The 80/20 Solution: Katie and Monty

What, exactly, is the 80/20 Solution, as it applies to personal relationships? Very simply put, it’s the proposition that few people can ever hope to be 100% of all things to a partner at all times: 80% is about the maximum level of participation most people can ever hope to provide, when we’re talking about meeting his or her soul-mate’s total needs in life.

But what about the other 20% of the average person’s emotional and recreational desires; the intellectual pursuits which help round out a life and make it a truly memorable one? What if that person’s partner isn’t able to meet those particular needs?

A few adventurous couples--recognizing this challenge--have elected to openly spend time apart from each other, fulfilling those needs with other experiences, pursuing activities which don’t spark their partner’s interest at all; some of them with other people who do share their passions!

Katie and Monty Graham is one such couple. They’ve come to this lifestyle rather reluctantly: Katie’s older sister and best friend, Caroline, and her husband Matt take the plunge first. They breathlessly tell Katie and Monty all about it and brag about the positive results it produced in their own slightly stale ten-year marriage.

While both Katie and her husband are shocked at first learn about the incredibly out-of-character things Caroline and Matt did while on separate vacations, but they can’t seem to stop thinking about them. At last, they decide to give it a try, but they elect to do things quite differently: they agree not to tell each other a word about their mutual separation and what they might have been up to during that period.

Best intentions aside, circumstances force them to be honest with each other, producing explosive results of a very positive nature in the bedroom! This, then, is the story of their little experiment…