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Photographs by Thomas Whiteside
GAME-CHANGING
RELATIONSHIP ADVICE
Eve Rodsky, the author of Fair Play: A Game-Changing
Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and
More Life to Live), chats with actress and writer Busy Philipps
about the “invisible work” women do
and how to build more equitable partnerships
I ORDER GUACAMOLE and
margaritas, and wait for Busy Philipps
in the back of a crowded Mexi-
can restaurant in West Hollywood.
I haven’t yet met the actress and
author of the 2018 memoir This Will
Only Hurt a Little, which I consumed
in one sitting and loved for its witty
“show, not tell” feminism. I’m eager
to get her take on Fair Play, my systemized approach to renego-
tiating and rebalancing the domestic workload between couples.
I was familiar with the narrative of her rocky marriage to screen-
writer Marc Silverstein and how she’d often felt that the respon-
sibility for raising their two daughters—Birdie, now 11 , and Cricket,
six—fell on her. But instead of dredging up the past, I was more
interested in how they had improved their relationship. According
to recent articles, Philipps had rescinded her request for a divorce.
She and Silverstein had reconciled and were...happy.
As a prompt to get her talking, I brought my research binder
stuffed full of articles I’d collected on the subject of the “gendered
division of labor.” I intentionally opened the binder to an article
titled, “Invisible Work Is Killing Me and My Marriage.”
Philipps enters the noisy taqueria in a bright floral sundress
and colorful jewelry. As she sits down and reads the headline, she
laughs. In her trademark style of laying it all on the table, she
jokes, “Sounds familiar.”
After taking a sip of her margarita, she leans forward. “You
know what they say about divorce, right? In friend groups, divorce
is a house of cards.” This piques my interest, given that a figura-
tive card game couples play is at the core of Fair Play, in which
“winning” keeps couples together.
She continues, “In friend groups, if you’re all married, you have
a silent agreement to be miserable together. And a lot of times the
person who decides to leave is vilified in the group because you’veupset the status quo. Like, ‘How dare you? We had a fucking
agreement to be miserable.’”
I quip, “God forbid you become a game changer in your marriage.”
“Not according to the married friend group,” she says, sighing.
“But here was the thing I kept saying to myself, I am not certain
that I will ever be happy, but I know for certain I do not have to
feel miserable all the time.”
I share with her that many of the women I interviewed, even
when unhappy, resist the idea of taking the lead in their mar-
riages. “Why is this also ‘on me’ to ask for change?” is something
I hear a lot.
“Many women wait until it’s too late,” she says. “At that point their
resentment is too high and their communication patterns are set.”
“That’s right,” I tell her. “And as one couples therapist told me,
without one person initiating change and being the one who finally
says, ‘I cannot live like this anymore,’ you’ll both stay stuck in the
same old patterns that aren’t working. It’s like dumping wet laundry
on your husband’s pillow when he forgets to put it in the dryer.”
Philipps gives me a disbelieving look.
“Trust me,” I say. “I’ve heard worse.”
Known for an active, not passive, voice, Philipps spoke up in her
marriage and made a powerful move: She played the divorce card.
Perhaps creating two homes was a means of providing her some
relief from doing it all in one home?
She shrugs. “My thinking was that if I leave, at least then maybe
I’d get two days off a week,” Philipps says, though she’s quick to
acknowledge, “I understand that I’m in a place of privilege, and even
if I left Marc and I’d been super down on my luck, there was a
version of life that I could have made work for me and my daughters.
This is not the reality for many women.”
But as Philipps discloses in her book, Silverstein fought against her
walking away. She takes a bite of her carne asada taco and recounts,
“Marc was like, ‘I’ll do anything.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, then do
everything. Because I have done it all, all Continued on page 193Cakewalk. This page: On Busy Philipps (left): Dress, Prada. Earrings and bracelet, Irene Neuwirth. Rings, her own. On Eve Rodsky: Dress, Gabriela Hearst.
Bracelet and ring, Irene Neuwirth. Opposite page: On Philipps: Dress, Michael Kors Collection. Sandals, Gianvito Rossi. shopBAZAAR.com.
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On Birdie (left): Tracksuit, Dolce & Gabbana. Sneakers, her own. On Cricket: Shirt, skirt, and headband, Bonpoint. Shoes, Dolce & Gabbana.
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