Maris & Antonio
Maris and Antonio are a thoughtful designer couple based in Chicago, IL who deeply trust and respect one another. They seek to always reflect throughout key moments in life and set their own intentions rather than blindly follow any inherited way of being. They have two children ages 5 ½ and 2 . With an experimental approach to life, below are some of their key reflection points, tools and philosophies along with their full interview.
Frameworks: Maris, being a design researcher, could likely make a framework for everything. When something becomes logistically challenging she starts asking questions and visually moving these questions on a spreadsheet to make sense out of what she is looking at. For example, to help Antonio who does most of the cooking, she created a grid that asks and answers: who is home each night? What’s in the fridge? What are our go to recipes? This allows Antonio to spend less time on food prep and shopping and allows for Maris to contribute to feeding the family.
Linguistic Compass: This couple appears to land on a word that subtly drives their actions when approaching something big in life. For example, during their wedding the word was “intimate” which led them to have separate engagement parties for friends and family and a backyard wedding ceremony with their parents and siblings.
When kids entered their lives their word became “simplify” and now they have everything delivered and are planning to move for an easier commute. During this time of Covid, their word is “control” and they look at what aspects of their lives they can actually do something about such as their work hours and adapt those things to meet their current needs.
Notice the Rage: Just before their wedding, Antonio was experiencing crippling neck pain. His brother-in-law insisted on reading the book, “Healing Back Pain: The Mind Body Connection.” Brushing it off for a while, he finally listened to the audiobook and by the time the book was finished, his neck pain was gone. What he realized was that the pain stemmed from the stress & emotions he was having about work and wedding planning. Since then, whenever the couple experiences physical pain not associated with a specific injury, they stop and ask themselves if there is actually something they are mad about that hasn’t been addressed and use this as a trigger for deeper conversation with one another.
Sibling Sabbatical: Maris wanted a second child, a sibling for their first born. Antonio did not. So, they did what many couples would do in this situation and they went to therapy. Through these sessions they uncovered a deeper issue stopping Antonio from wanting a second child: he didn’t feel creatively fulfilled and he worried that a second child would pull him even farther away from his creative pursuits. Instead of leaving it there, they took a new perspective and realized that if Antonio could take a year off from income-driven work to pursue creative endeavors, that this would satisfy his deeper needs and feel okay about welcoming a new infant into their lives. So, they ran the numbers to support themselves on Maris’ salary and their savings and saw this as an investment in their long term future. Neither one of them went to grad school so financially, they saw this sabbatical as somewhat equivalent. Nine months after their daughter was born, Antonio left his job and launched a podcast series called Dadwell, exploring the intersection of creativity and fatherhood.
The goal of these episodes is to expand the vocabulary for navigating life together. Have questions, thoughts, respectful comments? Leave them below!