From Fighting to Fair Play

Most couples struggle with invisible labour, resentment, and unspoken expectations - until they discover a simple, powerful system that transforms their relationship.

 In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Sharmila Logothas reveals how the Fair Play method,  created by Eve Rodsky, offers a clear, card-based roadmap for redistributing household and caregiving tasks, dismantling gender norms, and fostering true equality at home. But it’s more than just chores; it’s a tool to tackle toxic masculinity, create intimacy through honest conversations, and reclaim your time and emotional well-being.
 
You’ll discover:

• How the "blueberry moment" can spark profound relationship shifts and personal empowerment
• The importance of recognising and valuing all time equally, especially in a world obsessed with work and achievement
• Why naming tasks and setting boundaries can alleviate resentment and prevent emotional burnout
• How relational therapy and techniques like Fair Play safeguard your connection amidst modern chaos
• Practical strategies to navigate resistance and resistance, whether you're a hesitant partner or the one holding more of the mental load
   If you're finding yourself overwhelmed by the unseen chores of daily life, yearning for deeper connection, or simply seeking a framework to bring clarity and fairness into your relationship, this episode is your essential guide. Perfect for couples ready to do the work, mental load warriors, and anyone craving healthier, more connected relationships in a world that often feels messy and uncertain.
   Tune in and learn how to turn organisation into intimacy, and create a life where everyone’s needs are acknowledged, respected, and fulfilled.

 Guest Dr. Sharmila Logothas is a licensed psychologist and founder of Intentional Psychology, specialising in relationship dynamics, mental health, and the transformative power of practical tools like Fair Play.

https://intentional-psychology.com/about-me
https://intentional-psychology.com/other-services
https://www.instagram.com/drsharmilalogathas/

Creators and Guests

Host

Jacky Power

What is Words in the Wilderness?

The Words in the Wilderness podcast is for those who have the conviction to make changes in their life as they drag their feet through the messy middle, crying into the void "it ends with me."

Led by Jacky Power - The Therapeutic Poet - these are conversations that look underneath the label, the diagnosis, the tidy explanation, at what's actually going on.

If you've made a decision to change your life and now you're in that wobbly, lonely bit where nobody quite gets what you're going through, I made this for you. Because I've been there. Many times.

Each episode starts with one of my own poems, using therapeutic poetry to set the scene. Sometimes it's just me, unpacking human tricky things. Sometimes it's a guest - a therapist, a coach, someone whose lived experience has taught them something worth passing on.

We talk about leaving what doesn't fit anymore, about breaking the patterns you inherited and don't want to leave as your legacy, about all your human tricky things that you've maybe been taught to hide.

I'm Jacky Power and I'm on a mission to rehumanise, one poem at a time. Reminding you that you have permission to feel and use those feelings as data to decode, not symptoms to squash.

Follow Jacky on Instagram: @the_therapeutic_poet
Find out more: www.jackypower.com
Listen to Jacky on Insight Timer: www.insighttimer.com/TheTherapeuticPoet
Join her on Substack`:www.jackypower.substack.com

Jacky Power (02:16)
Welcome to Words in the Wilderness and with me today is Dr. Sharmila Logothas. Welcome, Sharmila, it's great to see you.

sharmila (02:24)
Hello, Jacky Nice to you too.

Jacky Power (02:25)
thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. Now, you are founder of intentional psychology, a member of the psychology cooperative, and you work with young adults, couples and families. What kind of what kind of work do you do with them? What are you helping them with mainly, do you find?

sharmila (02:43)
initially my NHS work was very much around kind of trauma informed therapy, so working with more complex mental health problems ⁓ within community mental health teams. But then as I've moved into private practice, it's expanded. I've really enjoyed working with young adults and supporting them through

all sorts of kind of mental health difficulties. And then gradually my interest has become more about relationships. And I think that runs across my work, whether I'm working with individuals or with couples. And more recently, I've been working with the Fair Play method,

Jacky Power (03:24)
Yes, which is what we're going to talk about today. And the fair play method was something that was created by Eve Rodsky. To introduce us into the method, I thought I'm always trying sort of launch pad things with the poem. So I'm going to share this poem, which is which I wrote, which is called Sunday Love Songs, and then we can talk about Fair Play. Listening to Sunday love songs and the husband's writing in. She puts the whole family before herself.

sharmila (03:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jacky Power (03:52)
Her priorities, her kin, these angels who walk among us, these selfless souls of love. And I hear these words, and I hear me say, fuck that. I'm not chucking myself under a bus to get the world's admiration. I've needs too, thank you very much. I'm not a martyr to the nation. I'll happily hear anyone's needs just alongside my very own.

sharmila (04:06)
You

Jacky Power (04:22)
I advocate equality in each and every home. Fathers do not babysit the kids whom they have sired. Our default can't be, you have it, so that we may be admired. I'm loved for my consistency, my humour, and my passion, not for any self-flagellation that gets labelled as compassion. Wake up to these toxic messages that subtly come our way to all of us alike.

It's time now for fair play. I changed the last bit ⁓ to bring us into talking about fair play. So why don't you describe what it is, how it came about, and why you are interested in it personally and then professionally?

sharmila (04:51)
I'm pretty in.

Yeah.

the way that I kind of like normally introduce Fair Play is that it's a card based system. So it's you can kind of think of it as an organisational tool for the home. So it's a way of kind of divvying up tasks, kind of making sure that there's less confusion about who's doing what. It kind of really helps with kind of like doubling up or missing things that get missed because it's very clear who's doing what.

Jacky Power (05:18)
Mm.

Mm.

sharmila (05:33)
But I think what it also does really well is it kind of really kind of helps to kind of dismantle like the power dynamics that can kind of sometimes crop up, especially in kind of heterosexual relationships where all kind of like these old kind of like gender norms and things come into play. And it really helps to make kind of all those invisible tasks that kind of just get done usually by one person rather than by people in a... ⁓

household. ⁓ And it just makes those kind of invisible tasks more visible. And I think that's where its power lies, really.

Jacky Power (06:11)
So it's a hundred cards, aren't there? There's like these this pack of a hundred cards that you then sort of divvy up, I suppose, or see what's on each card and talk about.

sharmila (06:19)
Yeah, so you sit down together,

you have a look at all the cards. There's 40 cards that are to do with caregiving and then of 60 cards are to do with like running a household. And within that there's different suites. So you've got kind of like home, out, caregiving, magic making cards, which I think is often missed, which is really lovely.

Jacky Power (06:40)
⁓ yeah.

sharmila (06:43)
And then the wild cards, which are kind of like the things that come out of the blue that kind of like derail kind of like what's happening in the family. So maybe a family illness or a bereavement or kind of like starting a new job, those kind of things that can kind of really kind of shift the kind of family dynamic.

Jacky Power (07:01)
Yeah. I think what's great about it as a tool is it's making things conscious, right? Like it's bringing things into awareness which might have before been assumed or ⁓ and when once it's conscious, then it's possible to change things or at least acknowledge the effort and time that's taken in it.

sharmila (07:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

100 % I think like the awareness of like what's going on needs to happen before you can kind of change anything and I think that's what it does and it and I guess it's being conscious of all of those tasks that happen that like you said you might not be aware even need doing.

Jacky Power (07:38)
Yeah. I was listening I I was listening to the book Fair Play on Audible. and Eve talks about the blueberry moment. So this moment where she was really busy. I think she had a young child she was nursing. She was back at work. She needed to put something in to be delivered. And her husband messaged her saying, I can't believe you forgot to buy blueberries. And she just had this sort of epiphany moment of,

assumed responsibilities, I think might be a nice way to put it. how have you come into this work yourself? Was it a personal journey yourself? Have you had your own blueberry moment?

sharmila (08:03)
Yeah.

Yeah,

so I think me, like a lot of people went into a relationship that I thought was kind of very liberal, kind of where we were going to share things equally. And then it was it was really after having my first baby that you suddenly realize that actually we're falling back into these old gender.

Jacky Power (08:29)
Mm.

sharmila (08:34)
normative patterns and ways of doing things and it happens. I don't think it was necessarily a conscious thing. It was more kind of that I took maternity leave and Tom had two weeks paternity leave and then I got very good at doing kind of lots of things. I was never kind of a natural parent. It was something that like I learned but because I was doing it so much more often I just got really good at kind of

Jacky Power (08:47)
Mm.

Mm

sharmila (09:01)
putting the baby down or kind of making food for the baby or learning how to feed the baby and all of these things. And then when I went back to work after maternity leave, that never quite kind of evened out again. And I think that's the way it probably happens for a lot of people. So I just remember kind of like the feeling of stuckness and the all the resentment and all of this stuff.

that happened where I was just feeling kind of like this quiet rage almost and feeling quite helpless about what to do about it because we'd have these conversations, things might change a little bit, but then we'd kind of fall back into the same patterns again. And It wasn't really until I discovered Fair Play, which was after my second child but we kind of set it up and

I think it just saved my marriage. Like, I don't think I was ever really going to leave. It was never kind of like that bad, but it was one of those things where like the resentment was eating away at me. And it was creating a lot of of conflict in the house where we'd have these bickering kind of like these little bickers and things like that. And it just gave us a system, a really clear way of dividing up who is doing what.

really getting each of us to take accountability for the parts that we'd agreed to and to start to communicate about some of this stuff because sometimes communicating about this stuff is hard because it brings up so much discomfort, resistance. So having kind of like a system that kind of makes it feel safer to talk about those things was really helpful for us.

Jacky Power (10:41)
I think there's something soothing as well, isn't there? In if somebody has created a whole pack of a hundred cards around this.

we're not the only couple that's going through this. which can help to take some of that shame away. I remember reading about the thing that kills a relationship is contempt. Like when when one person has contempt for another. And I think when there's these little daily attritions happening, it's very easy for that contempt to start and to fester. And you mentioned feeling like resentment.

sharmila (10:50)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Jacky Power (11:14)
feeling resentful. And I always think that resentment, when I whenever I feel resentful, I'm always thinking, okay, what do I feel deprived of? Like that's a really good signpost for for there's deprivation somewhere.

sharmila (11:21)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So I always talk about resentment. So Brené Brown in her book, The Atlas of the Heart, I don't know if you've read of it. She talks about resentment and the way she talks about it is that you think it's in the anger category, but actually she puts it within envy.

Jacky Power (11:31)
Yes. Yeah.

Hm, yes.

sharmila (11:42)
And it's this idea that actually it's that jealousy of, I want what this other person has, this freedom or ability to come and go.

Jacky Power (11:53)
Yeah. Whereas I think I what I like about thinking of why I'm de you know, what am I deprived of is it brings it back to me and the focus on what what can I do about it. You know, even if it's like, if it's if I'm envying somebody else, then my focus is still on the other person. But when I'm thinking about, well, what do I feel deprived of, then there's then it gives I think it's a more empowering thought. And I know in the book she talks about she fault, doesn't she? And and and this idea of

sharmila (12:12)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jacky Power (12:21)
What we actually have to take ownership of

sharmila (12:24)
yeah, because if I think back to kind of how I felt when my children were younger, it is this idea of like, that it feels like something is being done to you when actually you're, it takes two people to kind of create that dynamic. and there is that kind of something about being able to set a boundary and to communicate what you need.

Jacky Power (12:37)
Yeah.

sharmila (12:46)
which I don't think I was doing,

Jacky Power (12:51)
No, and I think the tricky thing is, is the fear is if I set that boundary, even if I'm grounded in yes, this is what I need, it I might it might not be the result that I want it to be. Like they might actually say, look, I'm just not prepared to do that. And then it really can bring into question your own values and where you're willing to compromise and where you might have to make really tricky decisions. And I do wonder if that's a part of it. The people would rather, you know, not face that particular writing on the wall.

sharmila (13:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

We're really uncomfortable with discomfort, aren't we? And I think that's it. Because often we have these catastrophic thoughts that actually the other person is going to say blanket no, or they're going to leave, or we're going to have to leave, or something like that. When actually, usually what happens is that it's more of like a kind of back and forth and a negotiation.

Jacky Power (13:25)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm. And it's an opportunity for intimacy, isn't it? Because you're showing more about how you feel and what you care about.

sharmila (13:52)
yeah.

Absolutely. And

I think there's something really important about I wrote a post recently about change and the discomfort of change. And there's different choices that we make, right? Like one is to kind of radically accept the situation that we're in and to just go along with it and put our energy and focus on other things. One is to stay and suffer, which is not change anything at all.

And the other is to really try and work on something, go actually I'm not happy. This is something that, okay, there might not be the perfect answer, but I can kind of keep working at and chipping away at and try things and see if they work. So it doesn't always have to be that catastrophic. I'm going to have to leave or they're going to leave or it's all going to end in tears.

Jacky Power (14:35)
Hmm.

Hmm. But don't you think that that is something that we're really struggling with n nowadays? You mean you talked about how uncomfortable we are with the idea of discomfort, and I think that's how we've ended up with everything being this flat line description when we're feeling

Not great of it's bad for my for my mental health. You know, there's no we don't really talk about the the grittiness of feelings. It's like it's got this sort of flat line of a i either the mental health thing or disorders or whatever. and I think that the fair play method is an entry point into us being able to explore that discomfort. it just seems to me that that's something that's really needed in the world right now.

'Cause there's a lot of discomfort, but it's a lot of blame. It's not actually constructive.

sharmila (15:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we've forgotten, like, think a lot of the conversations that I see online, even in person with people is that we've forgotten the nuance and it can be really polarised. things like talking about how men are trash or toxic masculinity can often get people's back up straight away. And then when when you've lost someone, it's hard to have a conversation.

Jacky Power (15:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. A and yet I think part of the issue is that when well, I well, this is my personal experience of when I have felt like I haven't been heard, it can be so difficult for me to hear the other person. Desmond Tutu talks about this in his book of the bookness of forgiving, of you know, y first of all you need to be able to tell the story and hear the hurt before you can before you can get to the negotiation and the kind of looking at things differently.

sharmila (16:18)
Yeah.

Jacky Power (16:20)
And it feels like everyone is so full of their own hurt that they're wanting to dispel that before they can hear anybody else's. So so the problem is is everyone is shouting into this void of everything's toxic, everything's terrible. And there's n there's not that dialogue going on.

sharmila (16:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it fits in with relational life therapy, which is a type of therapy that I really love, which is this idea of like, actually, we need to be able to hold on to the relationship. And that actually, this is something about us working as a team and trying to figure this out together rather than be at each other.

Jacky Power (16:49)
Mm.

sharmila (16:58)
that's not really helping anyone. I think at some point you have to make a decision of like actually is this so awful that you need to burn it all to the ground or actually do you want to really have a go at figuring out how to make this work together.

Jacky Power (16:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, we have a saying in our house, do you want it to be right or do you want a relationship? And it's sometimes you do want to be right more than the relationship. But you know, it's ⁓ but a lot of the times it's about trying to find the compromise within within the relationship.

sharmila (17:19)
Yep.

Yeah, and I think that's a big one, isn't it? Kind of like that sense of being right can sometimes outweigh the trying to figure something out. And I think, like, again, that's where having a system where you're starting from a place where you create shared family values. So you're thinking about what's important to you as a family and then using those to choose which of the cards are important to you, how you're going to divvy them up.

Jacky Power (17:46)
Mm.

I want to get onto the idea of time and the value of time because I know Eve talks about that in the book, and I thought that was a real game changer for me actually in how we can think about roles is we both have a limited amount of time. and our time is equally precious as as individuals and and divvying that up.

but before we talk about that, I just want to ask what how do you find it working with couples? Do you find that there's one person that's more reticent, one person that's more kind of willing? I I imagine it's quite a tentative process at the beginning to get everybody on board.

sharmila (18:32)
Yeah, I think by the time they've decided to come and see a therapist to work on it, there's already been a lot of thinking and kind of working through resistance and stuff that's already happened to get them there. So that's helpful. But there is someone who is more kind of passionate, more interested in kind of making this work. And it is usually the person who's holding kind of the greater share of the

Jacky Power (18:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

sharmila (19:02)
mental load, the invisible labour, all of that stuff. and that's okay. Like I think a lot of people feel like, why should I be the one to like drive this? ⁓ But actually, it does take someone and it is usually the person who is struggling from the most who drives it

Jacky Power (19:10)
Hm.

I think that can be a real sticking point. So to be able to, like you say, it's acknowledge the reality that there is often one person that's more invested in changing things. And that's it, that is okay, right? That's where we'll st start from. Rather than using that as an extra point feel additional contempt or resentment, you know, which is tempting. I totally get it, but not progressive.

sharmila (19:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean what you need is to get to a point where someone is willing to come to the table and to engage and listen and discuss. And I think most people are willing to do that because if they value the relationship they can see all the ways that it's harming the relationship

Jacky Power (20:02)
Yeah. Well one of the things that we spoke about before we started recording was this I I mean you mentioned it, but this idea of toxic masculinity and obviously there's the this whole conversation around manosphere and what do you think is a good approach to what we're seeing right now with this idea of toxic masculinity and the shock and horror that goes with that?

sharmila (20:22)
Yeah.

So my take on it is that it feels very much like a reaction and it's like a pushback to kind of the conversations that we're having. And it feels like defensiveness enacted, That actually all of the conversations that we've had maybe through the 80s, 90s about feminism and what's needed. And this feels like a real pushback against that.

Jacky Power (20:50)
Hm. Do you mean the way in which men are behaving or the way in which it's being spoken about?

sharmila (20:50)
That's.

I think there's something kind of like really painful about the way that it's been spoken about. And I kind of get it. Like I kind of get why it's so hard to hear that about kind of something that's big part of men's identity, right? Like to hear that you're toxic is really painful. And then when you have this kind of other group of people kind of saying, actually, you're great, like as you are in...

Jacky Power (21:00)
Mm.

Yeah.

sharmila (21:24)
like that feels easier. So I can kind of see why that would be a draw. But at the same time, I think because those voices are loud, it feels like it's a lot of people and I think it can actually take away from the fact that actually Most people are in the messy middle, but we hear more from like the extremes.

Jacky Power (21:32)
Yes.

Yeah.

sharmila (21:48)
And I think that's often what happens is that the people in the Manosphere are really loud. Perhaps the more radical left are really loud as well in their condemnation of the Manosphere and all of these things. And actually, most people are in the messy middle with trying to have relationships and figure things out. But they're also quieter and it's harder to hear what's going on there.

Jacky Power (21:52)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that because I was going to ask you, you know, what do you think healthy masculinity is, or what do you think healthy femininity is? But I mean, I think that even that is being too binary in a sense. I mean, we talk about that, right? But like it's just being a healthy human. And I think that comes back to the fair play thing. It's not like there's pink jobs or there's blue jobs, you know,

We have finite resources, we have finite capacity. How are we going to manage this in the messy middle that's not always going to be perfect? But, how can we employ these tools to do the best we can? Yeah.

sharmila (22:43)
Yeah.

Yeah. And that's

the thing, like, I mean, these conversations are so new. I think we spoke about this earlier as well, like that actually, we've only had the language to even talk about these things that happen in the home for the last 10, 15 years, really, even though like, I guess it's been talked about academically since the 1960s. It's only come into, I suppose, kind of like public awareness in the last 10 years or so. And I guess it's

Jacky Power (22:54)
Yeah.

Yes.

sharmila (23:16)
thinking about as we're evolving, right, we're learning from this and we're trying to figure out how to use this new awareness that we have and all of these new tools like Fair Play and they'll get refined, they'll change, they'll be used in different ways and ⁓ that's all a good thing but we just need to sit with this messiness that we have now.

Jacky Power (23:41)
Yeah. Yes. And I mentioned earlier about the way that Eve talks about ⁓ time. can you speak a bit about that? you know, in fair play and how that's how that's seen because I know it's when there's one main breadwinner, for example, it's easy for their time to seem more valuable because in one sense the output is of higher monetary value, so that is a real thing.

I'd love to hear your views on that.

sharmila (24:11)
Yeah, so Eve Rodsky talks very much about this idea of my time is as important as your time. And it's this idea that actually all time is created equal. I think in society now, we value paid time better. And I think that's part of the problem, because we value that so highly in society, that we build our whole world around it.

Jacky Power (24:29)
Yes.

sharmila (24:35)
a lot of the time and so we prioritise making sure that's prioritised. But actually all of the other things are equally as important. I think in the Fair Play documentary one of the things they did was interview people and they put some research where they were talking about people on their deathbeds and they said what did you value in your life and what was important.

And no one said, oh, it's because I got that promotion. It was all things like I really valued the time that I spent with my family and my friends and the meaningful things that I created.

Jacky Power (25:03)
Hmm. Hmm.

sharmila (25:11)
so.

Jacky Power (25:12)
Yeah, to

be a life well well lived. I was thinking someone said to me recently, because I run therapeutic poetry writing workshops.

And for for the two hours it I charged I somebody was saying to me, that's an awful lot for like a poetry poetry thing. And I thought it was a really I said to my maybe that's because you don't necessarily see the the value in it, And I'm thinking about poetry and the human experience and whenever we're in that absolute crisis point of the human experience, whether it's ⁓ a death or a birth or a marriage or you know, poetry, song.

These elements in which we in the way we can just transcribe our human experience is what we turn to, you know, and it's so human. And yet there's this yes, and it's where we connect. I think it's that real golden thread of connection that, we can both look at a painting and then we can talk about the feelings that that painting evokes in us, or a piece of music or or words, and and

sharmila (25:53)
Yeah, absolutely. It's so human, isn't it? Like that creativity that's inherent in us.

Yeah.

Jacky Power (26:14)
They're the bridges to or they can be the bridges to human connection. And and it's funny how in that's also got so devalued in a sense, you know.

sharmila (26:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, and that's one of the things that think again Fair Play helps you to bring back. So one of the kind of I think the most special card in the pack is the unicorn space card. I mean, unicorn space for you is obviously poetry. For me, I love painting. I love crochet and like crafty things.

Jacky Power (26:30)
Mm.

Yeah.

sharmila (26:46)
But it's all these things that we do purely for ourselves because we're passionate about it. And then like you kind of put out into the world, right, in some way or other, and share with other people.

Jacky Power (26:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's such a funny sense because for me, when it when I'm in this sort of mentality of, I need to I want to prove my worth in this, you know, like when I'm looking for it to prove and can get sort of frustrated, or why has this not happened, or why am I not out, you know, or why has no one read such and such, whatever. And then I think, well, maybe I just won't do it. You know, when I'm in sort of the teenagey like, it's not fair.

And then I just think about I can't not do it. And I think that's that unicorn space, isn't it? That actually all of these meanings have got layered on from outside. It needs to make money for it to be meaningful. And what yeah, but in unicorn space that's not true.

sharmila (27:21)
I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, and it's different things for different people. So for my husband, it's cycling. It can be different, but it's just uniquely something for you. Yeah.

Jacky Power (27:50)
And something to honour. It's not it's not

about weighing one up against the other. It's about how alive it helps make make someone feel.

sharmila (27:55)
Yeah and how you protect

that for each other in a house, like make sure that you both get that.

Jacky Power (28:04)
Yeah, yeah,

absolutely. we talked about before we started recording about the importance of language and how weighted language can be. What do you see in your couple's work or in your young adult work? What you know, what do you notice around language that you think's important to share?

sharmila (28:24)
There's something about being able to name something that I think is so liberating for people. So I think if we come back to the language around household inequity and understanding things like the mental load, like lots of people, Usually men, come to therapy and they're just like, I never really understood what the mental load was. I thought I was doing half because I was doing all like the physical things like my wife would say.

Jacky Power (28:45)
Hmm.

sharmila (28:51)
you know what, like we need to do this, this and this this weekend and I would just do it. So I thought I was doing half, but actually I didn't realize that she was the person who was conceiving that and planning that. And that's a big part of what takes up all the mental energy and creates decision fatigue really contributes to the resentment.

Jacky Power (29:12)
I really wonder as well, because that cognitive load, I mean, we've we've seen a ⁓ mass increase, I think. I don't know. I that is not a substantiated statement. I don't know, but I think we've seen a massive increase in the number of women that are being diagnosed with ADHD. And

What my concern is, and I I know obviously sort of especially as women are going through the menopause and those hormones that might have buffered things aren't aren't there to buffer anymore. But I also wonder how much is around that cognitive load and the unspoken expectation that is there for women. I mean, three I've three children, three different educational institutions emailing me.

I mean, I wrote a poem about this because it was like here's an email to tell you there's an email coming. Here's an email to say that you had that email. Here's an email, you know, or here's an email but to remind them to have water, to remind them to have sunscreen, to remind them. And whether you decide to reply to that or not, it still has to be deleted out of your out of your inbox. I mean, what's your what is your view on that? And that is not I do not want that to be heard as me dismissing anybody's diagnosis or

sharmila (30:04)
I'm

.

Yeah.

Jacky Power (30:27)
concerns or troubles or struggles. It's more about environmentally, what do you think that we're attributing to a personality or to somebody's trait that might actually be much more environmental than we're giving it credit.

sharmila (30:44)
yeah, I think there is a ⁓ massive factor. Like if you think about the amount of stimulus that we have coming in now compared to the generation before us, it's huge. we have everything by internet. There's no switching off.

Jacky Power (30:52)
Yeah.

sharmila (31:02)
And we're all like tapped into social media and we have all of these messages around all of these things that we should and shouldn't be doing, constantly coming in. And then if you think about households now, the pressures on households, most of the households in the UK are dual income families. So you're doing multiple kind roles all at the same time.

And that in itself is kind of a pressure and how you handle that pressure is obviously going to be affected by things like neurodiversity, like hormones and things like that. But yeah, there is that overwhelming number of things to do now that I think is an environmental factor.

Jacky Power (31:42)
Yeah. And I like what Eve says in the book as well about maybe it's just dropping things. she in one part in the book, she talks about, that emotional and mental load of, writing the thank you letters or doing the birthday cards. And and as I was listening to that bit of the book, I was feeling guilty because I don't do, I just don't do that. I just don't do that anymore. And then as I listened to it later on, she was like,

Maybe you need to drop some of this stuff and you just agree that you drop it. And it was like Yeah.

sharmila (32:05)
Yeah, and again, it's tapped into your family values, right? But like,

actually, we were all kind of tapped into these ideas of what we should be doing, and not really thinking about actually what do we value as a family. So often will be like, five different clubs that we need to like take the kids to after and now it's actually are you doing these clubs because the kids are getting something out of it that this is a family value, something that's important that you need to instill in your kids.

Jacky Power (32:14)
Yeah.

sharmila (32:32)
Or are you doing it just because everyone else is? And that's a really important question to ask. 100%. And I think each family is resourced differently, financially, emotionally. And I think it's really important to think about what's your capacity as a family and what is going to lead to more happiness, more rest.

Jacky Power (32:36)
Yeah, it's like that keeping up with the Joneses thing, isn't it, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's making decisions as a result of intention, like intending to make those decisions, rather than they just happen. we've just we've ended up in this situation that no one's enjoying necessarily. but it feels really difficult to stop because we haven't taken a step back and gone, who are we as people and how does this fit in with what we're doing?

sharmila (32:56)
all of those things.

Absolutely. And I think we've talked a lot about making conscious decisions. And I think that's really what it's about, isn't it? It's like actually, you go into it with your eyes wide open and you go, we're doing this for this reason, even though it's hard. And even though I'm tired after work, this club is really important for my kids to get to. Or not.

Jacky Power (33:22)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Or actually ask them, do you want to go? Not like you must l l play the piano because that's just what needs to be done. I I've really enjoyed talking to you, so thanks so much. Is there anything that I haven't asked about or that you know that you think you want to share on that I've not mentioned?

sharmila (33:46)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, just thinking about this idea of like actually what for a lot of us, we kind of go into these kind of relationships and we don't really think about this aspect of it. And I think Fair Play has had lots of criticism. So there was an article, I think it was in the New York Times and it was talking about how I think it was called something like, Doomed to be a Trad Wife. And it was very much kind of talking about how

they tried Fairplay, but like actually there was something really unsexy about having these conversations. because actually it's not something that we're used to doing. And you have to work through, again, it comes back to kind of, I suppose, working through the discomfort and, but actually there's also something really containing about having a framework

having these conversations I think leads to more intimacy not less.

Jacky Power (34:49)
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we my husband and I haven't done fair play, but we have done coupleship agreements And I think there has been there's a real peace in the regularity of

knowing that there is a place for us to discuss the workings of our family life. So I I wrote about this in one of my substack pieces ages ago. one of the things that I noticed myself doing in our relationship was not wanting to bring up certain things. And then I ended up bringing up those certain things literally as he was leaving out the door, right?

sharmila (35:22)
Hmm.

Yeah,

we often do it at the wrong time, right? ⁓

Jacky Power (35:29)
Doing the wrong time. But it kind

of feels like the right time to me because I I'm gonna say it and then he has to leave, right? So it's really unfair for him. and then what would happen is he'd be, you know, fed up with that. And that then would help to feed into my belief of see, I shouldn't bring these meetings up because he's fed up when I do. And when we so what we used to do, we don't so much anymore, because there's not so much the need, but we used to have a Sunday family meeting and it would, you know.

sharmila (35:47)
Yeah.

which sounds really

similar to the check-ins that you have with Fairplay.

Jacky Power (35:58)
Right. ⁓

So helpful. We'd have the kids come, you know, come round it as well. And actually, if David and I had arguments, you know, it's it's never it's a there's a lot of messy middle. we were bringing the kids to discuss with them. We've we've had a fight about this and this is how we've resolved it, and this sort of thing. That has taken a lot of time and effort over the last 20 years. My eldest kid is 20.

⁓ but what I would say is that I think, and I don't I not in a smug way, I think it's paid off because they've they I think that they all ha have a voice and they feel that they have a voice. I mean, again, there's fluctuations in that, but there's a lot of that repair work that's being done. And I think that that's what fair play offers. And

sharmila (36:35)
Yeah.

Jacky Power (36:56)
you know, you use the word organization. If you think about marriage as an institution, it was something that was created out for convenience and for moving money through and all of those things, right?

sharmila (37:06)
Similarly, and

I think for a lot of the past, well, the past like 100 years or so, there were really clearly defined roles of who did what in the house, and they didn't really cross over, whereas now it's much more merged.

Jacky Power (37:21)
Yeah. And I think having an essentially like an organizational structure, we it's basically change management system and an organizational structure. That's what it seems like to me. That actually, once you've agreed those things and you've got things up and running, it gives you much more time for that unicorn space and for that freedom to really be.

sharmila (37:43)
Bye now.

Jacky Power (37:45)
Interdependent, you have your own independence, which leads to much richer lives for everyone involved.

sharmila (37:52)
Yeah, yeah. And it also makes you feel less alone, I think, because you're not one person carrying all of these things. You're thinking about it, working it out together as a family. So it brings that unity.

Jacky Power (38:04)
the last thing I want to ask you is the families that have gone through it or the couples, you said about being lonely. Have you found that they have become more bonded together? But actually around their friends, there's then been struggles because they're changing as a couple and it's having an impact in any way on their, you know, their ecosystem of friendships.

sharmila (38:28)
I think there can be pushback within like friendship circles, but actually if someone's doing something differently to the way that everyone else is, there can be sometimes like some snide comments maybe, those kind of things.

Jacky Power (38:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. and one I one actually my last last question. You said about heterosexual relationships. Have you worked with same-sex couples? And what's the impact there?

sharmila (38:55)
Yes,

So the research is that because LGBTQ couples don't come into a relationship with those gender norms already tied to their identities so strongly, it's easier for them to navigate these things. So there tends to be less kind of conflict around these things.

Jacky Power (39:08)
Yeah.

sharmila (39:15)
But it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen because there's so many things that make it difficult for us to talk about this uncomfortable stuff, isn't there? So there are definitely couples where because of maybe trauma histories or personality types and neurodiversity, all of these things, where actually it has been difficult to navigate who does what in the house. And then it's still helpful to have a system.

Jacky Power (39:23)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's not and I think that's the important thing that that shows that it's not actually tied to gender, but those the the if someone's more controlling or if someone feels like they can't speak up as much or all of these kind of things can still very much exist within a coupleship. Yeah. They make it difficult.

sharmila (40:00)
Yeah, so many dynamics. Yeah. And also,

there's so many different types of families now. And there's only parents, there's multi generational families, and actually, it's kind of navigating who does what within any type of household. And older children, we've talked about our children, but older children can also get involved.

Jacky Power (40:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it'd be great for uni houses. I could see, you know, like fair play for uni.

sharmila (40:27)
Yeah, yeah, I think they've done some, they have

actually started to do that in the US. So yeah, watch this space.

Jacky Power (40:33)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. So if people want to learn more about fair play, if they want to connect with you, Sharmila how can they do that?

sharmila (40:41)
⁓ So I am on Instagram as Dr. Sharmila Logathas so they can contact me there or I have my website, Intentional Psychology, which they can also contact me at. I'm at the Psychology Co-operative, so you can come through there and that kind of contributes towards it's a cooperative model. the money, the profits from that kind of go back into the ⁓ company to kind of work towards kind of providing more access to stuff.

Jacky Power (41:12)
Brilliant. Well thanks

so much for your time today and for sharing more about Fair Play.

sharmila (41:17)
Thank you for inviting me. Bye.

Jacky Power (41:19)
Thanks, Sharmila Take