Ed, Mei, and 10,000 Miles of I-95 Resentment
When Chris and I got married, I started loading the dishwasher. Every night.
Nobody discussed it. There was no summit.
A few years later I woke up as the Chief Executive Officer of Kitchen Sanitation. Chris assumed I just loved doing the dishes.
I was quietly seething, like someone unplugged my phone at 2%. Chris had no
idea anything had been unplugged.
My business partner Ed had the highway version.
On road trips, Ed drove and his wife Mei fell asleep. Every single time. For years, Ed white-knuckled I-95 for hundreds of miles while Mei napped. She thought he loved driving and her job was to stay out of the way.
Ed felt like an Uber driver on hour six, with a passenger permanently on quiet mode and no tip in sight. Mei felt like a cat in a sunny window, heated seat on, blanket to her chin, and a chauffeur who clearly loved his job.
We'd both signed a secret contract: an assumption we made without ever asking the other person.
Your house is full of these. "He's in high school, he should know to start homework after his snack." Or take "do your laundry." To you, that means washed, dried, folded, and put away. To your teen, the clean pile on the chair counts as done.
Your version has four steps. Theirs ends at the chair. Both of you think you're holding up your end.
And they go both ways. Your kid has some for you, too. "You'll obviously wake me up." "You'll know I need poster board tonight." "You'll drive me. Now."
Nobody can keep a contract they never got to read.
TIP
Catch one secret contract in your house, yours or theirs. Then:
Spot it. What's one thing you assume without ever having said it out loud?
Name it. Literally say, "I think we have a secret contract about ___." Make it a fun discovery, not an accusation.
Schedule the renegotiation. Put it on the calendar for a calm moment. Snacks help.
GROW
Secret contracts only cause trouble while they're secret. Once they're out in the open, they turn into a conversation instead of a fight, and everybody gets a say in the terms.
DIVE
Spotting secret contracts is hard. Rewriting them with a teenager is harder. A coach can sit in the neutral seat while we dig them up and rewrite them together.
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