When I was in high school, one of my mother's friends told me "You can't just live on love." I, of course, that she insane. I knew that when I found the right person, everything else would be ok with the world, right? I was right for a while. When I met my now-husband, I was so enamored with him that sometimes I forgot to eat or pay rent. It turns out that landlords don't care about star-crossed lovers.

As we become more and more comfortable with each other, more and more reality started creeping back into our lives. When the kiddo was born a day before our first wedding anniversary, we were overwhelmed by a gigantic wave of reality. Gone were the days of gauzy late night talks, here were the days of groggy late night feedings.

Now, as an adult, I understand why "You can't just live on love." Your spouse should be your lover, but also your friend, partner, and co-worker. Just as you need to work together to keep harmony in the politics of your family and friends, you need to work together to keep your household running smoothly.

As a housewife or stay at home mom, you may feel that you carry the burden of keeping up the house. If you feel this way, your spouse certainly will too. It can be difficult to juggle all of the household's needs by yourself, so getting your spouse to help out can drastically ease your workload and your stress level.

First off, make a list of everything that needs to be done for the house. Grocery shopping, paying bills, cooking meals, laundry, chaffering the kids, etc. After you have the list of activities, go through it and note the estimated time you spend on each activity weekly. (For this example, let's assume that your spouse works at 40-hour week.) Now, pick 40 hours of work that doesn't infuriate you and mark it off the list. You should also include items on your 'full-time' list that you want accomplished in a specific way.

What you have now is way to fairly split up the 'overtime' section of household work. Before talking about what you want from your spouse, ask what he'd like to see more (or less) of in the house and what he'd like more time to do. Add those to your overtime list. If you have children old enough to help with chores, let them add a couple things too.

Sit down as a couple or family and present your full-time list and your overtime list. Let your family/spouse know that you are feeling overworked and show them. This allows you to come from a position of calm strength, instead of guilt and weakness. Show them your full-time list and let them know that you are happy to take care of all of this as your 40 hour workload, but you need some help with the leftovers.

Bring out the overtime list. Let your your husband know that you would be happy to do half of this list and you'd like him to take over the other half. (Be sure to include chores he already takes care of to his workload allowance, since he works 40 hours a week to take care of the family.)

Note: As you may be able to tell, I'm a big fan of lists, but they certainly aren't the only way to do it. Other successful households use charts or assigned chores, which means that everyone knows what their responsibility is.

As with any change to routine, it may take some time to adjust. To ease the transition, keep these things in mind:

• Give lots of honest praise. If you aren't the best at providing positive reinforcement, try to think of how much nicer it is that you didn't have to do everything yourself.
• Your spouse/family may need to be reminded of the chores they agreed to help with. Try to be straightforward and emotion-neutral. As stated above, this is a change to how things have been operating in your house and it is difficult to break old habits and build new ones. Keep that in mind as you transition to a less stressful life.
• If someone isn't doing something they agreed to do and it seems that they are purposely avoiding it, do not do it for them! Call a new meeting and see if there's a chore of yours they'd like to trade.
• Don't worry if your spouse doesn't do something the way you normally do it. It may drive you a little crazy, but it's best to just grin and bear it. Remember, this is a transition

In my house, at least, a lot of miscommunication arises from not talking about the 'boring stuff', like cleaning the house. This means that my husband, who has a verbal memory instead of a visual one, won't really realize that the house is cleaner upon coming home than it was when he left for work.

Change is not easy in the short-term, but it will be worth it in the long-term to keep an open dialogue about the care of your family's home. Try to appreciate each other and the work you both do. Sure, he may "get to escape to the office," but you get to "stay in your comfortable home, safe from nagging bosses and gossipy coworkers." If you need some more support, please do join us in the community.