I like the whole "bidding" theory. I also like the body of theory around agreeableness. Here's a
high level overview in the form of New York Post.
This intuitively makes a lot of sense to me -- my wife is extremely agreeable. I'm slightly less agreeable, but still, I think, around the average or maybe a bit better than average. Not on the internet, though -- but I'm trying to work on that. Our marriage is one of the most stable of people we know, and we know plenty of marriages that would be considered stable, and I attribute that mostly to how agreeable my wife is.
How does this look on a day to day basis? It has been more than five years since I yelled at my wife. In the decade we've been together, that's only happened once or twice. Same going the other way. We snip at each other rarely, and when we do, we immediately call the sniper out on it and typically apologize and make up right away. We ask for and give smiles. We don't fight about who does work. This used to be because my wife cheerfully took on an enormously unfair share due to my laziness, but lately I've been bringing up my game. I'm not quite up to 50% yet, but I might be close to 40%. We never fight about money, nor about what activity to do on the next day, what TV show to watch, where to go to eat, what to cook for dinner. We don't count who changed the last diaper or who put the kid to bed more times this week. We just do it.
People used to think marriage was about grand gestures and diamonds and shit. My best guess, looking at the research I've seen and my friends who are doing the best, is that it's all about not being a dick, and not being married to one.