Life Admin by Elizabeth F. Emens

Author:Elizabeth F. Emens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Choosing a Mate, or Popping the Admin Question

Few people are going to choose a romantic partner based on the prospect’s admin-doing or non-doing. In defense of anyone who does so, though, it’s worth noting that people have chosen partners on far more suspect grounds.

Consider asking the Admin Question when finding a mate.

Admin as a factor in courtship sounds pretty unromantic. And yet choosing a life partner is not just about deciding who you will have sex with for the rest of your life (if you’re among the fortunate ones who make it that far in marriage, and in sex). Choosing a life partner is also joining a team.

Research suggests that your partner’s conscientiousness— a dimension of personality associated with “being careful, thorough, responsible, organized, and planful”1—predicts your job satisfaction, income, and likelihood of promotion.2 Some work has found that a partner’s degree of conscientiousness predicts relationship satisfaction as well.3 (The one study I know that finds no connection between a partner’s conscientiousness and relationship satisfaction studied college students—people who likely don’t share that much admin yet.4) A recent study also finds that one’s own conscientiousness predicts sexual function in both men and women—and a steady partner’s conscientiousness predicts sexual function in women.5

Let’s pause and think that over for a moment. Your partner’s personality, along a dimension that seems highly relevant to admin, shapes your future prospects for success and happiness at work—and possibly for happiness at home, too. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. You’re joining a team that involves running a life and a household. Everyone’s contributions matter for everyone else. And as that young father warned us in Chapter 4, Admin is marriage. (This idea of marriage as joining an admin team probably informs Nora Ephron’s infamous line “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.”6)

For sure, if you’re merely choosing whom to bed once, then a prospect’s admin personality may not matter much to you. Though be warned: If you are instead thinking of becoming sexually involved in an avowedly polyamorous relationship, you should be extra careful about your partners’ admin abilities. If you’re an admin Doer, and your poly partners are not, that is a lot of extra admin for you; just ask Alice, the woman in my brainstorming session with an Avoider husband and a Denier live-in girlfriend. Moreover, the scheduling and emotional maintenance of a polyamorous relationship itself involves a lot of admin. A poly woman I interviewed, Bonnie, worked as a legal secretary, and her husband, James, is a project manager. These are serious Super Doers.7

Certain sections of this book are haunted by a particular person. As I write about choosing a mate, I see Rosa, the Super Doer oldest child who grew up translating for her immigrant parents. Rosa, now studying for a postgraduate degree, thinks partners should divide up work based on who has the time for it. She gets upset at her current boyfriend: “I don’t understand how someone can go about their laz—their days without planning ahead.” (Yes, it did sound like she slipped and started to say lazy instead of days.

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