If you’ve been to an engagement party, bridal shower, or wedding, you’ve probably heard a well-meaning relative offer these sage words of wisdom: Marriage is work. Hard work. Persistent work. A lifelong project. The adage is instructive, but it’s also a warning — this relationship will try your patience, and for it to endure, you must be willing to put forth the effort.

This is undeniably true. All relationships require maintenance to survive. No two people will ever see eye-to-eye on everything, will never have enough time to spend together, and will, at some point, feel a gulf of distance between them. Healthy relationships are constant conversations; they require cooperation, give and take. Anything less is just complacency.

But, in today’s culture, relational upkeep is increasingly considered problematic. The rallying cry to “protect your peace” and incessant warnings around “red flags” encourage individuals to part with relationships that require any elbow grease, fine-tuning, or uncomfortable conflict resolution. This is, perhaps, a response to the longstanding expectation that women in heterosexual relationships will overlook, excuse, or attempt to correct bad behavior.

Wouldn’t it be nice, then, if you could pinpoint exactly how much “work” is too much work? If you could identify the number of times you’re supposed to re-tread the same old argument before you can throw in the towel? How do you decide when a rough patch is just reality?

In between the two extremes of “cut them off” and “do anything to make it work” is the goldilocks of romantic labor: enough effort from both parties to ensure the relationship can grow. While everyone maintains a different line for what they consider “too much” work, research supports the idea that people who put effort into their relationships are happier in the long run — and that work might look much more humdrum than you think.

But keeping a partnership afloat shouldn’t come at the expense of your own mental and physical health. As impersonal as it may seem, it helps to think of relationships as another job: Just like dissatisfied employees search for greener pastures, burnt-out couples shouldn’t be ashamed to leave a bad fit behind.

Working to maintain a romantic relationship is a somewhat recent phenomenon. Until the 20th century, people largely got married and stayed married — “and they didn’t really talk about their relationships in terms of this work analogy,” says Kristin Celello, an associate professor of history at Queens College, City University of New York and author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States.

But by the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, with divorce rates climbing, a hodgepodge group of social scientists, psychologists, and the media united in their panic concerning the sanctity of marriage. And thus, a brand new field was born: marriage counseling. That’s when the idea of marriage as work also took root, Celello says. The notion persisted in the ensuing decades, especially after the post-World War II divorce boom. It was thought that this essential work, Cellelo continues, was “the way to strengthen your relationship and also prevent divorce.”

Throughout the 20th century, social movements called into question who this work benefits (spoiler alert: it’s men) and who all the responsibility falls to (it’s women). Until the 1970s, it was the wife who attended marriage counseling, Celello says. The problems in a marriage were largely blamed on a woman’s behavior. (“In the ’50s, the idea is, well, if your husband’s drinking, what are you doing to make him drink?” Celello says.)

Feminism in the late 1960s and ’70s helped promote the idea that relational upkeep shouldn’t exclusively fall to wives and encouraged women to set non-negotiables in their relationships. It slowly became the mainstream view during this time that “there are things that can happen in a marriage which you shouldn’t keep working,” Celello says, “like when it comes to abuse or infidelity.”

These days, a conservative-led push for higher marriage and birth rates along with the rise of the trad wife — which glamorizes the experience of a stay-at-home wife and mother — has once again valorized the idea of “work,” at least in a heterosexual marriage. “In conservative circles now, in the 21st century, we [have] sort of come back around to people don’t put enough respect on marriage, and that they don’t work hard enough,” Celello says, “and that maybe it’s okay if there’s some degree of even physical violence or, [what] others might see as abusive.” At the same time, a spate of popular divorce memoirs have encouraged women to leave marriages where they find themselves carrying most of the burden.

What we mean when we say relationships are work

How much work you’re willing to put into a relationship largely depends on your attitude toward romantic partnerships. People generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to beliefs about romance, says Fabian Gander, a research associate at the University of Basel. One group puts a lot of stock in destiny — the idea that you’ve been brought together by fate and are soulmates. The other believes in growth — that a relationship can be nurtured and problems repaired over time. In a study from last year, Gander found that those who believe in soulmates are happier in the short term, but those who think of relationships as something you work for are more satisfied in the long run. Partnerships where both parties have strongly held destiny beliefs were less satisfied with their relationships over the years.

Other research has supported Gander’s findings. Research from 2012 found that effort was associated with satisfaction and stability in couples, whether they were living together, married, or in a new relationship post-divorce. The researchers measured effort based on how participants related to statements like “I tend to fall back on what is comfortable for me in relationships, rather than trying new ways of relating” and “If my partner doesn’t appreciate the change efforts I am making, I tend to give up.”

Couples who are highly connected and have more successful marriages, a 2022 study found, were more likely to be intentional and proactive about showing compassion, spending time together, and being kind to one another. They also underwent regular “relationship maintenance,” that included expressing needs, discussing problems, and setting goals for improving the relationship.

Why does work — or a belief in the power of effort — seem to equate to relationship satisfaction? “Probably because [these couples] are prepared to invest effort,” Gander says. “They know that I cannot just relax.… Maybe they know that this isn’t how things work out best.”

Gander is also continuing to study what type of “work” the happiest couples engage in. As a part of the research, Gander and his team asked couples what activities they did together over the course of two and a half years, ranging from going hiking and doing dishes to talking on the phone and having sex. Couples who maintained shared activities remained happy, and, in some cases, got happier over time. “Of course, real life is hyper-complicated, but one part of the answer may be that couples need to keep up the level of interactions,” Gander says. “These things are always intertwined. So if I’m in a happy relationship, I will gladly do something with my partner, and the other way around if I’m not happy.”

In today’s hyper-busy, over-scheduled world, the renowned relationship therapists John and Julie Gottman have their own suggestions for couples looking to put in extra work. Couples who hope to strengthen their relationships should spend an extra six hours together, focusing on quick chats at the beginning and end of each day (20-odd minutes a day), showing physical affection (five minutes a day), and scheduling a weekly date night (two hours a week).

More time, more conversation, and more vulnerability doesn’t always serve a relationship. Especially if you’re the only one partaking. In even the healthiest of partnerships, there will be an imbalance between an “over-functioner” and an “under-functioner,” according to Lexx Brown-James, a licensed marriage and family therapist and sexologist. Over-functioners have “been taught to be hyper efficient,” Brown-James says, “which begets an under-functioner partner… who doesn’t do as much in the family or in the relationship, because it’s permissible to do so.”

This dynamic inevitably breeds frustration. The over-functioner believes their partner doesn’t carry their weight, whether with household chores, emotional conversations, or child care, and the under-functioner feels bossed around. “They come to therapy saying ‘we have communication problems,’” Brown-James says. “I often say that it’s not a communication problem, it’s an intimacy problem. Neither one of you is risking being vulnerable, whether that’s saying I need help, or I feel like I’m failing, or I feel like I’m not good enough, or I’m struggling with what you’re doing right now.”

Absent those honest conversations, resentment can brew; you can burn out on your relationship. You might stick it out because you’ve been taught relationships are work, after all.

In these moments, Brown-James says, it’s often imperative to look within. Society often reinforces gendered stereotypes that dictate women serve as the over-functioners and men as the under-functioners. To buck those narratives, you have to get comfortable asking yourself what it is you really need out of this relationship. This is especially important if you’re not used to expressing your desires in a relationship in order to please your partner.

“That work on self means that you know what you want,” Brown-James says, “you’re able to verbalize it, you’re able to recognize when you get it, and you’re also able to reciprocate and see that you’re the person that can deliver what the other person wants.” Sometimes, that independent work occurs at different paces, sometimes it doesn’t occur at all. And it’s okay to not want to wait for your partner to reach their own clarity.

Before calling it quits, consider what your goal of the relationship is, Celello says. Is it to be married (and stay married)? Is it to coparent children? Is it financial security? “How does a partnership enable you to do that or not?” Celello says. Your idea of appropriate effort may change based on each of these goals.

On occasion, however, despite countless conversations and attempts to bridge divides and truly hear each other out, all that work isn’t enough. No one can tell you when you’ve crossed that threshold.

Throwing in the towel shouldn’t be seen as a sign of defeat. It signals a willingness to find happiness elsewhere, even if that’s solo. “People, when they don’t like their jobs,” Celello says, “will start a new career, and they’ll find other sources of accomplishment and enjoyment.” That’s work worth honoring, too.