Mental Load

[forty-two]

4 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

Oh yea, I do think you are right - I think women do tend to be more focused on social relationships and they are in fact valuable and take work to maintain.  I guess I was taken that as given in a way!  It's more certain expressions of that, and how we balance them.  For example, I used to send out Christmas cards, which I think was something that fell within that.  Also, I just enjoyed it.  I haven't now for a few years though - one year I had a new baby, and then I had a job focused around Christmas and it was too much.  So I dropped it - there are other ways to maintain connections that are less stressful when I am busy, and I hope at some point too to get back to it.

But I think it's easy to get caught feeling like certain things have to happen, and almost a sense of doom around them not happening, but it's not really something so vital.  I have a friend, really the wife of a friend, who I think has this problem - she is a person who has a very strong sense that things should be a certain way, and it makes her very stressed when they are not.  It seems  like she has an extra hard time stepping back and saying "how else might this look and still be ok."

Anyway, that was my main idea, that it is a good thing to step back and say, what will be lost and gained if I don't do this, or do it in a different way?  Can I stop it for a while, or is it something I feel I need to do mainly to achieve some arbitrary standard, or because it's what my parents did? etc

I completely agree with your overall point here. 

WRT the bolded: I'm coming more and more to think that the important things shouldn't be taken as given.  That the important givens only *stay* important and given by being constantly and explicitly stated, over and over again.  There's a saying in my corner of confessional Lutheranism: justification assumed is justification denied.  If you aren't constantly and deliberately *affirming* the important things, then you are de facto contributing to their decline.  Channelling Alastor Moody, it takes CONSTANT VIGILANCE to keep the important things important.

[frogger]

Connections and relationships are super important, which is why I don't exchange gifts outside the immediate family or make big parties etc. I know some women handle everything wonderfully. They really do but adding things just because you are supposed to just stresses me out. If I'm stressed out I ruin other relationships like with my husband and children. I think a lot of women focus on looking good socially but that doesn't always mean that it really is about relationships. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it really is! . 

I do try to be cognizant that others recognize love through those things and I specifically tried extra hard with the inlaws for that reason and exchanged gifts with them long after not doing so with my own family. My husband had to take the lead most of the time though. The best gift givers in my house are my husband and DS2 because they really pay attention to what people like and need. The rest of us are clueless. 

 

[Corraleno]

4 hours ago, Quill said:

What bothers me about the original article - and the reason I said “whiny” - is that, upset for understandable reasons or not, what good does writing an article about her bumbling, incompetant mate do for the problem?

Because tens of thousands of women (and men) read that article and thought "OMG, I'm not crazy, other women deal with this exact same thing!" or "Oh wow, there's a name for this thing that makes me feel like my head is going to explode!" The original version of that article, which was longer, was published in Harpers Bazaar in 2017. It went viral on FB and was linked by nearly every woman I know, who said OMG, read this, this explains SO MUCH. In the original article she used the term "emotional labor" and it had such a massive impact that there was a follow up article in Harpers Bazaar a month later in which many men were quoted as saying they suddenly understood what their wives were talking about.  So what you perceive as a pointless, whiny vent that accomplishes nothing, actually turned on thousands of light bulbs in the heads of men and women and actually did make a difference in people's relationships. 

 

4 hours ago, Quill said:

The thing with leaving the Rubbermaid tote out - I do not understand why she would trip over it, push it on its side, be mad about it for two days. If it were a one-off thing at my house, I would get out the step stool and put it back up. If it were a chronic thing another family member repeatedly does, I would discuss it with them. “Dude, I get so frustrated that every week you leave the ——— right in the middle of ————. You, being taller, can easily put it back but I have to get out a stool. So please put it back.” Presumably, if he’s not a careless jerk, he will modify his behavior. If he is a careless jerk, well, I am sad for the woman. 

And this is exactly what I am talking about when I say that people keep implying there are just two kinds of men: "careless jerks" who will never change (and whose wives deserve sympathy), and "not careless jerks," who will of course modify their behavior simply by being asked nicely. The truth is that the VAST majority of men for whom this is a problem are in the big fat middle of the bell curve: they are neither irredeemable jerks who should be divorced, nor nice guys who will immediately modify their behavior simply by being told nicely one time — or even 100 times. There are literally millions of women who deal with this crap on a daily basis, who have asked nicely over and over and over, who love their mates and don't want to divorce over this, who are nonetheless really sick and tired of it.

Those of us who have dealt with this can read Gemma Hartley's article and easily recognize the signs that this is not a one off thing, that this is an ongoing pattern in their relationship, so when we hear other women, who do not deal with this, bending over backwards to give this guy (and takeout-guy) every possible benefit of the doubt, while using words like unreasonable, childish, whiny, pouty, and huffy (all words used in this very thread) to describe the wife, it's annoying as hell. Because that is exactly the same response that so many women get from their husbands when they try to explain this — it's the wife's fault for asking wrong, or not spelling out the steps correctly, or caring about trivial stuff that doesn't matter (Who cares if the house is a pig sty? Why make such a big deal about all this little stuff?)

[frogger]

StellaM

Oh, boy I didn't see your response as I was posting.

I'm sorry. Trully, I am. This is s sorry state of affairs. When you pit sexes against each other or generations or races you really isn't as good as all working together. My heart goes out to you. If your partner is the automatic enemy, that is a bad position.

I know you have a lot on your plate too with your son. I'm sorry.

Edited March 14, 2019 by frogger

[SKL]

10 minutes ago, frogger said:

Connections and relationships are super important, which is why I don't exchange gifts outside the immediate family or make big parties etc. I know some women handle everything wonderfully. They really do but adding things just because you are supposed to just stresses me out. If I'm stressed out I ruin other relationships like with my husband and children. I think a lot of women focus on looking good socially but that doesn't always mean that it really is about relationships. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it really is! . 

I do try to be cognizant that others recognize love through those things and I specifically tried extra hard with the inlaws for that reason and exchanged gifts with them long after not doing so with my own family. My husband had to take the lead most of the time though. The best gift givers in my house are my husband and DS2 because they really pay attention to what people like and need. The rest of us are clueless. 

 

Similar here.  Rather than worry about treating different people differently due to forgetting birthdays etc., I have a very short list of family things I track.  On that list is Christmas, the catch-all gift-giving-include-everyone event that hopefully shows I care about them despite my lack of initiative the other 364 days.  And I will check in when something is happening ... come to events I'm invited to ... but remembering a grown in-law's birthday every year?  Nope, sorry.

Right now I'm working on getting my kids to send thank you cards to said in-laws.  That makes it into my "mental load" because I think it's more important than me acknowledging every birthday on my family tree.

[frogger]

1 minute ago, StellaM said:

 

This is really disengenuous. 

I didn't say 'men are my enemy', I said 'I choose to have solidarity with women.'

I know some very nice men, my own son and dad among them.  It's actually OK to recognise that their needs as a class often don't intersect with mine. Sometimes they do; I'll back a working class man on a picket any day, for example.

I trust men have the innate capacity to work out how to support each other, if they need support. Yes, it takes work to find support.

Just as I trust them to have the capacity for family and domestic competence, if they choose to manifest it. 

What's a sorry state of affairs is when women seem compelled to All Lives Matter the heck out of relationships between the sexes.  And seem to actually believe that there are men out there so intrinsically incompetent, that expecting them to cook food for a family without asking Mom, is some extreme expectation.

 

 

It wasn't disingenious. You seem angry and it seems sad. Yes, men can work out there own support systems and I worked out mine. It doesn't include all women though. It is my husband and my siblings and some close friends. 

[SKL]

30 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Because tens of thousands of women (and men) read that article and thought "OMG, I'm not crazy, other women deal with this exact same thing!" or "Oh wow, there's a name for this thing that makes me feel like my head is going to explode!" The original version of that article, which was longer, was published in Harpers Bazaar in 2017. It went viral on FB and was linked by nearly every woman I know, who said OMG, read this, this explains SO MUCH. In the original article she used the term "emotional labor" and it had such a massive impact that there was a follow up article in Harpers Bazaar a month later in which many men were quoted as saying they suddenly understood what their wives were talking about.  So what you perceive as a pointless, whiny vent that accomplishes nothing, actually turned on thousands of light bulbs in the heads of men and women and actually did make a difference in people's relationships.

There is value to being able to identify and name what is dragging us down.

The benefit, however, gets watered down when we add "so I am a victim and [insert class of victimizers] is the cause of it all."  Which IMO just makes people more unhappy.

It would be better for the article to say "if this sounds familiar to you, you are in good company, AND there is something WE can do about it, such as [insert constructive relationship-friendly suggestions here].

The whole "why shouldn't all the burden be on HIM to see his faults and fix them" - while popular in that kind of literature - is completely unhelpful for anyone who intends to maintain the relationship.

[frogger]

1 minute ago, StellaM said:

 

Great. I am glad it works for you.

Yeah, I am kinda pissed because a bunch of women are suggesting that only pouty, privileged women who fixate on daily folding of the napkins feel mental load.

 

Except I never said that. I think you are confusing me with someone else.  Can I relate to the lady in the article? No.  

Can I understand that there is mental load and planning and delegating tasks is extra burden? Yes. 

Can men cook, care for kids, and what not? Well, the majority I know do so I suppose.

If I were a lesbian and married a woman would I be hated and despised by my spouse. Well, likely, considering this thread. 

 

 

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

I find it really minimising when the suggestion to mental exhaustion is the equivalent of 'stop hoovering the rug every morning, Ethel!'

The women I know with too much on their plates aren't concerned with frivolities. Their mental stress comes from, disproportionately, dealing with home and family neccessities.

 

Well, I don't really have anything to say, except that yes, some people find a major source of stress around things that they consider to be necessities, but probably aren't.  A friend of mine - a man - has just gone on stress leave from the military because he has been unable to seperate the necessary from the unnecessary.  Several of us who have worked in the same environment have been telling him for a few years that his approach will lead to burn-out, and that no one will set those boundaries for him if he doesn't do it himself, but he can't see it.  

Not every situation includes that kind of problem, but some do, and often they aren't evident to the people in them - I mean, if it was evident they would generally not be in that position.

I find it really odd to just say, yeah, that's never an issue for people, because I think it makes them seem stupid, and they aren't stupid.  It's not stupid, it's just human.

 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

And this is exactly what I am talking about when I say that people keep implying there are just two kinds of men: "careless jerks" who will never change (and whose wives deserve sympathy), and "not careless jerks," who will of course modify their behavior simply by being asked nicely. The truth is that the VAST majority of men for whom this is a problem are in the big fat middle of the bell curve: they are neither irredeemable jerks who should be divorced, nor nice guys who will immediately modify their behavior simply by being told nicely one time — or even 100 times. There are literally millions of women who deal with this crap on a daily basis, who have asked nicely over and over and over, who love their mates and don't want to divorce over this, who are nonetheless really sick and tired of it.

Well, I did almost put another possibility in there, but I didn’t want to go off on that particular tangent, but since you did, I do have thoughts on exactly this. 

Yes, it is certainly possible that he’s neither a careless jerk nor will modify his behavior. There are all sorts of reasons why this might be true. It may be he doesn’t have that sort of brain and does not remember/notice. It may be he thinks the tote belongs where he left it because he has to keep getting into it. Maybe he’s chronically lazy and knows she will put it away so he doesn’t make the effort. I still think a ranty article is the wrong way to address this problem. It’s making your writing bread and fame through publically dissing your mate, which I despise. 

In a marriage, there will be things the mate is never going to do the way the other mate wants. If you have a considerate mate, it probably won’t be that many things; if you have a pretty inconsiderate mate, it may be many things. IMO, that’s just life with other people. I don’t do everything according to his wishes, either.

For a long while, we had this stand-off over my propping the bedroom door half-way closed wih an exercise ball. For me, this was already a compromise, because dh wants the door open, while I want it closed. I hate it open!  I feel exposed. But he hates it closed because of something about the air circulation system. So I propped it halfway, so I can’t see out the doorway, yet air still circulates. For several months, he would roll the ball away in a huffy way every morning. We had numerous head-to-heads about this. Then, he just stopped. I don’t know if he complained to his friends and they told him to stop being mad about this dumb thing, or he decided it was logical or just decided it was not worth being mad over every morning. But I continue to prop the door halfway and he never bothers about it anymore. 

I think there are a lot of opportunities like this in marriage, on either side of the pair. There are also a bunch of things I have accepted he is never going to do “my way.” Obviously, I am not talking about someone who is being treated with severe negligence or whatever. I’m talking about that big bell curve in the middle. 

This is what we do with our kids, especially if we have a kid with EF deficiencies. We scaffold what we can, but we accommodate some things, too. One day my ADD boys may be married to someone who will get fed up that, despite asking nicely and discussing it so many millions of times, they won’t do something the “right” way. Do I want their mates to portray them that way in a magazine or in a viral video? No, I do not. 

[EmseB]

27 minutes ago, StellaM said:

Yeah, I am kinda pissed because a bunch of women are suggesting that only pouty, privileged women who fixate on daily folding of the napkins feel mental load.

This is where I always come back to thinking message boards, despite the mental stimulation, are just a huge waste of time. It's interesting that this one sentence is what 10 pages of dialogue boils down to. If this is the characterization, why even bother?

[forty-two]

 

44 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

Well, I don't really have anything to say, except that yes, some people find a major source of stress around things that they consider to be necessities, but probably aren't.  A friend of mine - a man - has just gone on stress leave from the military because he has been unable to seperate the necessary from the unnecessary.  Several of us who have worked in the same environment have been telling him for a few years that his approach will lead to burn-out, and that no one will set those boundaries for him if he doesn't do it himself, but he can't see it.  

Not every situation includes that kind of problem, but some do, and often they aren't evident to the people in them - I mean, if it was evident they would generally not be in that position.

I find it really odd to just say, yeah, that's never an issue for people, because I think it makes them seem stupid, and they aren't stupid.  It's not stupid, it's just human.

 

I agree with you that, many times, when people feel overwhelmed by too much to do and not enough resources to do it, there's room to cut helpful-but-not-needful and needful-but-not-mission-critical stuff.  I'm not sure it's always a perfectionist issue - where the problem is being unwilling to lower standards anywhere.  Sometimes I think it's more of a broader prioritization issue: willing to cut the fat, but they've cut all the fat they can see.  So another pair of eyes can help, along with the usual suggestions on how to look at things differently.

But recently I've had conversations with women where it becomes clear they really *have* already cut all the fat.  They've long since gotten the low-hanging fruit, they've done all the standard things, they've done in-depth research on the non-standard things - all the obvious things and most of the non-obvious things have been tried long ago.  They have a clear-eyed view and they've done the analysis, and there is just too much that needs to be done and not enough resources.  Their situation just sucks, really.  There's no good solutions and the women themselves have a much better idea of the costs and trade-offs of the various not-good solutions than anyone coming in cold.  I don't really blame them for getting a bit shirty when they hear the umpteenth suggestion to just "let the non-essentials slide" - they did that two years ago.  They aren't wrong that everything left is mission-critical.

I have a relentless drive to find a solution, to refuse to admit defeat, to refuse to admit that life could suck like that.  But I think that sometimes life *does* just suck like that.  And that I can cause more harm than good by refusing to admit that it could - that it's better to acknowledge that an overwhelming reality really *is* inherently overwhelming than to keep stubbornly insisting that it *is* solvable if only you keep trying.  Insisting that an overwhelming-but-solvable problem is indeed solvable is offering genuine hope - especially when you can help solve it - but insisting that an unsolvable problem is actually solvable is offering false hope, telling an immensely cruel lie.

It's why I pray so much more now - I have a much clearer sense of the huge number of unsolvable problems - and it has highlighted for me how even the existence of solvable problems is a supernatural gift from God.

Edited March 14, 2019 by forty-two

[frogger]

6 minutes ago, EmseB said:

This is where I always come back to thinking message boards, despite the mental stimulation, are just a huge waste of time. It's interesting that this one sentence is what 10 pages of dialogue boils down to. If this is the characterization, why even bother?

Yes, but it is good to get different viewpoints even if nobody changes their mind. I feel like so much social media is simply confirmation bias which is dangerous in my mind.

I see so many men doing the heavy lifting that I do remember there are different subcultures with different values who forgot society changed. My world is small I confess. 

There was a good spin off thread that could actually be helpful. Of course, it is also good to know when to not beat a dead horse. Sometimes I forget.

[HS Mom in NC]

18 hours ago, Corraleno said:

Someone on this thread did in fact say that living with this burden is totally a choice, and that she purposely chose a husband who did not have any of these issues, and would never have settled for a husband with ADD because they are childish thinkers. Which kind of took me aback, to be honest, because I can't personally imagine saying to someone "I'm sorry, but I can't go out with you because you have a learning disability and therefore are not up to my standards." Also, I know plenty of people with ADD who somehow manage to make it work without dumping all of their EF issues on a spouse.

I said I wasn't attracted to someone who can't handle their own practical daily life management effectively. That's not the same as telling them so explicitly.  It means telling them what people typically say when they realize there are compatibility issues: That I didn't see the relationship continuing long term and it was best we saw other people or declining when they ask me out with the generic I'm not interested in a relationship.  I'm completely stand by my decision to marry the type of person I prefer just like everyone else sets their own criteria for the kind of person they want to spend their life with.  I had no intention of teaching strategies for my spouse that I would be willing to do with my minor and early young adult children. I want my spouse to be my partner, not my dependent. Adulthood=being self sufficient in my mind. If someone with ADD can be completely self-sufficient and not have a disordered, messy, life with routine adulting tasks done adequately, then they're perfectly good candidates because they're managing and coping well. You set criteria for who is marriage material for yourself any way  you like and volunteer for whatever you like, but I opted out of having a spouse dependent on me for routine adult tasks.

Good thing too because I've been confined to bed rest for 6 months during a pregnancy while I had a toddler, I've been in bed for 6 weeks recovering from surgery twice, I planned to homeschool and wanted him to do  math and science for Jr. High and Sr. High, I've spent 3 years helping care for elderly dependent relatives at the end of their lives, and we adopted internationally and had to deal with all those short and long term demands plus a year of transition hell that comes standard with traumatized children.  No way would I have been able to do all those things well if I had been expected to carry the mental load we expect adults to be able to do for themselves on behalf of my spouse.  If someone else wants to carry that for another adult, go for it!  More power to you.  But there's absolutely no valid reason to expect everyone to volunteer for such things. My oldest is married to someone like that.  Her marriage, her choice.  They're happy and I'm happy for them. She went into it with her eyes wide open.

I don't believe in fairy tales or entering fixer upper marriages.  No way would I marry someone I thought needed changing.   My mother foolishly tried that with my father.  She talked him into having a baby. In her mind she said she thought it would, "Inspire him to be a more responsible person."  It didn't work. Then I was  surprise a born 11 months after my brother was born.

[EmseB]

16 minutes ago, frogger said:

Of course, it is also good to know when to not beat a dead horse. Sometimes I forget.

All the time, here.

Also I tend to forget not to feel too personally invested in the internet, which makes me realize I get pouty unnecessarily.

[unsinkable]

32 minutes ago, EmseB said:

This is where I always come back to thinking message boards, despite the mental stimulation, are just a huge waste of time. It's interesting that this one sentence is what 10 pages of dialogue boils down to. If this is the characterization, why even bother?

 

It is the digital version of making homemade Christmas cards that people throw in the garbage.

[EmseB]

22 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

I don't know. 

It does feel a lot like banging your head against a brick wall. 

Are you asking me personally why I bother ?  

No, I was mostly asking myself.

[Ausmumof3]

2 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

And again...who generally does the constant vigilance to keep the important things aobout family  and home alive ?

Look, it might be fine for families where the women have zero financial or other out of the home responsibilities. I mean, sure, if all I had to think about was family and home, and everything else in my life was taken care of,  I'm sure I could manage a higher mental load before burn out.

I know very few women who are not at least also working p/t outside the home, or working from home, in addition to their other roles.  This board is nowhere near representative. 

 

And this is I think part of the problem.  Women are now able to have careers (good thing generally) but society has just expected that everyone can manage two full careers and the rest of life.  I personally don’t think that’s ideal and it does lead to burnout.  Someone has to take the less demanding job or both need a less demanding job to enable everyone to carry the load at home.  Even if the mental load is shared on top of the mental load for work everyone is going to get burned out.

[Shoeless]

2 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

Great. I am glad it works for you.

Yeah, I am kinda pissed because a bunch of women are suggesting that only pouty, privileged women who fixate on daily folding of the napkins feel mental load.

No one has said that. 

The situation isn't black and white.  It's not either/or.  

It's not the case that all women are overwhelmed by mental load OR all women are whiners.  There can be a state that exists where some women are whiners AND some other, totally different women have some really serious, heavy mental load.

 

[Targhee]

On 3/11/2019 at 8:19 PM, Tanaqui said:

 

Is this what people mean when they talk about "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? Even inasmuch as that statement is true, it's about as meaningful and useful as "men are taller than women". It tells us nothing of the functioning of the average man.

Listen, as somebody whose brain actually *does* "work differently", I still don't get a free pass on leaving my dirty socks hither and yon. (I know because every time I've tried it I've had people threatening to throw them in my soup.) I also don't get to just leave heavy boxes on the floor rather than the shelf I took them off of because it "isn't obvious" to me or other people "care more". It's obvious to anybody  who spends more than two minutes of thought on the subject that what comes down must invariably go back up. It's also obvious that if the only consequence of your own laziness is that your mommy or your wife rolls her eyes and gets sad and eventually does it for you then you'll find it easier never to learn to care about having a livable home. Can you imagine these men saying to their boss "Oh, I didn't know when you told me to get that thing that you intended for me to put the box back on the shelf afterwards, you never said that! All you had to do was ask me to put it back!" or "Sorry, Sarge, when you said you wanted our barracks clean I didn't mean that meant I couldn't leave my dirty clothes on the floor afterwards. It's still pretty clean, right?" (And when it comes to failing to pack underwear or clean shirts for a trip, I find myself wondering if that wasn't on some level deliberate. "If I screw it up, at least I don't have to do it again." I assume he hasn't had to do it again in that case.)

Um, no it’s not.  My Dh and kids (teens) with adhd all do this.  And I don’t take care of it, but I do ask them to take care of it after I’ve tripped over the heavy box a few times and they still haven’t done anything.  And then sometimes they DO notice without being asked, but mostly the adhd kicks in, they are distracted, and the box becomes background mess in their minds and they don’t think about it (or aren’t bothered by it). And then they’re embarrassed or feel nagged when I say something (because it’s so out of mind they can’t connect it to their own responsibility). Maddening! But also, not intentional and not conditioned. And yes, I do have to choose to live with their mess/disorganization (because we share space) or I have to assume the mental load of reminding so that the mess doesn’t push me over the edge.

[Targhee]

11 minutes ago, StellaM said:

I think ADHD is whole other conversation.

It's a genuine disorder that definitely requires more grace, and a longer lead in time to set up the strategies and learn the skills which will mitigate the EF difficulties. 

It's possible a minority of those adults have sub clinical issues with EF. 

Most adults don't have ADHD. 

 

True, only around 5-7% of the general population has ADHD, but how many of them have undiagnosed adhd or EF dysfunction? I guess that was my point.  It nearly ruined my marriage because dh was undiagnosed  and his behavior left me feeling all sorts of things (unimportant, frustrated, like I was parenting a grown man, etc) including huge mental load.  He became resentful of my “nagging” and I became weighed down and disconnected.  It wasn’t until our oldest got a Dx at 9 (13 years into our marriage) that I we realized this was probably what was going on. It’s still an issue, hard on both of us, but at least I can understand it isn’t a character/personality/self-discipline issue, and he is more responsive to reminders. 

[SereneHome]

On 3/13/2019 at 8:10 PM, Corraleno said:

Someone on this thread did in fact say that living with this burden is totally a choice, and that she purposely chose a husband who did not have any of these issues, and would never have settled for a husband with ADD because they are childish thinkers. Which kind of took me aback, to be honest, because I can't personally imagine saying to someone "I'm sorry, but I can't go out with you because you have a learning disability and therefore are not up to my standards." Also, I know plenty of people with ADD who somehow manage to make it work without dumping all of their EF issues on a spouse.

Other people have said that women who complained about these issues were just being whiny, or weren't communicating clearly, or should just suck it up and accept that it is what it is and be cheerful about it instead of frustrated. It's like there are only two possible alternatives here: the men are total selfish assholes and there's nothing to be done about it, or the men are basically decent guys so the problem is either that the women are being too picky and aren't explaining things well enough, or they just need to adjust their attitudes and just accept that this is their life from now on.

What I'm not seeing in this thread are women saying "Oh, wow, yeah I can see how it would suck to be married to someone you love and want to stay married to. but who is just not willing to take on more than 10-20% of the mental load, if that. That must be so exhausting and frustrating! You have my sympathies." I'm reading lots and lots and lots of comments along the lines that women really shouldn't expect a man to do this or that or this other thing without extensive hand-holding and multiple explanations and check lists and reminders, because nobody's perfect. 

Your 1st paragraph - I think it is a very smart idea to know what you able to live with and what you are not, otherwise you might very well end up in the situation in your 3rd paragraph and while collecting all the sympathy of the world might be nice, won't fix the actual problem

Your 2nd paragraph - I was the one who said that I chose to accept my husband for the person he is.  But that's not the only thing I did.  I also chose to see the other side   - where he chose to accept things about me.  And we chose to structure out lives in a way where it makes it better for us as a family.  It took time and work and lots of yelling for a long time.  But we chose to fix it. Or we could have chosen to divorce.  Acceptance is not a dirty word

[SereneHome]

9 hours ago, Bluegoat said:

 

I think the thread overall covered a pretty wide variety o situations, some of them including whiny ones.  I don't think there are significant differences in self-reflective ability among men and women, so some people don't really have much insight to their situations on both sides.  I noticed a lot of people mentioned mommy bloggers being annoying about this, I may be they tend to be a certain sort of person.  I don't tend to enjoy the trend to very personalised writing in that I see in a lot of media, and I wonder if that isn't true of others as well, and they are rubbed the wrong way.

 

I also think it's very common for mental load to be disproportionate, and that for a variety of reasons women often are on the heavier end of that.  I also think for most couples it's possible to do something to improve it.

I think when people are at an impasse around this, the only way to try and overcome it is going to be to approach it like a management exercise, and look at things like, is the perception that the load is unfair accurate as it could be.  THat's not an assumption that it isn't, it's a way of trying to see things more holistically.  Because it is also the case that the person who is seen to be doing less may have mental load that is invisible to the other person.  That's the nature of it being invisible, and it's not uncommon.  Even if there is still an imbalance, it can make people feel a lot better at the situation if they realise that actually, their partner is not just looking for a free ride and is contributing. It can also reveal what the real gaps are, or where there are patterns.

And then it's often a good idea to check around expectations.  I think this is an area where their often will be legitimate differences in opinion and expectation that can sabotage things. There often isn't really one right answer about how housework or bills should look, and people's experience growing up often contain a lot of underlying assumptions they aren't aware of themselves, and don't communicate well to their partner as a result.  

Those can gross gender expectations because they have to do with family culture, but I do think gender expectations have a big role in many cases.  Lots of people have the experience of a mother who takes care of certain things, and that tends to make it hard for them to see the real work being done.  I think though that there is a part of that which it ends up falling to women themselves to let go of, which is that they very often have certain expectations of themselves, or certain things as reflecting on themselves. Men seem in a lot of cases to have an easier time letting those go - they don't care about remembering everyone's birthday in the extended family, or that the house should look like what they see on HGTV, or they aren't reading magazines that tell them they have to make snazzy packed lunches for their kids.  I think women internalise a lot of pressures with this stuff that can really ramp up the feeling of carrying the household themselves.  Most men who find themselves having to manage it all just let a lot of that stuff go, and they don't get some of those pressures in the first place, they don't watch HGTV for example (I know that seems like I'm giving a lot of power to a tv channel, but I think it's emblematic and that stuff is truly hugely popular and has had a hand in changing people's expectations around household work.)   

All of which is to say I think it can require a real examination for a lot of women about what is pressurising them, including social and cultural things,  and expectations from their up-bringing. It could also be their spouse's expectations.    I think reconsidering what is really important like this can be a huge relief for a lot of overwhelmed people, it can probably reduce mental load for some more than a spouse making changes to what they do.

The third thing I think is to take a pretty clear look at your own and your partner's limitations, and what will take the least energy to change most effectively, and what sort of things are going to be impossible.  The thing with the bin struck me like that.  It could be an easy fix, but if he is the sort of person who gets distracted between tasks and then forgets what he was doing, he'll likely always do it to some extent.  It would be better use of effort to try and be chill about the fact that he leaves stuff out, and maybe get him to take over something else.  And similarly, if there is certain work that is especially trying for you, or which you actually will not want to turn over, then it's best to be aware of that.

I think for most couples, if the one who is overburdened can try and see what are the most pressing issues, they are so much more likely to be able to approach the other person in a way they will respond to.  And it's just so much easier to finding practical solutions when there is a clearer sense of what is going on in the household, and what needs to go on, and what could be left.

 I know a few people have said they think that when someone is at the end of their tether they have already examined all this, but that hasn't tended to be my experience,  I think the being overwhelmed in itself can begin to obscure these kinds of things, and suck in issues that are really peripheral.

So - that's usually how I approach thinking about articles like this - what could be the factors, how would I approach working through them.  It does tend in a way to be one-sided, because I have more information about the thinking of the person doing the writing, while only that person's explanation and perception of the situation of the other person.  

 

 

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine.  She has two kids, both her and her husband work FT and she was saying how she is pretty much responsible for 99% of the "home" stuff.  And she told me when she was in college all her girlfriends had the same images of their future lives - how they will get married, have kids, have great careers, great home lives and how of course they can do it all bc you know, women, hear us roar.  But when reality set it - it was quite different.  But by that point her husband was very much used to not having to do anything and now she is having a very hard time managing her life.

[SKL]

2 minutes ago, SereneHome said:

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine.  She has two kids, both her and her husband work FT and she was saying how she is pretty much responsible for 99% of the "home" stuff.  And she told me when she was in college all her girlfriends had the same images of their future lives - how they will get married, have kids, have great careers, great home lives and how of course they can do it all bc you know, women, hear us roar.  But when reality set it - it was quite different.  But by that point her husband was very much used to not having to do anything and now she is having a very hard time managing her life.

It's true, many of us believed the fairy tale that we can do it all.  With people waiting to have kids, that means more opportunity to set ourselves up for a fall, i.e., develop super home management and expect that to hold up once kids arrive.  Then when the kids arrive, we are exhausted, but we keep telling ourselves that this is just temporary until the kid can sleep overnight, or self-feed, or walk, or use the toilet ....  All lies!  LOL!  Right now I am in the throes of middle school girl drama and people tell me it gets still harder when they are in high school.  And it really never ends.

Truthfully, for me and surely many other women, nobody is telling us we "have" to do a lot of the things we do.  My kids don't have to do multiple activities or play in the school band or shoot for honor roll.  My house could be messier, and we didn't need to have pets.  I don't have to help friends and relatives with their tax returns and other things.  My kids don't have to have thousands of things in their rooms.  I don't have to carve out time for world travel in between work deadlines.  I don't have to plan summer academic review.  I don't even have to keep up with facebook and WTM.  These are all choices, and this is after cutting out a number of other things we used to do.  The argument "well this is what Society expects" doesn't fly.  Society expects us to make our own choices.  Society's ideal woman is a big fat lie.

As for the husband's part, honestly, in my observation, it isn't usually the husband who insists on keeping all this optional stuff going.  Most dads aren't saying "you have to put her in gymnastics and don't ask me to help with it."  It's usually the moms who have a hard time reining it in - and I say this knowing I am one of those moms.

Whatever I'm saying on this thread, I am not denying that there are families where the wife is under an unavoidable huge load and the husband isn't stepping up.  But the scenarios where moms complain about "all the things" they choose to keep up with for their NT, healthy children?  I mean sure, it's nice to list it out sometimes just to marvel at how much we all do.  But my sympathy is saved for more serious issues that people don't choose.

[Scarlett]

Well I haven’t read all the replies but I will say every couple in the world just has to learn to live together.  It sound so cliche,  it the older I get the more true it seems.  I was married to my first husband for 26 years and although he was a big fat cheater he and I did have a very good division of labor.  Even when we worked full time before ds was born.....I did some things he did others.  

My current dh...who is so trustworthy....I never worry about him having sex with other women.....he and I often clash over domestic issues.  He wants to get in and do things that I have always managed. Letting go of things has proved to be more difficult than doing everything myself.  

[Carol in Cal.]

2 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

And this is I think part of the problem.  Women are now able to have careers (good thing generally) but society has just expected that everyone can manage two full careers and the rest of life.  I personally don’t think that’s ideal and it does lead to burnout.  Someone has to take the less demanding job or both need a less demanding job to enable everyone to carry the load at home.  Even if the mental load is shared on top of the mental load for work everyone is going to get burned out.

Right, and at least in the US the one who takes the less demanding job does not get a larger share of the finances for an appreciable amount of time in the case of a divorce, because it is viewed as 'her choice'.

[Frances]

3 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

But you're talking about perfectionism. And that's a separate issue.

I agree that perfectionism can cause stress.

I disagree that when women talk about carrying a disproportionate amount of the mental load involved in home and family life, they are talking about internally generated perfectionim.

I'm really unsure why the two keep being conflated.

The woman in the article wasn't exhibiting stress from her own perfectionism.

Bathrooms do need to be cleaned on an ongoing basis. Women with small children and paid work often need ongoing professional assistance, and some of them can afford it. She asked for the gift of not having to organise it, her husband said 'sure' and then stuffed it up. Not the crime of the century, but also hardly attributable to the woman's perfectionsim.

I don’t think it’s always just perfectionism. Christmas is the perfect example for me. From threads on this board, I realize that some women do about 100x more for Christmas than I’ve ever done and probably about 10x more for birthdays. And many are carrying the mental load for the whole thing and executing the majority of the work. If it’s important to them and they enjoy it, that’s great. But if not, then that’s just one example of where figuring out what’s really important can be helpful.

The above is not to say that I don’t realize that some woman are maxed out because virtually everything is on them and all of it has to be done, there is nothing to cut.

[Frances]

Just now, StellaM said:

 

The thing I don't get about the anecdotes mentioned as illustrative is why those women were assumed not be maxed out.

The woman with the cleaner (or rather, without the cleaner!) - she sounded maxed out to me. Small kids she's juggling with increasing freelance work. That's really not about just spending too much time on unimportant things - I mean, kids and work - it's hard to cut down on those, kwim ?

I'm still completely unenlightened as to why the default, when thinking about those women, was 'unreasonably high expectations'. I really feel puzzled about that.

 

I didn’t say or mean to imply it was the default. I said it can sometimes be part of the problem, as I’ve seen on these boards and IRL.

[Frances]

3 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

I just wonder why it's socially acceptable to talk about that part of the problem, but not the other part - that maybe a whole lot of men out there are still, even in our supposedly post-feminist times, allowing women to carry their much or all of their share of the mental load as it pertains to home and family. 

That reaction is really confusing to me.

 

 

How is it not socially acceptable to talk about mental load? It seems like I’ve been reading about it forever, and certainly talking about it with my friends. I’m lucky to no longer be in the position of carrying most of the mental load for my household, but it’s certainly something I’ve talked with others about ever since I had a child, and especially after I went back to work.

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, Carol in Cal. said:

Right, and at least in the US the one who takes the less demanding job does not get a larger share of the finances for an appreciable amount of time in the case of a divorce, because it is viewed as 'her choice'.

I know.  But the issue is with the social perception that it’s possible to have two people have full careers and raise kids and still have some kind of quality of life.  Acknowledging that raising kids and running a house is mental work doesn’t seem that revolutionary to me but then a lot of extreme feminists seem to think staying home with kids or doing housework is turning brains into mush so maybe it is a big realisation that actually there is a tonne of mental work associated with it.

to me the biggest problem we have socially is actually acknowledging the work and contribution of caring roles.  In past times a divorce often did lead to even distribution of assets or alimony but because socially we’ve decided people doing the work at home actually aren’t doing anything that’s often not the case anymore.

[EmseB]

20 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

I meant on this thread 🙂

I agree; out in real life I've never come across a single woman who wasn't sympathetic to mental load, and who doubted it was a gendered topic.

The options are to agree that it sucks (sympathy); offer suggestions to get the dude to change; offer ways the woman can do less, reduce standards, change herself; suggest divorce; or ???. You can do the third one the same time as the first one!

Beyond that, on a discussion board where we're all coming at it from different perspectives, sympathy for it existing seems to be caveated in a lot of posts but isn't much of a discussion in and of itself. It's expressed, but I mean, I didn't assume it was a JAWM thread or I never would have posted in the first place. I can be sympathetic to women carrying an unfair mental load and totally disagree with that author's take or approach on the issue. I can also be generally sympathetic (having grown up seeing it happen in my own) and disagree with other posters here. 

[Carol in Cal.]

50 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I know.  But the issue is with the social perception that it’s possible to have two people have full careers and raise kids and still have some kind of quality of life.  Acknowledging that raising kids and running a house is mental work doesn’t seem that revolutionary to me but then a lot of extreme feminists seem to think staying home with kids or doing housework is turning brains into mush so maybe it is a big realisation that actually there is a tonne of mental work associated with it.

to me the biggest problem we have socially is actually acknowledging the work and contribution of caring roles.  In past times a divorce often did lead to even distribution of assets or alimony but because socially we’ve decided people doing the work at home actually aren’t doing anything that’s often not the case anymore.

I have my own theories about this.

I think that there are two kinds of feminism (broadly), one focusing on pure fairness/equality which is mostly letting women be much like men in terms of rights and responsibiities, and one focussing on what would benefit women distinctly from men (more common in Europe).  In focusing on the first, you end up with feminists sometimes adopting (ironically) sort of old-fashioned male attitudes toward staying at home and doing 'women's work'.  And the push for choice ends up imposing the responsibilities of caregiving vs. career as an optional choice that should be an individual rather than a marital or societal responsibility, leading to great inequities in the economics of divorce.  I don't think that things had to go this way, but that's where they went, at least here in the States.

[Ausmumof3]

23 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I have my own theories about this.

I think that there are two kinds of feminism (broadly), one focusing on pure fairness/equality which is mostly letting women be much like men in terms of rights and responsibiities, and one focussing on what would benefit women distinctly from men (more common in Europe).  In focusing on the first, you end up with feminists sometimes adopting (ironically) sort of old-fashioned male attitudes toward staying at home and doing 'women's work'.  And the push for choice ends up imposing the responsibilities of caregiving vs. career as an optional choice that should be an individual rather than a marital or societal responsibility, leading to great inequities in the economics of divorce.  I don't think that things had to go this way, but that's where they went, at least here in the States.

Hmm this is interesting.  I hadn’t defined it like that but that’s probably true.  I think invidualism versus the collective good plays in somewhere here too.  I mean it may be a better outcome for individuals to both have high income high interest careers and not have children.  But it’s not a sustainable model for society because it creates all the issues with population decline, aged care etc etc.  so if we as a society need people to have children then we need to figure out a way to financially account for the labour being done.  Or we just rely on immigration which effectively means child bearing and raising becomes another aspect of our society that we outsource to underdeveloped countries and poor women.

[maize]

1 hour ago, StellaM said:

 

Ah well, all I'll say is I think the responses were weighted to one of your 6 + options.  And not maybe the most helpful one. 

I think I got stuck on the explanations of how a man might not be able to cook dinner without bothering his wife. 

It's like my brain came to a juddering halt there, and just couldn't get past it.

I'm still kind of stuck there, honestly. 

Do you disagree with the writer's take, or the issue she chose to foreground as her 'straw' ? (no need to answer, I know you are fried, just curious).

 

 

Mine can't. 

Cook dinner that is.

He has managed to keep the kids alive the couple of times I left town for a few days, they lived almost entirely off of takeout though.

Mostly I see his issues as straight up disability. Doesn't make the burden I have to shoulder any lighter but it does help me not feel excessively resentful.

I've been mostly avoiding this thread because I find the topic depressing. 

I do think some people conflate executive function issues and unwillingness to carry mental load. I'm carrying all the mental load and I also have terrible executive function.

Which is how I can work all day and my house is still a mess.

 

[maize]

8 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

But maize, I was talking about neurotypical adults. 

I know that people suffering from disability have different challenges, and so do their spouses.

Anyone with chronic depression is doing great to hold down a job. I am pretty sure I wouldn't expect anyone with chronic depression, male or female, to carry the load 50:50, particularly not during an execerbation. C'mon now, you know I am not a 'depression/ADHD is a character flaw' person. 

It's simply not the case, though, that the majority of adult males are suffering from debilitating executive functioning disorders, especially from ones that only strike in the home! 

Yeah, I know you know. I've just been hanging around the edges of the discussion and decided to use your post as a place to jump in.

The article in the OP did sound whiny to me, things like the bin left out in the closet--that kind of thing looks like an EF issue to me cause it is absolutely the kind of thing I do all the time. My brain never connects the dots between "you got this item out and have been stumbling over it for days" and "put the item away". It just doesn't.

My 15 year old with better executive function (in spite of my horrendous example) is so much better about this kind of thing.

[maize]

My dad was actually a pretty good example of sharing the mental load, when he was home he would jump in and do stuff as needed. He did a lot of the cooking when mom was pregnant.

[Carol in Cal.]

I would like to add—I do think it’s pretty awful to blog about your family in a derogatory way.

I picture them going to an office party and someone having read this and ribbing the husband about the Rubbermaid box or something.  It’s just really not good.  It’s too big of a public setting for that kind of thing.  I think it’s fine in a more private and impersonal group, but wow.  I hope she checked in with him first and that he was fine with it.

[SKL]

We don't actually know that the people in the egregious examples are not impaired in any way.  Just because you have a job and haven't been fired recently does not prove you are a good manager of details.  I have relatives who are incredibly successful in some respects, but they would be OP guy x 10 despite being decent humans.  A high IQ / exceptional memory / focused talent, or a great charismatic personality, can cover up a lot of things at work, at least for a while.

Edited March 15, 2019 by SKL

[frogger]

26 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I would like to add—I do think it’s pretty awful to blog about your family in a derogatory way.

I picture them going to an office party and someone having read this and ribbing the husband about the Rubbermaid box or something.  It’s just really not good.  It’s too big of a public setting for that kind of thing.  I think it’s fine in a more private and impersonal group, but wow.  I hope she checked in with him first and that he was fine with it.

 

This reminds me of the fad of shaming your kids by making them hold a sign with their transgression and posted it on social media. I can't imagine a kid ever trusting a parent again after something like that.  

[Corraleno]

51 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I would like to add—I do think it’s pretty awful to blog about your family in a derogatory way.

I picture them going to an office party and someone having read this and ribbing the husband about the Rubbermaid box or something.  It’s just really not good.  It’s too big of a public setting for that kind of thing.  I think it’s fine in a more private and impersonal group, but wow.  I hope she checked in with him first and that he was fine with it.

Yes, she got his approval before publishing it, and she also said in the article that he is a great guy, she loves him dearly, but he just did not seem to understand the concept of emotional labor. And apparently after seeing thousands of men and women, all over the world, confirm that his wife really wasn't just being whiny and unreasonable and making this stuff up, he finally "got" it. In the follow-up article, she says that he is really trying to step up now, and is doing things like picking up milk and juice on the way home, without having to be asked.

The fact that he might have been slightly embarrassed by the fact that other people knew he was slacking off at home seems to be far outweighed by the ultimate benefit to not only his own relationship, but many others. And frankly, if he's embarrassed by the fact that other people know he doesn't pick up after himself, then maybe he should have picked up after himself. It's not like she said he was lousy in bed or smelled bad or something.
 

44 minutes ago, SKL said:

We don't actually know that the people in the egregious examples are not impaired in any way.  Just because you have a job and haven't been fired recently does not prove you are a good manager of details.  I have relatives who are incredibly successful in some respects, but they would be OP guy x 10 despite being decent humans.  A high IQ / exceptional memory / focused talent, or a great charismatic personality, can cover up a lot of things at work, at least for a while.

Well, apparently he's not impaired, since he is finally stepping up to take on some of the load. 

It amazes me that so many people seem to really really want there to be some obvious explanation for why this guy, and take-out guy, weren't stepping up before. Maybe they're ADD or otherwise impaired; this was probably just a one-off and not something he does all the time (even though there were obvious flags that is was a pattern); she didn't spell out every single step of calling a cleaning service or a take out place, so he couldn't possibly have known how to do that without explicit instruction; he did do what she asked, she was just being unreasonably picky because he didn't do it her way, etc. It's like there was an immediate judgement that the wives were being whiny, huffy, unreasonable, etc., and that had to be justified by finding excuses for the husbands, who were given every possible benefit of the doubt, while the wives got none. 

 

[frogger]

41 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Yes, she got his approval before publishing it, and she also said in the article that he is a great guy, she loves him dearly, but he just did not seem to understand the concept of emotional labor. And apparently after seeing thousands of men and women, all over the world, confirm that his wife really wasn't just being whiny and unreasonable and making this stuff up, he finally "got" it. In the follow-up article, she says that he is really trying to step up now, and is doing things like picking up milk and juice on the way home, without having to be asked.

 

 

That is great. I did not see the follow up article but since she had permission and it was a lesson learned and she must have been able to communicate and he must have been willing to listen which is what a relationship is all about. Figuring out what works for both of you, not just one of you. 

[Carol in Cal.]

So what if we said, would i accept this from a female roommate?  When considering this issue.  It’s an interesting way to frame and reconsider the question.

[frogger]

59 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

So what if we said, would i accept this from a female roommate?  When considering this issue.  It’s an interesting way to frame and reconsider the question.

 

Well, I can tell you I couldn't have lived with a certain person's wife for a week. I was totally flabbergasted. I don't know how he managed a decade but divorce , especially with children involved, is so much more complicated then just moving into a different apartment which is why I have more sympathy for those who have to basically take care of another adult rather than have teamwork.

The other problem I see is that it's not just a roomate. My DH doesn't just share a space and car with me. He shares responsibilty for 4 other human beings. You can be sure I expect a lot more from him. 

[Corraleno]

Yeah, I don't think roommates are a parallel situation. Married couples are far more than roommates, and they are often also co-parents. While there are surely roommates who create conflict by not picking up after themselves, I can't imagine many people would consider it acceptable for one roommate to be forced to take on the job of managing the mental load of the other roommate — not without agreeing to it and probably being paid or compensated for it, anyway.

Now if you're talking about same-sex partners who are actually a committed couple, and likely co-parents, then I would feel exactly the same way. Expecting one partner to take on a vastly disproportionate share of the emotional labor for their shared lives is unreasonable, and if one partner is repeatedly telling the other partner that this is a problem, then the partner who refuses to acknowledge the problem and try to fix it is an ass. Even if they have ADD or other EF issues, if their partner says "this is making me extremely stressed and unhappy and it's affecting our relationship in negative ways, so we need to find a solution," then they need to at least find some kind of compromise that works for both of them, not just shrug and say "well I'm not good at this stuff, so you just have to live with it."

The fact that sometimes, in some cases, it's the husband who bears a disproportionate share of the burden doesn't alter the fact that in the vast majority of cases that burden falls on the wife. The fact that sometimes, in some cases, the issue is EF deficits in one partner doesn't change the fact that in the vast majority of cases the issue is with an NT partner, nor does it absolve an ADD partner from doing everything he can to mitigate those issues in order to relieve some of the burden on his wife. This problem is, by and large, a gender-based problem, because women's "emotional labor" is, by and large, invisible, devalued, seen as "not real work," and/or seen as their biologically-determined lot in life that they need to just accept instead of whining about.

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, Carol in Cal. said:

So what if we said, would i accept this from a female roommate?  When considering this issue.  It’s an interesting way to frame and reconsider the question.

As I said, I don't think the roommate situation is parallel, but I think if you just reverse the genders in the couple, many people would no longer be bending over backwards to excuse the behavior of a woman who was shirking her fair share of the load.

If the husband was complaining that he was doing all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and child care and household management, and was telling his wife that he was feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and needed her to take over some of the load, would people be using words like pouty, huffy, unreasonable, and whiny? Would people be suggesting that obviously he didn't express himself correctly, he should have spelled it all out for her, women can't be expected to know how to call out for pizza or hire a cleaning service without explicit instructions, she probably has lots of other things on her mind, he's not appreciating all the things she does do, etc. 

And even if people on this board want to claim that they would indeed have reacted exactly that way, the vast majority of people who read a story like that would be saying "OMG, that man is a saint, how does he put up with that? Poor guy, stuck with such a lazy selfish wife! He should divorce her and find someone else, he deserves so much better." 

[SKL]

3 hours ago, Corraleno said:

Yes, she got his approval before publishing it, and she also said in the article that he is a great guy, she loves him dearly, but he just did not seem to understand the concept of emotional labor. And apparently after seeing thousands of men and women, all over the world, confirm that his wife really wasn't just being whiny and unreasonable and making this stuff up, he finally "got" it. In the follow-up article, she says that he is really trying to step up now, and is doing things like picking up milk and juice on the way home, without having to be asked.

The fact that he might have been slightly embarrassed by the fact that other people knew he was slacking off at home seems to be far outweighed by the ultimate benefit to not only his own relationship, but many others. And frankly, if he's embarrassed by the fact that other people know he doesn't pick up after himself, then maybe he should have picked up after himself. It's not like she said he was lousy in bed or smelled bad or something.
 

Well, apparently he's not impaired, since he is finally stepping up to take on some of the load. 

It amazes me that so many people seem to really really want there to be some obvious explanation for why this guy, and take-out guy, weren't stepping up before. Maybe they're ADD or otherwise impaired; this was probably just a one-off and not something he does all the time (even though there were obvious flags that is was a pattern); she didn't spell out every single step of calling a cleaning service or a take out place, so he couldn't possibly have known how to do that without explicit instruction; he did do what she asked, she was just being unreasonably picky because he didn't do it her way, etc. It's like there was an immediate judgement that the wives were being whiny, huffy, unreasonable, etc., and that had to be justified by finding excuses for the husbands, who were given every possible benefit of the doubt, while the wives got none.

Again - if the shoe were on the other foot - if the husband were publishing criticisms of his wife to the whole world and not caring if she got embarrassed; if a group of men were piling on to a wife for not doing her husband's usual job perfectly, on the first try, without asking questions - you would probably not be sounding so supportive of that husband or those critics.  Just assuming here.

Why must support for other women include trashing their husbands?  And if someone makes a constructive suggestion rather than pile on, then somehow that's an attack on the woman.  The logic is just not there.

[EmseB]

51 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

As I said, I don't think the roommate situation is parallel, but I think if you just reverse the genders in the couple, many people would no longer be bending over backwards to excuse the behavior of a woman who was shirking her fair share of the load.

If the husband was complaining that he was doing all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and child care and household management, and was telling his wife that he was feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and needed her to take over some of the load, would people be using words like pouty, huffy, unreasonable, and whiny? Would people be suggesting that obviously he didn't express himself correctly, he should have spelled it all out for her, women can't be expected to know how to call out for pizza or hire a cleaning service without explicit instructions, she probably has lots of other things on her mind, he's not appreciating all the things she does do, etc. 

And even if people on this board want to claim that they would indeed have reacted exactly that way, the vast majority of people who read a story like that would be saying "OMG, that man is a saint, how does he put up with that? Poor guy, stuck with such a lazy selfish wife! He should divorce her and find someone else, he deserves so much better." 

I think I said exactly that, specifically about the issues in the article. And I said if my husband got iritated with me for not putting away bins or leaving my clothes on the floor or forgetting my keys or things at the store or whatever we'd have kind of a bad time. I would be miserable.

But maybe my husband  does deserve better. How does he live with me??

[SKL]

2 hours ago, Carol in Cal. said:

So what if we said, would i accept this from a female roommate?  When considering this issue.  It’s an interesting way to frame and reconsider the question.

I have been through a lot of it and more with my female housemates. 

I "accept" that they are different from me in several ways. For example, they literally don't see dirt / mess the way I do.  And they dislike cleaning.

I don't accept that my house has to be a pigsty nor that I have to do all of the work.  But I accept that it will take polite discussion and reminders to get people to change their habits, and that we can trade off responsibilities so each is using our different talents, and that my standards might be a little too high for the situation we are in.

I certainly would not post an article about it using actual names and incidents, nor would I hold a grudge over something relatively unimportant.

[EmseB]

19 hours ago, StellaM said:

 

Ah well, all I'll say is I think the responses were weighted to one of your 6 + options.  And not maybe the most helpful one. 

I think I got stuck on the explanations of how a man might not be able to cook dinner without bothering his wife. 

It's like my brain came to a juddering halt there, and just couldn't get past it.

I'm still kind of stuck there, honestly. 

Do you disagree with the writer's take, or the issue she chose to foreground as her 'straw' ? (no need to answer, I know you are fried, just curious).

 

 

I was the one that said it was silly for me to be bothered by my husband asking if he was using the correct rice in a recipe (my rice bins aren't labeled). My husband is not an idiot or unwilling to acknowledge and take on the mental load of the household, and yet this is supposedly what is going to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. I don't buy that. I think it's not unreasonable to ask your spouse an ostensibly stupid question about how to do something they don't normally do, in a room that's organized to my perferences. Anyway.

As to your question, (and know I'm speaking to the article and it's tone not your situation or anyone specifically that has something going on) I just keep thinking about my grandma reading this article. She came to the US with a tiny baby, limited English, almost no money, and no expectations that a man would help her with any task pertaining to the household. My grandfather, who I have only known as a loving, caring grandpa who doted on her the last year of her life, went to work and came home for 45 years. He worked hard, but the idea that he should do anything with meals, kids, laundry, cleaning, etc. just did not enter their minds.

So I think about my grandma with no indoor plumbing for a time, hand washing everything (she shook her head at me when she heard I used cloth diapers by choice), growing, processing, preserving their food, mending clothes, thrifting, buying groceries on an allowance, getting a part time job at Sears, fixing every meal to his preferences (from scratch), etc., etc.

And I think she would roll her eyes and laugh in disbelief at this woman with her ineffectual husband scrubbing toilets, buying unwanted jewelry, and *leaving bins out* and not thinking of picking up the milk or juice. We have robots to do 90% of the labor that took her hard, physical work all day and we complain about being the person that has to remember to operate them. And the woman in the article is literally crying about it.

I'm not saying I want to go back to the 1950s or that we aren't generally better off with involved spouses, but it does feel a bit like fainting couch feminism, or pettiness, or decadence of some kind, or reducing the home to a series of menial burdensome tasks that someone else should remember, too! like we just can't be expected to handle all of this because it's too much. And it bothers me, too, because I place great importance on home making, home keeping as a vocation, but I see very, very few people (including the author) valuing those tasks as such. So anyway, after thinking about your question for a long time, I think the answer is, it's both.

[EmseB]

52 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

OK,  I am not talking about you. I am quite confident that as an intelligent, caring woman, you do in fact carry plenty of the mental load for your family, even when indisposed.

But generally - the woman in the article should not have gotten irritated, expressing irriration would be to blame for her husband's misery, and she definitely should never discuss it publicly ?

Surely the simpler solution is for the person continually enacting irritating behaviours, neccessitating small but culmulative additions to their spouse's mental load, to change their behaviours ? 

 

 

Sure! But I mean, in general I see no universe where a man writes an article about his wife taking on physical labor in order to avoid the mental strain of hiring it out, and then he writes about how she doesn't understand all the stress he's under at work all day, and yet she sluffs the kids off on him to do this thing he wanted hired out and she never remembers to take care of x and y, and he's always stepping over toys and crap when he walks in the door...I don't see that article getting a positive reception.

And part of that is going to be because everyone assumes something about what the wife is doing when her husband is not home, that they don't assume about him when he's away from home. Like, if she didn't pick up the toys it was because she was busy with something else.

So your question assumes that one party in the marriage is going to be the one doing these irritating things adding to the other's mental load. And that that assumption is the sisterly thing to go on, believe women when they say this is happening, if I understand correctly. But I can't agree with that assumption because I think generally both spouses do those sorts of things and both spouses have to work towards changing themselves or accepting the other's foibles and work ethics and messiness and gross habits. I think a lot of the time it is a completely two way street in that regard. I actually think it's pretty rare that just the man is going to be the one doing annoying stuff. I think that's a trope, like Everybody Loves Raymond is not real life. It's funny because it resonates on some level but also because he's a caricature.