How much work is too much in a relationship?
If you've been to an engagement party, bridal shower, or wedding, you've probably heard a well-meaning relative offer these sage words of wisdom: Marriage is work. Hard work. Persistent work. A lifelong project. The adage is instructive, but it's also a warning — this relationship will try your patience, and for it to endure, you must be willing to put forth the effort.
This is undeniably true. All relationships require maintenance to survive. No two people will ever see eye-to-eye on everything, will never have enough time to spend together, and will, at some point, feel a gulf of distance between them. Healthy relationships are constant conversations; they require cooperation, give and take. Anything less is just complacency.
But, in today's culture, relational upkeep is increasingly considered problematic. The rallying cry to 'protect your peace' and incessant warnings around 'red flags' encourage individuals to part with relationships that require any elbow grease, fine-tuning, or uncomfortable conflict resolution. This is, perhaps, a response to the longstanding expectation that women in heterosexual relationships will overlook, excuse, or attempt to correct bad behavior.
Wouldn't it be nice, then, if you could pinpoint exactly how much 'work' is too much work? If you could identify the number of times you're supposed to re-tread the same old argument before you can throw in the towel? How do you decide when a rough patch is just reality?
In between the two extremes of 'cut them off' and 'do anything to make it work' is the goldilocks of romantic labor: enough effort from both parties to ensure the relationship can grow. While everyone maintains a different line for what they consider 'too much' work, research supports the idea that people who put effort into their relationships are happier in the long run — and that work might look much more humdrum than you think.
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But keeping a partnership afloat shouldn't come at the expense of your own mental and physical health. As impersonal as it may seem, it helps to think of relationships as another job: Just like dissatisfied employees search for greener pastures, burnt-out couples shouldn't be ashamed to leave a bad fit behind.
The labor of love
Working to maintain a romantic relationship is a somewhat recent phenomenon. Until the 20th century, people largely got married and stayed married — 'and they didn't really talk about their relationships in terms of this work analogy,' says Kristin Celello, an associate professor of history at Queens College, City University of New York and author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States.
But by the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, with divorce rates climbing, a hodgepodge group of social scientists, psychologists, and the media united in their panic concerning the sanctity of marriage. And thus, a brand new field was born: marriage counseling. That's when the idea of marriage as work also took root, Celello says. The notion persisted in the ensuing decades, especially after the post-World War II divorce boom. It was thought that this essential work, Cellelo continues, was 'the way to strengthen your relationship and also prevent divorce.'
Feminism in the late 1960s and '70s helped promote the idea that relational upkeep shouldn't exclusively fall to wives.
Throughout the 20th century, social movements called into question who this work benefits (spoiler alert: it's men) and who all the responsibility falls to (it's women). Until the 1970s, it was the wife who attended marriage counseling, Celello says. The problems in a marriage were largely blamed on a woman's behavior. ('In the '50s, the idea is, well, if your husband's drinking, what are you doing to make him drink?' Celello says.)
Feminism in the late 1960s and '70s helped promote the idea that relational upkeep shouldn't exclusively fall to wives and encouraged women to set non-negotiables in their relationships. It slowly became the mainstream view during this time that 'there are things that can happen in a marriage which you shouldn't keep working,' Celello says, 'like when it comes to abuse or infidelity.'
These days, a conservative-led push for higher marriage and birth rates along with the rise of the trad wife — which glamorizes the experience of a stay-at-home wife and mother — has once again valorized the idea of 'work,' at least in a heterosexual marriage. 'In conservative circles now, in the 21st century, we [have] sort of come back around to people don't put enough respect on marriage, and that they don't work hard enough,' Celello says, 'and that maybe it's okay if there's some degree of even physical violence or, [what] others might see as abusive.' At the same time, a spate of popular divorce memoirs have encouraged women to leave marriages where they find themselves carrying most of the burden.
What we mean when we say relationships are work
How much work you're willing to put into a relationship largely depends on your attitude toward romantic partnerships. People generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to beliefs about romance, says Fabian Gander, a research associate at the University of Basel. One group puts a lot of stock in destiny — the idea that you've been brought together by fate and are soulmates. The other believes in growth — that a relationship can be nurtured and problems repaired over time. In a study from last year, Gander found that those who believe in soulmates are happier in the short term, but those who think of relationships as something you work for are more satisfied in the long run. Partnerships where both parties have strongly held destiny beliefs were less satisfied with their relationships over the years.
Other research has supported Gander's findings. Research from 2012 found that effort was associated with satisfaction and stability in couples, whether they were living together, married, or in a new relationship post-divorce. The researchers measured effort based on how participants related to statements like 'I tend to fall back on what is comfortable for me in relationships, rather than trying new ways of relating' and 'If my partner doesn't appreciate the change efforts I am making, I tend to give up.'
Couples who are highly connected and have more successful marriages, a 2022 study found, were more likely to be intentional and proactive about showing compassion, spending time together, and being kind to one another. They also underwent regular 'relationship maintenance,' that included expressing needs, discussing problems, and setting goals for improving the relationship.
Why does work — or a belief in the power of effort — seem to equate to relationship satisfaction? 'Probably because [these couples] are prepared to invest effort,' Gander says. 'They know that I cannot just relax.… Maybe they know that this isn't how things work out best.'
Couples who have more successful marriages were more likely to be intentional about showing compassion, spending time together, and being kind to one another.
Gander is also continuing to study what type of 'work' the happiest couples engage in. As a part of the research, Gander and his team asked couples what activities they did together over the course of two and a half years, ranging from going hiking and doing dishes to talking on the phone and having sex. Couples who maintained shared activities remained happy, and, in some cases, got happier over time. 'Of course, real life is hyper-complicated, but one part of the answer may be that couples need to keep up the level of interactions,' Gander says. 'These things are always intertwined. So if I'm in a happy relationship, I will gladly do something with my partner, and the other way around if I'm not happy.'
In today's hyper-busy, over-scheduled world, the renowned relationship therapists John and Julie Gottman have their own suggestions for couples looking to put in extra work. Couples who hope to strengthen their relationships should spend an extra six hours together, focusing on quick chats at the beginning and end of each day (20-odd minutes a day), showing physical affection (five minutes a day), and scheduling a weekly date night (two hours a week).
When enough is enough
More time, more conversation, and more vulnerability doesn't always serve a relationship. Especially if you're the only one partaking. In even the healthiest of partnerships, there will be an imbalance between an 'over-functioner' and an 'under-functioner,' according to Lexx Brown-James, a licensed marriage and family therapist and sexologist. Over-functioners have 'been taught to be hyper efficient,' Brown-James says, 'which begets an under-functioner partner… who doesn't do as much in the family or in the relationship, because it's permissible to do so.'
This dynamic inevitably breeds frustration. The over-functioner believes their partner doesn't carry their weight, whether with household chores, emotional conversations, or child care, and the under-functioner feels bossed around. 'They come to therapy saying 'we have communication problems,'' Brown-James says. 'I often say that it's not a communication problem, it's an intimacy problem. Neither one of you is risking being vulnerable, whether that's saying I need help, or I feel like I'm failing, or I feel like I'm not good enough, or I'm struggling with what you're doing right now.'
Want to put a little more work into your relationship?
The researchers John and Julie Gottman devised a cheat code for improving relationships: Spend an extra six hours a week together. Here's how to build that time into your schedule.
Chat for two minutes before saying goodbye each weekday.
At the end of each work day, kiss for at least six seconds and then catch up for 20 minutes.
Share your appreciation for each other every day. (The Gottmans approximate this will take five minutes a day.)
Devote five minutes a day to physical affection: cuddling, kissing, hugging, etc. (35 minutes)
Schedule a two-hour date night each week. (120 minutes)
Finally, check in with each other for an hour to discuss the positives in your relationship as well as any issues. (60 minutes)
Absent those honest conversations, resentment can brew; you can burn out on your relationship. You might stick it out because you've been taught relationships are work, after all.
In these moments, Brown-James says, it's often imperative to look within. Society often reinforces gendered stereotypes that dictate women serve as the over-functioners and men as the under-functioners. To buck those narratives, you have to get comfortable asking yourself what it is you really need out of this relationship. This is especially important if you're not used to expressing your desires in a relationship in order to please your partner.
'That work on self means that you know what you want,' Brown-James says, 'you're able to verbalize it, you're able to recognize when you get it, and you're also able to reciprocate and see that you're the person that can deliver what the other person wants.' Sometimes, that independent work occurs at different paces, sometimes it doesn't occur at all. And it's okay to not want to wait for your partner to reach their own clarity.
Before calling it quits, consider what your goal of the relationship is, Celello says. Is it to be married (and stay married)? Is it to coparent children? Is it financial security? 'How does a partnership enable you to do that or not?' Celello says. Your idea of appropriate effort may change based on each of these goals.
Related Why couples are choosing cohabitation over marriage
On occasion, however, despite countless conversations and attempts to bridge divides and truly hear each other out, all that work isn't enough. No one can tell you when you've crossed that threshold.
Throwing in the towel shouldn't be seen as a sign of defeat. It signals a willingness to find happiness elsewhere, even if that's solo. 'People, when they don't like their jobs,' Celello says, 'will start a new career, and they'll find other sources of accomplishment and enjoyment.' That's work worth honoring, too.
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Today, text messages and disappearing voice notes have replaced letters between close friends, Instagram Stories vanish by default, and encrypted platforms such as Signal, where social movements flourish, let users automatically erase messages. Many people write to-do lists in notes apps and then delete them, line by line, when each task is complete. The problem for historians is twofold: On the one hand, celebrities, artists, executives, and social-movement leaders are generating more personal records than ever, meaning a lucky researcher might have access to a public figure's entire hard drive but struggle to interpret its contents. On the other hand, historians might lose access to the kind of intimate material that reveals the most—a possibility that has led some prognosticators to predict a coming ' digital dark age.' In some ways, archival research has always demanded sorting through verbal and visual detritus and working around unexpected gaps in records. 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When Sontag donated her laptop to the archive, did she realize how much she was giving away? In the past, even a writer of Sontag's stature would typically have a small-enough correspondence collection that they could plausibly review the letters they were planning to donate to an archive—and perhaps wouldn't have included missives from a secret lover. But the scope of our digital lives can make it much harder to account for everything (imagine giving up your whole social-media history to a researcher) and much easier for a historian to locate the tantalizing parts with a single search. Of course, that's if historians are lucky enough to access records at all. Many people delete their old texts to save storage space; with each swipe, years of correspondence might disappear. And even if they are saved, digital records are sometimes impossible to retrieve. 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Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Unlike Anna, 47, who largely kept her concerns to herself, her sister-in-law was vocal about her dislike for their in-laws. This rubbed Anna's husband the wrong way and ultimately drove a wedge between the two families. Now, they live an hour away and only see each other a handful of times a year. And when they do, it's awkward, Anna says. Her kids are no longer close with their cousins. Whenever Anna's sister-in-law invites her family on trips to amusement parks, they decline but end up going anyway — without them — and then lying about why they couldn't coordinate plans. 'I just hate the dishonesty,' Anna says. 'The worst part for me is pretending everything is fine when clearly everybody in the room knows it's not fine.' The relationship one has with their in-laws can be fraught and perplexing, friendly and intimate, polite and distant. The relationship one has with their in-laws can be fraught and perplexing, friendly and intimate, polite and distant. They're not the people you've chosen to bind yourself to, but you're still inextricably linked as long as you're with your partner. In-laws enjoy all the trappings and status of family, but aren't quite. Spending time with them can feel obligatory and not totally enjoyable. At the same time, there are no clearly defined expectations for what in-law relationships should look like, beyond the stereotypes. So what do you owe your partner's families of origin? They may not be your family, but they're probably going to be in your life in some form or fashion. They might never be a proxy for your own mother or sibling, but that doesn't mean they can't come close. The in-law stereotype As long as people have married, they have inherited their spouse's family. For centuries, parents aimed to pair their children based on the reputation, power, and wealth of a neighboring family, to create alliances through marriage. In many cultures worldwide, newlyweds typically moved in or near the husband's family. 'The aim of marriage was to acquire useful in-laws or gain political or economic advantage,' writes Stephanie Coontz in the 2005 book Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. By the 1920s, Coontz writes, 'marital privacy was more important than adults' ties with their parents' and, as a result, the number of couples who lived with their parents dropped precipitously over the first half of the 20th century. As couples established themselves as independent entities, in-laws — especially mothers-in-law — came to be seen as prying interlopers, as evidenced in the 1954 book In Laws, Pro & Con. 'Many a mother-in-law sounds baffled, bewildered, and bitter in her role,' wrote the book's author Evelyn Millis Duvall. 'She reports that anything she does is misconstrued by her sons- and daughters-in-law. If she leaves them alone, she is being neglectful; if she is nice to them, she is being twofaced; if she appears interested in what they are doing, she is meddling; if she keeps out of their affairs, she is not interested in them — she just can't win!' Since then, the cultural view of in-laws in America has stayed remarkably consistent, says Sylvia Mikucki-Enyart, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa. The caricature of the overbearing mother-in-law still has strong cultural sway — TV and movie representations abound. In real life, there are entire Reddit communities dedicated to meddlesome 'MILs.' Now, try to think of a single well-known father-in-law joke. 'In-law relationships are this weird between place of being family but not being the same intensity of family as family origin.' Beyond these broad stereotypes, cultural and familial expectations and traditions influence the in-law relationship. For instance, daughters-in-law in Asian American families reported feeling anxious, angry, and confused as a result of their in-laws' traditional cultural expectations to be subservient and deferential, according to one study. Other research found that among Black families, sons-in-law sharing interests with their fathers-in-law and making an effort to engage in family activities helped strengthen their bond. The way you interact with your in-laws is largely shaped by your partner's example. After all, if it weren't for them, you probably wouldn't have any connection to these people at all. Marrying someone who has a history of regularly spending time with their family of origin is a strong indication that you'll likely see more of these people in the future. 'I would take my guide from my wife,' says Geoffrey Greif, a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and co-author of In-Law Relationships: Mothers, Daughters, Fathers, and Sons. 'How close does she want me to be with her father and mother?' These expectations shouldn't come as a surprise — they're almost certain to come up while a couple is dating. As the relationship progresses and you gain insight into your partner's familial ties, you may learn how much they value weekly hangouts with their siblings or big gatherings for holidays. A close-knit family dynamic can, for some, be a green flag. Early on in his relationship with his now-wife Melli, Steven Schenberg, a 37-year-old in transportation logistics in Chicago, realized they'd not only be marrying each other but also each other's families. Within the first few months of dating, Schenberg grabbed dinner with one of Melli's sisters, attended the family's annual New Year's Day brunch, and slept on the floor of the hotel room Melli shared with her sisters at a wedding. Melli's brother is now one of Schenberg's best friends — a friendship that likely wouldn't have happened had they not met through Melli. Schenberg credits the closeness he maintains with his wife's family as part luck, part shared values. 'I was raised in a tight family nucleus,' he says. 'Melli was the same way.' The weird in-between space in-laws occupy Just because in-laws occupy a place of prominence in your partner's life doesn't necessarily guarantee them a similarly intimate space in yours. After all, you lack a deep shared history. There's always a degree to which you'll always play catch-up. 'In-law relationships are this weird between place of being family but not being the same intensity of family as family origin,' says Gretchen Perry, an associate professor of social work at the University of Northern British Columbia. 'When you have conflict, often, there's less tolerance for the intensity of that conflict [than] with your own family of origin.' And these relationships can be primed for conflict: too involved in-laws, absent in-laws, pushy in-laws, cheap in-laws, too-invested-in-their-traditions in-laws. Because there are fewer cultural norms offering a clear example of normative in-law relationships in Western societies, Mikucki-Enyart says, uncertainty abounds. 'Versus other cultures where when you get married, you go live with your husband's family and you're deferential to your mother-in-law,' she says. 'There are other cultures where it's very clearly outlined how these in-law relationships go, and in the US, we really don't have that.' In her research, Mikucki-Enyart has observed two types of uncertainty arise within in-law relationships: relational uncertainty (What kind of relationship do I want with this person? How often do we interact?) and family level uncertainty (How do we balance time with each family? How will grandparents interact with children?) The latter is usually more impactful, Mikucki-Enyart says, especially when grandchildren enter the picture. If a parent-in-law is uncertain about how best to help their adult child and their spouse care for their own kids, they may sacrifice closeness with their grandkids. 'There are other cultures where it's very clearly outlined how these in-law relationships go, and in the US, we really don't have that.' Mother-in-law relationships are typically the ones that are more fraught, at least in heterosexual relationships. This is because mothers have more points of contact within families. Women are still socialized and are expected to carry the bulk of child rearing and kin keeping, Mikucki-Enyart says, and a scarcity mindset pits mothers against their child's partner. 'There's not enough for all of us,' she says. 'We have to fight for a position and a spot, which leads to…it's either her or me. Not 'no, we can both love him and have individual relationships with this linchpin person.'' The recent 'boy mom' phenomenon only further ties a mother's identity to her male children — the trope suggests that relinquishing her son to a romantic partner means a woman losing a part of herself, too. Fathers-in-law, meanwhile, are seen as protectors. 'Men aren't involved in these relational roles, or their protectiveness is fulfilling their role,' Mikucki-Enyart says. How to have a pleasant-enough relationship with your in-laws Discuss how you want the relationship to look: As your relationship gets serious, talk with your partner about the relationship you hope to have with each set of parents. Set boundaries, too. How will you celebrate holidays? How will you address potential issues with the other's parents? If you plan on having children, how much access will each set of grandparents have? How often will you spend time with extended families? What will you do if parents want to see you more than you'd like? You might also have this conversation with your (future) in-laws if you're comfortable. It's never too late to have these talks. Determine how you'll navigate conflict: The blood relative is always responsible for smoothing over any conflicts. They should never throw their partner under the bus when bringing up concerns to their family of origin. Try using 'I' or 'we' statements: 'We love it when you visit, but could you give us a heads up next time?' Be prepared for compromises: Building a new family unit requires renegotiating old rituals. If your in-laws want you to come to their house for the holidays out of tradition, but you want to see your family, too, suggest alternatives: you'll go to their house for Thanksgiving and your parents for Christmas or Hanukkah. The more you buy into the cliches, the more they become self-fulfilling prophecies. 'Parents, especially mothers-in-law, are really in this damned if they do, damned if they don't position,' Mikucki-Enyart says. 'They're very aware of the negative stereotype surrounding them. So sometimes then they'll go to the extreme and really, give the couple space. ... Then children are like, 'Well, my mother-in-law doesn't even reach out, she doesn't even care,' and when she does, it's too much.' What do we owe in-laws? Whether an in-law falls under the umbrella of kin depends on how you define family. Those with a more narrow view of family — spouse and children — may be less inclined to bend over backwards to appease their mother-in-law. Still, in most cases, it's worth maintaining at least a cordial relationship with your in-laws for the benefit of your spouse or children. That's assuming you're treated with the same respect. Rina, a 31-year-old who works in hotel customer service in Toronto, used to consider her husband's sister someone reliable, someone worth confiding in. But over time, Rina's sister-in-law cut off contact with her, despite maintaining daily calls with her brother. At family gatherings, Rina's sister-in-law would ignore her and never told her kids to call her Aunt Rina. Recently, Rina's sister-in-law introduced her new baby to everyone in the family — except Rina. She was heartbroken. Rina, whose last name is being withheld so she can speak freely about her family, told her husband that his sister's actions made her feel like an outcast. 'He sees the problem,' Rina says in an email, 'and really wanted to help out.' He offered to talk to his sister, but Rina stopped him. It would only cause more drama. Related How to set boundaries with grandparents Knowing your in-laws, flaws and all, helps blunt the pain of any slights. In her research examining relationships between mothers- and daughters-in-law of East Asian descent, psychologist Angela Gwak found that though they were stressed by their mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law learned to cope with them over time. 'They've learned to accept them, but not like [their] family of origin,' Gwak says, 'but just learn to coexist together. The stress is less jarring because they know and can predict how they would respond to certain circumstances or situations.' Proof (and perhaps solace) that you may not be able to completely live without your in-laws, but you can learn to live with them.
