14, the reluctant partner. This was such an interesting and

chapter to write because it was looking at all of the challenges to everything that we were saying and understanding where they came from, how they were true and helping make it feel real instead of, to your point, some pie in the sky imaginary relationship where then unicorns transport you to your activities and

And what we discovered as we were interviewing couples, and as part of the research for this book, we spent time with about 100 people in in-depth interviews, was that when the partner felt like there was no way they were going to participate, when we took another look

The person who was doing more, the person who was over contributing had a role to play. And the dynamic couldn't shift until there was a willingness to look at how am I as the over contributing partner, the one who would be all in for 80-80, who just happens to be married to this person who wouldn't be interested. What's my part in this?

And in some ways, it actually started from our own experience that when Nate and I were first married,

I can say this about you, right? Yeah. Okay. He was the reluctant partner and I was absolutely the over contributor. And some of this I think was historical legacy and gender roles where I just thought to myself, you know, of course I can and therefore should not only work full time, but be in charge of our house and our finances and how we get organized and our travel to see our families.

And then after it would happen, I would experience all kinds of resentment. And then what I realized was, oh, wait, I'm creating this dynamic. And it was most explicit around our finances that when Nate and I got married, he was a grad student. So he lived in graduate student housing in a dorm, which I don't think he ever cleaned until we got married. Yeah.

And meanwhile, I was a consultant and I had some practice with finances. So I had spreadsheets and was using Quicken and really had some systems. And I was like, oh, cool. I'll just take this over. And then I was so mad every time that he would go spend on things. There's an infamous story in our relationship about this bike that he went and bought some super fancy bike. And I was so pissed because he didn't have any conception of what percentage of our budget that was.

And then he said, babe, how am I supposed to know? And I realized I was so controlling that I was actually preventing him from being an equal partner with me. And so there's in the reluctant partner chapter, we encourage people to take a look at what's my part in this. How could I myself show up differently that might allow a different possibility for my partner?

Yeah. Yeah. You have to create some space. You have to become an invitation to the table. If, if you're otherwise crowding everyone out at the table, then you can't expect them to join you. Right. Exactly. And how would you distinguish between, you talk about the difference between a reluctant partner and an unwilling partner, right?

The key distinction there has to do with to what degree is the under contributing partner curious and open to the possibility of a new dynamic. So in our case, I was definitely the reluctant partner. And yet I was also interested and open to this idea that maybe we could shift the way we thought about our relationship, our mindset, also the way we structured our relationship,

to create something that worked better for both of us. So the key variable there is curiosity and reluctant partners. They seem to resist doing more. They seem to resist working on the relationship, reading books about marriage, things like that. But there is on some level a spark of curiosity there.

Whereas an unwilling partner is someone who has essentially just boarded up the door to change, has no interest in shifting the way they think about the marriage in seeing somebody who might be able to help you as a couple. And that's just a really unfortunate position to be in. And I think, you know, one of the things we learned from our interviews and we say in the book is that in that case,

you really don't have much room to shift to something like 80-80. You know, you can make it work and you can sort of practically figure out ways to maintain a life together, but 80-80 is probably not in your future if that's the case. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that for a lot of reluctant partners,

At least some of the time that can be the sense of, well, I don't even see how this could be different. They will also be uncomfortable in their own way because inevitably when you're in a relationship where there's this huge imbalance or where there's competition, other things start falling apart and becoming very uncomfortable for both people, whether you're the over-contributing partner or the reluctant partner.

But that's yeah, go ahead. I think that's so interesting, Neil, because in some ways the over contributing partner, it's easy to see why that can be a drag and why resentment would show up. And that sense of unfairness or this isn't working in some ways feels pretty easy to identify, right?

But I love that you're pointing to it's uncomfortable to be the reluctant partner as well. Yeah. And we experienced this ourselves. But I also remember this one interview where we were interviewing a gentleman whose marriage had just ended and he was the reluctant partner. And, you know, you'd think that for somebody who has a spouse who's really doing everything, that would be a great position. You get to be the free rider.

But he talks about how painful it was, where the whole story in their relationship was, he's the guy who doesn't do enough. He's the guy who doesn't show up. And this is somebody who's a big time achiever in life, who's striving for success. And so to have that be his identity was so painful. It actually...

pulled him back from doing more. So there's a way in which this dynamic, it's like self-reinforcing. If you're the reluctant partner and you feel that way, then you lose all the motivation you might've had to do more. And so the dynamic just keeps getting worse and worse. You know, the discrepancy gets wider and wider and it kind of just creates a cycle of inequality. Yeah. I think it's ironic how in that situation, you know,

I think it ends up feeding both people's stories of it never being enough or, or one of them, maybe I'm not being seen and appreciated. And the other being like, I could never live up to what my partner wants for me. Um, and neither of those places is a place where you're going to feel really great about being with each other, where you're going to feel like having sex with each other, et cetera. Um, one last little point here that I think is important. And, um,

You made me think of it, Kaylee, when you were talking about how you didn't choose to call it the 100-100 marriage and that you reserve some of that for yourself and your identity and what's important to you. You also talk about how important it is to feel the freedom that if you had to, you could leave. You do reserve that right if you can't figure this out together. Right.

Yeah. One of the, one of the qualities that allows 80, 80 to really thrive is that level of respect and autonomy to know that you have choice.

And I want to be thoughtful and respectful that I recognize that's not always the case in every relationship, that sometimes there are external constraints that make that not available. But in the vast majority of situations, that recognition also creates additional incentive to work your hardest to make what you have and what you're committed to as awesome as it can be. Yeah. And that...

Also, if you're if you were like, yeah, my partner is the unwilling partner. Definitely go through the exercise that that Kaylee and Nate are talking about in terms of examining how you might be contributing. Step back a little bit like there's a whole unwinding process that you can go through here that that doesn't unwind instantly. Right. It takes some time for a dynamic, an unhealthy dynamic to shift and.

But in the end, like, yeah, if you got to go, like, you might have better luck next time. Exactly. Not that that's what we're saying. You should that shouldn't be your first choice, but it shouldn't be off the table. Correct. Totally with you. So let's talk about sex.

We're working backwards now a little bit from chapter 14, because you talk about how in the in the landscape of the 80 80 marriage, 80 80 relating that you have to examine things like what are the roles that need to be filled in?

By each of you in your relationship and who's going to do that. What are you going to prioritize in your in your coupleship? How how is the power dynamic unfolding? What are your boundaries going to be? We can touch a little bit more on some of these and then you have this interesting segue into sex in your book and how all of this the ways that we relate how they play out in

in terms of how a couple has sex with each other or doesn't. I love that you pointed out the sequence there. I think you're one of the first people we've talked to who's noticed that, that there's an intentional arc of this whole narrative. And it may seem weird that we're going from a structure of shared success to roles, to priorities, to boundaries, to power, and then all of a sudden sex.

But it was really intentional. And the reason being that there's a critique of a lot of relationships, self-help, and particularly some of the tools we've put forth, which says something like,

sex and intimacy should be totally spontaneous. And this whole idea of getting clear on who does what in your household and priorities, that's what you should be doing in a business context. Like leave that for the boardroom because the bedroom is all about this kind of fun, totally spontaneous play of sex.

And what that leads to is a view of sex where the idea is that if you're having problems in the bedroom, that it must be a sex problem. So in other words, there must be some tactical reason that you're not having just outrageous, amazing sex. You know, you're not using the right toys. You need to use cherry flavored orgasm balm.

If you read a magazine like Cosmo, which we dove into pretty deeply while we were writing this book, I mean, it's hilarious, right? They have like underwater pool positions that can spark your sex life and all these different crazy things. But the basic idea behind this cultural narrative is that sex problems are sex problems. And we wanted to turn that narrative on its head. And so the argument we make in the book is,

is that most sex problems are actually life problems. And one of the things we say is what's happening in your life is also likely what's happening in the bedroom. In some ways, your sex life is like a mirror image of all the other things, all the resentments, all the conflicts that are happening in your everyday life.

So what's happening while you're in line at Costco and the fight you're having is actually very closely connected to what might be happening in the bedroom. And the reason for that is that when we're fighting constantly about fairness, when we're experiencing role confusion, we have no idea who's doing what, when we have totally unclear priorities, right?

everything becomes so crazy and chaotic and filled with conflict that we lose connection. And once we've lost connection, we're,

inevitably, no matter how amazing you are at sex or how many tools you buy or toys you buy, it's just not going to be as good. Connection is really the prerequisite. So that's sort of the reason for that strange arc that you pointed out. I love how

we got to notice that sex was a reflection also of the tenor of the relationship. That if your relationship was characterized by fairness, your sex was characterized by fairness. If your life was characterized with frustration, your sex was often characterized by frustration. Whereas if your life was characterized by

by generosity, then the sex was generous. If you were disconnected from your partner emotionally, you could have emotionally disconnected sex. If you were really emotionally connected, then it was emotionally connected, passionate sex. And the quality of the relationship was so reflected in the quality of the sex.

Sorry, I just got lost for a second thinking about sex, but yes. And this also unfolds often in terms of how partners experience differing levels of desire at different times, right? Like where one person is the one who seems to want it more, one person seems to want it less, and then this very similar kind of dynamic happens.

can unfold where it's like, well, what's fair or who's, you know, what's right in this situation or how do you even get past that when, when one person seems to hold to be the gatekeeper over sex. So what is your, how, how do you apply generosity to those, to those kinds of issues where, where, where,

People are in more of a competitive space around how much they're having sex, who's initiating, things like that. What you're naming is how sex becomes an expression of power.

And underneath that, there is very often in a couple, a drive discrepancy. Exactly as you're saying, one partner wants to have sex more often than the other partner. And it can become a real power dynamic. The person who has a lower sex drive becomes the gatekeeper or the person with the higher sex drive feels like they're pressuring their partner. And it creates really uncomfortable dynamics, right?

This is where from the place of generosity, we encourage using structure. And so if there is a drive discrepancy, while it can sound unsexy, it's actually really freeing and free sex is more fun than, you know, sort of obligatory or uncomfortable or gatekept sex is to make a plan.

can the low drive partner and the high drive partner agree on a frequency so that they know tonight is date night and we have sex on date night and it sets an expectation so they can also both lead up to that experience and encounter from a place of generosity, connection, agreement, rather than, oh,

oh man, am I going to get rejected if I ask? Or like, oh, can I feign a headache? That it actually creates more alignment. Yeah. Maybe we could talk for a moment about

something you touched on earlier, Nate, which was your prescription for revealing. And the reason that that's coming up for me in this moment is, is partly because of that arc that we were just talking about of how working through roles, priorities, boundaries, et cetera, leads, I think to that place. And I'd never really thought about it quite this way before reading your book, which I really appreciate. And,

It leads to a place where you can show up in bed with your partner where, I mean, obviously there are other places to show up sexually with your partner, but let's just talk about the bedroom for the moment. Where you can show up there relatively clear and able to just be present in the moment and

You know, I appreciate that we're talking about the sex problem and how to perhaps use scheduling as a way to overcome like this, the imbalance in drive. And at the same time, I think it is very real for a lot of couples that there are all of these kind of unspoken little moments that are driving them apart. And then when they get to the bedroom with each other, it's like,

It's like they can't even find each other. There's there's this big chasm to getting to that place. So even though there's this vision of like, oh, if we could only get there, there's all that pleasure waiting for us. There's being totally in the moment. There's being able to forget about our problems, all of those kind of lovely things that can happen sexually among others. Yeah.

It's almost impossible to get there if when you look at your partner, you can't stop thinking about how pissed off you are about X, Y, Z. Absolutely. So there's a couple of things going on there. The

broader life context is that, as you noted, many couples we interviewed really struggled with communication and in particular with two kinds of revealing. So one kind of revealing was just revealing to their partner their full experience of life, which could often be really good and positive.

There are a lot of couples we talk to that they're not having the conversation at the end of the day where they're sharing their dreams or they're sharing their wins in life. And that's one form of disconnection that's problematic and keeping you from being as close as you might otherwise be.

But then there are also those moments of disconnection or misunderstanding or hurt feelings, which are constant. I mean, I would say every day there's something like that that happens for us where we just we're not on the same page or whatever it might be.

And those moments are really opportunities in disguise if you use them skillfully. Because if in those moments you can reveal, hey, when you said that, I had this experience. I felt irritated, whatever it might be. All of a sudden, those moments can turn into opportunities to come closer together.

Now, if we don't take advantage of those opportunities, and I think our habit in relationships is to not do that because it's uncomfortable and it's awkward to say, hey, I need to reveal something. If we don't, they become like these microscopic ruptures that over time just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we talked to one couple, it's actually the beginning story of the revealing chapter where

The man and the couple had an affair with an ex-girlfriend over Facebook, and they tried to figure out for years, how do we get here? And finally, what they came up with was that there were so many of these microscopic ruptures in connection that eventually it became so big, this gap in disconnection, that it resulted in an affair, which is a catastrophic moment for a relationship. So I think that's the importance of those kind of

like moments of just coming back into connection and revealing your full experience.

First, what a gift for that couple to be able to look at it with that level of scrutiny and to be able to get to that place of recognizing like, oh, this is how the structure of our relationship actually contributed to that happening. I think that's so often one of the only pathways out of an affair where you have like a successful people are able to stay together. It's where

they're able to really look at the big picture and not get just trapped in blame. So just kind of naming that around that specific situation

Also, you mentioned the Gottman's work in your book. This seems like an appropriate place to just talk about how important showing up for your partner's bids are in a positive way. And they talk about that five to one ratio of positive to negative interactions that sometimes is even as high as 20 to one with the relationship masters versus the relationship disasters. Yeah.

uh, and so the, the revealing gives you a chance to, um, to take a negative interaction and turn it into something positive. Um, and, uh,

seeing your partner and appreciating them for the things that they do or appreciating each other's wins. Like you were just talking about, Nate, that's another thing that, that adds some positive energy to the bank account so that when, when a rupture happens of some sort, you've got something that you're, that's helping support you through those moments. Yeah. You're, you're articulating so beautifully the Gottman's work and the,

as we think about that bank account of relational capital, for us, it's really the mindset and the three pieces that fit together so elegantly are contribution, how can I give in our relationship? And that can be acts of service, but it could also be sharing an experience or it can be doing that errand or planning that thing. So there's a contribution piece

The appreciation, really the glasses that you wear in the relationship and catching your partner doing something good and the revealing, as you've said, what's really going on inside. And sometimes it's the wins and the celebrations. Sometimes it's the things that are just vile.

vulnerable to share, and then certainly naming the misses or the upsets or the issues so that you can do something about it. At least from our perspective, that's really a three-legged stool that when someone reveals that being present or accepting the bid might even look like appreciation, or it might look like revealing yourself that when your partner is

does a contribution that, again, you can appreciate them, that there's really a virtuous cycle between those three that helps create the overarching mindset of radical generosity. And that foundation allows

discussions about structure, discussions about roles, discussions about priorities, those things where pragmatically you need to make things happen in the world go so much better. And that the bank account or the foundation of radical generosity gives you so much more leeway as things have an upset, because then I can reveal trusting that we're coming back to that, that set point of appreciation and generosity together.

Hmm. What do you think? Like step one, let's say someone is listening to us talking right now and they're like, this sounds great. This sounds, you know, like what I'm shooting for in my relationship. I want us to feel I want to feel like like we're operating in a virtuous cycle of radical generosity. Yeah.

Other than putting your book in the hands of their partner, what are some practical ways to start that conversation in a relationship to help just bring it to the table that I want to make this shift? This could be amazing for us. We were talking the other day to a relationship therapist and he had this phenomenal line. He said,

everybody I talk to is excited to go second in marriage. And what I loved about that line is just this point that we're all really excited to move towards something like radical generosity or 80, 80, whatever you want to call it, a better relationship, as long as our partner goes first or immediately reciprocates. And so I think for somebody who's looking for the practical first step,

One idea is just to be okay with the discomfort of moving out of that fairness mindset towards something like radical generosity, because from the vantage point of fairness and 50-50,

Generosity doesn't actually make any sense. It is by definition unfair often to be generous and it's uncomfortable. And so the first thing would be to just be willing to go first, even if you're the over-contributing partner and that's unfair against the backdrop of unfairness. And then one really easy way to put this into practice is

is just to think about every day, one thing you can do as an active contribution for your partner. And these are not like huge, monumentous things. It's not planning a trip to Fiji. This could be getting them coffee in the morning, unloading the dishwasher for them, taking the trash out, even though it's not your turn, whatever that might be. But doing that

And then just seeing what happens, because one of the things we found is that there's a way in which generosity is contagious. And that's important because it answers the question of like, well, how does this actually transform the whole relationship? How am I not going to just end up doing more? And then my partner is not going to respond.

The truth is that mindset is often contagious. So if you're in a fairness 50-50 mindset, that's contagious. Your resentment is contagious. But likewise, if you can just shift one time a day into that mindset of radical generosity, I think what you'll find is that there's a way in which your partner will mirror that back to you in some way. It'll loosen up some of the resentment. You'll connect a little bit more and it creates this kind of virtuous upward spiral.

that I think is really powerful. Just speaking practically, you reminded me of a couple things. First is that in this mindset of generosity, there's...

There is actually literally a mindset shift in terms of how you see the ways that you contribute to your relationship. That's so important, right? Where you say to yourself, I'm doing this because I love this person. I'm doing this for the good of Kajona or whatever you've named your team entity.

you know, the, the Buccaneers, whatever it is. Yeah, exactly. Team satin. And, and that, that experience of doing something from that place, I'm doing this because I love my partner. I love my family is qualitatively so different than I'm going to do this because it's got to get done. And I'm going to, so I'm going to sacrifice and do it. So,

You're doing the exact same thing under those circumstances, but the way you're going to feel and the way the people around you are going to feel is going to be totally different. 100%. And then the other thing just I wanted to name quickly is that, you know, I think in the context of someone over contributing, it is important to remind you that

You need you do need to step back. You are probably going to need to have some conversations with your partner where you break things down a little bit more. And maybe we'll spend the last part of our conversation talking about about that sort of the practicalities of it so that.

It's not just one more thing in a long list of you doing everything like you are going to have to probably reel yourself in a little bit and you might have to be willing to deal with some chaos or things not happening so that you can enter the conversation about how to structure things differently.

You've named three really important components of if I want the dynamic in my relationship to change, what needs to happen? The first is the mindset shift around how I'm having the conversation. Because if I go into a conversation with my reluctant partner with a mindset of,

You need to change what you're doing is bad and wrong. I'm not going to tell you how bad and wrong you are and believe that they're then going to do something different. I think the probability of success is quite low. If I go into that conversation with a mindset of

I believe that one, we love each other, we're a team and that we can create something that feels better for each and both of us that frames it really differently. And sometimes even being explicit about the frame, I wanna have a conversation. I think it might be messy and it might not be easy and I'm doing it because I love you and I love us and I want us to be our best.

feels different. So one is the mindset. Two is exactly as you're saying, a willingness to experience some chaos. If I let my partner do something that I have been controlling, they're probably not going to do it the same way that I did. And maybe not even as well as I did. And can I

move through that discomfort, move through that chaos in service of the ultimate desire that we both want, which is an experience of equality and deep love.

And the third piece, I think, is a willingness to be explicit about those roles. That one of the things that was transformational in us moving from my over-contributing and it's under-contributing to this real partnership and teamwork was we sat down and I said, hey, this isn't working, not because you're doing something wrong, but because I'm

I'm going to break. And, you know, it was when our daughter was born, I was trying to be the mom that I wanted to be and a full time professional and do all of the tasks and chores and housework that I had somehow taken on. And I realized I was fraying at the seams and that wasn't good for me. That wasn't good for us. That was really not good for our daughter. And so sitting down with that framework to say, can we just look at all of the things that need to happen in our life?

And as we look at this list of roles that need to take place and where they currently live and where they could live, can we be a team in designing this so that you're doing the things that you care most about? I'm doing the things I care most about. Perhaps we can delegate some things that neither of us care about. But can we look at this with fresh eyes rather than just continuing the old things that we've been doing?

allowed us to create structure where we put it on paper and not in a tit for tat Excel spreadsheet where it's like, "You did not complete your task. I will now devote you into a performance review." Really, it felt so much like teamwork.

Yeah. Yeah. And there I imagine that there will be moments where you're like, well, you said you were going to do this thing and you didn't do that thing. And, you know, what do what do we do about that? Like, where's where's your radical generosity now when you're not, you know, you said you're going to take out the trash. So when those moments come up for the two of you, as I imagine they must, what do you fall back on? Yeah, that's where we really fall back on that idea of revealing.

So that would be a moment for us. And those happen all the time, even though I think we're pretty clear on our roles. It's just a moment where something got misunderstood or there was a miscommunication. And that's a real opportunity for

for us to examine, well, how are we setting things up where this miscommunication is happening? Or there's often roles in a relationship that are unexpected or new where you haven't really thought about who's the one who does that.

So, you know, this happened just recently for us. There was a question of who was going to manage a process of renewing our insurance. And we hadn't done it in a while. And I thought it was Kaylee's job. She thought it was my job.

And there was a little bit of frustration there, but it actually turned into a moment where we could clarify. So I think that's where revealing really comes in. And one other thing I would just say, we actually wrote an op-ed in the LA Times last week about this. There's a way in which...

not having clarity around roles can actually perpetuate inequalities in marriage. And the way this really gets started is something we found in our interviews. We would ask people, how did you decide who does what in your marriage? And the answer we got 90% of the time was some version of, I don't know, we just sort of fell into these roles. And we actually started to call it the winged approach to roles where we're

Couples, they never actually say this. It's very much operating under the level of awareness, but they basically just say, hey, you know, we're going to let centuries of gender norms and random historical accident determine who does what in our marriage. We're not actually going to think about it or look at it.

And that creates a lot of problems. It creates logistical problems around who does what. It creates fairness and resentment problems that arise as conflict in the relationship. But importantly, it also perpetuates gender inequality because when you're existing in a condition like that of total role confusion, which many modern couples are,

All of a sudden, there's a vacuum of responsibility. And who's going to fill in the roles? And who's going to do what needs to be done in that vacuum? Well, it's generally the person who's being pushed forward with the most historical momentum. And that is generally the woman in the relationship. So I think it's just important to underscore that that idea of clarifying roles has so many powerful benefits on so many different levels. Yeah.

I want to mention in this moment that, you know, one of the things that I found to be super practical about your book, The 80-80 Marriage, is that you, in these chapters about how you define your roles, how you figure out what your priorities are, how you figure out where you need to set boundaries, you offer some very simple ideas.

yet practical and and comprehensive ways to do this analysis for your relationship and hopefully from that I think get some insight about how you are operating in terms of all of these things and then you get to make a conscious choice about well is that how I want it to be or or do I want to do it in some different way

In my life outside of being an author, I'm an executive coach and a facilitator. So I am a huge fan of the exercise because I think sometimes if it lives only in conversation, we can nod at each other and be like, yeah, we totally get that. And yet there's something about that.

thinking about priorities where I need to give myself a report card and intentionally fail some classes at life, that all of a sudden gives a different level of clarity that facilitates more active choice in a really pragmatic way.

I want to give you guys a chance to answer maybe two questions at once before we go. I do want to mention that a little unique tidbit that I read in your book that I hadn't heard before was this idea that when it comes to defining who's going to do what in a relationship, that if you're someone who has higher standards, that it, it,

ends up becoming your responsibility to either do something or to delegate that thing and how and it made me think about how many times that creates problems in a relationship where the person with higher standards delegates to the other person who then doesn't perform up to their standards and how many problems that can create. So I thought that was a lovely little hint from your book. The question I want to ask you and

if you want to pass on this one and have me come up with another last question, I will. But I'm curious about this, the priorities and boundaries, because we haven't really touched on that quite as much. And I'm wondering if either of you

Just in like kind of a meta recognition of when you put yourselves out there as a couple, there's like a lot on the line. You're kind of exposing yourself. And I wonder if either of you is ever just like, fuck this 80-80 marriage. Like, this is hard. I don't like I'm done. I don't want to do this. And so I'm wondering if you can think of a moment like that.

and maybe how it feeds into the conversation about priorities and boundaries. How's that? What I can say is that in the lead up to this book, when we were thinking of it at first as an idea, and then we started writing it, I had a conversation about three or four times with different people

where they would call me out of the blue and they would say some version of, Hey, I saw that you're writing a book on marriage. Don't do it. I had this friend, he and his wife started a podcast on marriage and they got divorced like a year later.

And the basic idea was that if you go out there in public and you talk about what it takes to have a thriving marriage, you have essentially put a bullseye on your back and like the universe is after you and you will get a divorce. And I mean, I thought that was so interesting because I've been thinking about and writing about mindfulness for 15 years and

And nobody ever said to me in the course of that time, hey, you really shouldn't write about mindfulness because I knew this guy. He got into meditation and he lost his mind. You know, somehow you're writing about mindfulness is going to lead you down the slippery slope of insanity. You're going to end up in a mental institution or something.

But that was what people were saying about marriage. So you're absolutely right that there was something different about this project from everything we've done previously where the level of risk felt higher. And in terms of your question, though, which I think was, you know, have you ever had these moments of just like screw 80-80?

I honestly, and I'd love to have you answer this. I can't think of a moment where I said, screw 80, 80. I mean, I can think of moments where I've been extremely frustrated where, you know, we've had conflict, uh,

But I haven't had a moment like that. You know, there may have been times where somebody said something really weird on Instagram where I'm like, oh, screw being out in the in the public on this. But what about you, Kaylee? I'm curious. I was having the same thought. And this sounds too good to be true. I know it does sound too good to be true. This this is what I will say. So.

In the last 10 days, I have been both quite sick and injured. And so being on the, you know, sort of, I can't do the things that I would want to do side of it. I can feel how I have grown accustomed to 80, 80, that I'm

I believe in the long arc of generosity that it isn't, you know, and every day it needs to be perfectly even because in some ways that would be sort of a new formulation of

50-50 fairness. Right. But it is uncomfortable for me at this moment to feel like I am not showing up, you know, sort of doing more or like being able to express, you know, or contribute. And yet I think that in 80-80, it's also given me a language to reveal what's been going on inside that I didn't just sort of

grin and bear it and pretend that things were fine, that it was vulnerable to share all the things that were happening and trust that that was going to make us even closer. So it wasn't a moment of screw 80, 80. It was a moment of, wow, 80, 80 can show up really differently from how I initially conceived it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And the point isn't to be perfect. And it occurred to me after I asked the question that part I think of what I imagine will help keep your relationship healthy, despite being in the public eye, etc, etc, is relationship.

One, like reminding us that no one has a perfect relationship and that that what is perfect is being able to identify as a couple. What do we prioritize above all other things? How do we do that together so that it's like what are Kajona's priorities? And.

And where are we going to create boundaries so that whatever pressures being in the public eye creates for us, where we know where to draw a line, where to say no, where to keep our sphere, or as Stan Tatkin calls it, our couple bubble, or maybe we'll expand it to like the family bubble as well. How do we keep that intact so that the pressures of being public and maybe to be perfect are

don't impact us negatively in that way. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and as you mentioned, I think all couples experience this, but there is a certain level of clarity that you need to have sometimes around

how much do you want to put out there? You know, there are many people on Instagram talking about marriage and many people who will put out everything that happens, every fight they've had in, in, you know, all the detail. And so, you know, that's something we've had to think about is how much do we want to reveal and what's private, what's public. And I, I think,

We're authors, so we probably have to think about that more than other people. But even people who aren't in the public eye, there are still those decisions to be made around what you put out there, what you don't on social media, or just priorities and boundaries in general when it comes to dealing with extended family or just responding to the

endless stream of notifications and demands and requests that all of us are getting all the time, figuring out how we navigate that skillfully.

Yeah. Well, we have covered so much ground. And yet, if we were really going to like go through everything that's in your book, we could sit here for a lot longer. Rather than doing that, I'm going to suggest that you all go out and check out the 8080 Marriage by Nate and Kaylee Klemp, who have been here chatting with me today. And guys, if people want to find out more about you, your work, where can they find you? Yeah.

Our website, 80808080marriage.com is probably the best place. You can find out more about the book there. We also have a free guide there on how to have an epic date night and a quiz that's also free on how 8080 is your relationship.

We also do a weekly newsletter where we write about different tips on marriage and relationships. And then we're on Instagram as well, 8080marriage.com.

Great. Well, it has been such a pleasure to have the both of you here with me today. We will have the link to your website and to your book at neilsatin.com slash 8080. And you can also download the transcript of this conversation there. And Kaylee and Nate, such a pleasure to have you with us here on Relationship Alive. What an honor to talk with you today. Thank you.

Neil, thank you very much. It's so fun to talk about the book with someone like you who has just really gone deep and thought about it so carefully.