Expert Recommends More Unpaid Labor To Address Burnout Caused By Too Much Labor

Between long office days, late dinners, and endless to-dos, many working couples find themselves slipping into a routine of merely coexisting—a state previously defined as "two people metabolizing stress in shared square footage" but which researchers have now reclassified as clinical terminology for your love slowly rotting from the inside out.

The excuses feel valid: "We're exhausted," or "We'll catch up this weekend." But according to Dr. Jonathan Westbrook, a psychologist who studies couples and who pointedly notes that he is "also a husband" in his bio, these are not descriptions of reality but rather convenient moral failings that explain why your marriage is dying.

"The happiest, most resilient relationships treat their weeknights as opportunities that don't go wasted," Dr. Westbrook wrote in a recent column, seemingly unaware that he was describing the 31 minutes between scraping Trader Joe's Mandarin Chicken directly into one's mouth over the sink and full biological shutdown.

The groundbreaking research, which surveyed over 2,000 couples who self-identified as "happy," discovered that the most resilient relationships treat the hours of 9–11 PM as intensive emotional CrossFit rather than the period when the human body attempts to metabolize a day's worth of cortisol before surrendering to the void.

Notably, the study's methodology remains unclear on whether "happy couples" included anyone currently toggling between three apps to determine if they can afford both groceries and gas this week, or anyone who cried in a parked Honda Civic during their lunch break within the past six months.

Dr. Westbrook's 14 tips for weeknight connection—which include "put down your phones," "share highs and lows of your day," and "establish device-free zones"—somehow fail to include "restructure the economy so one income can afford what two incomes purchased in 1974" or "dismantle the systems requiring both partners to work 47 hours weekly just to exist."

"Long office days, late dinners, endless to-dos," Dr. Westbrook wrote, apparently describing these phenomena as scenic backdrop to relationship failure rather than—and this is worth emphasizing—the entire fucking problem.

The expert also noted that couples who "slip into a routine of just coexisting" have only themselves to blame, conveniently omitting that the routine was designed by economic forces that consider your relationship an externality and your weeknight presence at home a brief intermission between revenue-generating activities.

When reached for comment, an anonymous spouse from Naperville, Illinois, looked up briefly from her phone, made what researchers would classify as "insufficient eye contact," and noted that she and her husband would "definitely talk about this over the weekend."

"We've been meaning to catch up," she added, committing what experts now recognize as a relationship war crime.

The article's target audience apparently excludes couples with: second jobs, night shifts, elderly parents, young children, medical debt, chronic illness, long commutes, or the general human condition of being tired after working.

Dr. Westbrook's column concludes by implying your marriage is dying not because rent consumes 43% of your dual income but because you didn't do a 10-minute gratitude practice after answering Slack messages at 9:34 PM.

At press time, the psychologist was spotted at a coffee shop in Berkeley working on his next column, titled "Why The 47 Minutes You're Conscious Are Actually A Gift You're Squandering."

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated Dr. Westbrook "studied relationships." Dr. Westbrook has asked us to clarify that he has both observed human pair-bonding scientifically AND legally entered into one himself, making him double qualified.