*Marriage is work*: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that saying. In my personal life, I heard it from youth pastors at Bible camp, from well-meaning aunts at bridal showers, even from the woman who threaded my eyebrows the week before my wedding. In popular culture, I’ve seen the adage espoused on Martha Stewart’s website and by Ben Affleck on the Oscars stage. The idea has the sheen of a proverb, timeless and true. So after my wedding a few years ago, I attempted to be the best marriage worker I could be. I scheduled biweekly budget meetings and preached the benefits of the [“I” statement](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/03/well/family/relationship-coach-conflict-tips.html) in an argument. I analyzed my husband’s working style to optimize how we could divide unloading the dishwasher and vacuuming the kitchen. At its best, this attitude gave our marriage the clean hum of a caffeinated, productive morning at the office—every task checked off, every email replied to. At its worst, I felt resentful, exhausted, and miserly with my affection, like I could dole it out only after one of us had completed a job. Viewing marriage as labor never made me feel more connected to the man I had chosen to partner with. What do we mean when we say that marriage is work? To me, it’s the idea that entering a long-term union requires essentially becoming an [office manager](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/06/couples-gender-inequality-household-chores-caregiving-management/661404/). Partners manage communication, both emotional and logistical. They carve out time from busy social schedules to plan events, such as date nights and sex. They must learn the careful, tricky language of conflict resolution. Perhaps this conceit stems from a desire to make marriages happily long-lasting, and an uncertainty about how to do it. Conceptualizing marriage as work allows us to make happiness legible: Anyone can have a happy relationship, provided they are willing to do the necessary toil. There’s a kind of American [bootstrap optimism](https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/03/alissa-quart-bootstrapped-book-review/673354/) in this. But thinking of our relationships as labor changes them, too. What if there were a way to think of marriage—the everyday action of it—as something less like work and more like play?