34: Why Following Through With Household Chores is Everything!

Join us as Dr. Renée Peltz Dennison shares her expertise on creating a fulfilling and successful relationship. In this episode, Dr. Dennison gives relationship advice on why following through with household chores is everything!

About Dr. Renée Peltz Dennison

Dr. Renée Peltz Dennison is currently an assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Kenyon College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Family Studies and Human Development from the University of Arizona. Dr. Dennison is an active member in the National Council for Family Relations, the International Association for Relationship Research, the Society for Research on Adolescence, and the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood.

Dr. Dennison’s research interests focus on newlywed couples and emerging adulthood (ages 18-29). Specifically, she is interested in how families of origin influence your current marital relationship, and how issues such as your conflict resolution style and your division of labor influence marital satisfaction. She recently published two articles on newlywed relationships—one entitled “The Role of Couple Discrepancies in Cognitive and Behavioral Egalitarianism in Marital Quality“ in the journal Sex Roles, and one entitled “A Dyadic Examination of Family-of-Origin Influence on Newlyweds’ Marital Satisfaction“ in the Journal of Family Psychology. In addition, Dr. Dennison has been happily married for over a decade, and is the mother to two beautiful young boys.

Daily Tip

Have a good balance in your relationship of positive versus negative interaction. You’re going to fight sometimes, you’re going to have negative interactions sometimes, but if everyday you can think about your relationship as an account and balancing it out to the positives. So for every time you criticize or have an issue, try paying two or three compliments to sort of balance that out, then you’ll always come out on the positive side at the end of the day.

Relationship Advice Resource

Prepare/Enrich Couple Assessment

Tips for Engaged Couples or Newlyweds

Consciously think about what it means to get married and what it means to be successful in marriage.

If You Could Give Only One Piece of Advice…

Think consciously about your marriage. Don’t just slide into it. Don’t slide into cohabiting or getting married. Think consciously about it. What do you want from a marriage? What does your partner want from the marriage? Check in on those things frequently.