Spousonomics a Breezy, Cheeky, Geeky Look at Relationships

“Many people think of economics as dull, wonky, and irrelevant to their daily lives. Those people are not entirely wrong,” they write in the introduction. It’s the complexity and prolixity of academics, they say; actually, the core of the subject is “way simpler than that”:

It’s the study of how people, companies, and societies allocate scarce resources. Which happens to be the same puzzle you and your spouse are perpetually trying to solve: how to spend your limited time, energy, money, and libido in ways that keep you smiling and your marriage thriving.

That cheerful tone sets the stage for the rest of the book — breezy to the point of wind damage. I had to go to online dictionaries to decode (i.e. “suss out”) the urban slang that marinates the whole text. Spousonomics is a cheeky, geeky look at how the concepts that guide markets and economies also can apply at the kitchen table.

The major questions of married life are discussed under the headings of established economics terminology, and some of the chapters are brilliantly simple. The opening round, for instance, is titled, “Division of Labor: Or, Why You Should Do The Dishes.” They argue that Adam Smith’s call for specialization is a good start but not enough; you need to adopt David Ricardo’s notion of comparative advantage when allocating chores. The goal is to maximize happiness within the relationship, not for one or the other individual.

The danger of complacency toward your spouse is covered in “Moral Hazard: or, The Too-Big-To-Fail Marriage.” Just like the banking industry showed us, success in that sort of thinking depends on your level of trust in the one who actually holds to power to end the game — and your ability to predict where they will draw the line. Arguments which extend long past the original disagreement — or any hope of diplomatic compromise — are examples of loss aversion, the unwillingness to quit that drives rogue traders and compulsive gamblers to bankruptcy. The list of concepts is long and well-illustrated.

The authors may be geeks, but their case studies are not. Well, not all of them. They’re everybody from stock traders who buy their wives $8,000 handbags to failed rock musicians who reminisce about their stoner days. Everyone has the same sort of problems — who does the laundry, who pays the bills, why don’t I get the attention I want as frequently as I wish.

That last concern is a major subplot to the book, which could have been subtitled, “How To Boost Your Sex Life Using The Dismal Science!” I don’t think they go three pages without mentioning the marital act. Or the premarital act, for that matter; most of the couples they give as examples were playing house long before they exchanged any sort of vows. Sure, it makes sense to include a chapter on how boardroom principles apply in the bedroom — which the authors do, providing more information than I cared to know about other couples’ personal lives — but that chapter is just the big chunk of the iceberg which breaks the surface on every side.

A lot of the fuss and bother in these relationships illustrates the importance of two other principles: due diligence and caveat emptor. A remarkable number of these people fell in love (and then into bed) in the middle of bong parties and Grateful Dead concerts, and found their future spouse attractive because they were so free and creative and spontaneous, untrammeled by cares and hang-ups. Somehow it seems to surprise them that their extemporaneous boyfriend turned into an unemployable husband, or their groovy girlfriend is a lackadaisical housekeeper who [still] collects stray cats. St. Paul says, “And such were some of you,” offering the hope of redemption, and there is a current of reform underway in most of the couples portrayed, but it sure seems odd how intelligent people are so incautious about whom they attach to, or what they expect them to become in spite of the evidence.

Overall, it’s a hopeful book; only one of the couples portrayed ended up in divorce, while most found a new modus vivendi, perhaps with the help of John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman. Sometimes their solutions are more of the business-like marriage contract relationship rather than self-sacrificing love, but it seems to work in a pragmatic sort of way.

The authors’ view of religion is pretty agnostic, as the freewheeling amorality of most of their “cases” suggests; the only references I found were destructive (one woman’s over-involvement in missions work ruined her relationship) or cultural (they actually described someone as “a nice Jewish boy”). The absence of that factor fails to address studies indicating the relationship benefits of shared faith. But if you gain an insight into your own or your spouse’s behavior by looking through dismal-colored glasses, maybe help is where you find it.