Are you ready to sit your partner down to talk about the aggravatingly unfair division of labour in your house" Here are some tips from psychologist Joshua Coleman, senior fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families.
Look for underlying issues

Before even starting to dig in to a discussion about division of domestic labour, Coleman suggests assessing whether your anger is actually being used as a stand-in for more profound grievances. ?Some men may protest their feelings of being deprived or hurt in the relationship by not doing housework,? he says. ?Similarly, a woman might be especially critical of her husband?s sloppiness because of feeling rejected, unseen or uncared for by him in other areas of their life.? If these deeper wrinkles aren?t ironed out first, Coleman says housework negotiations are bound to fail. Encourage collaboration

One of the biggest ways to shut down a conversation is to criticize your partner or use general negative statements about their character, like ?you?re lazy.? Coleman suggests using language that inspires your partner to work together with you on solutions. For example: ?I feel like I?m doing more work than I?d like to be doing, and I wanted to get your thoughts to see how we might move forward together on that.? If you really want to grease the wheels, begin the chat by acknowledging everything your partner is already doing.

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