So, Now What?

18- When Your Partner Feels Like a Liability—and Your Kids Become the Safer Place

• angela tam

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What if the place you run for safety is the very thing keeping your nervous system on high alert? We dig into the quiet pattern many mental load carriers know too well: shifting away from a partner who feels unreliable and toward kids who feel safer, more responsive, and easier to influence. It makes sense—especially if childhood taught you that mistakes cost, no one’s coming, and love must be earned through output. But the relief you’re chasing never lands, because the load never leaves. It intensifies.

We unpack how overfunctioning becomes a survival strategy rooted in early experiences, cultural pressures, and neurodivergent realities like ADHD rejection sensitivity. Then we challenge the common fix of “just ask your partner to do more,” explaining why it often backfires without nervous system change. Instead, we walk through self-leadership: respecting the overfunctioning part, listening to the internal alarm, and practicing the U-turn—turning inward before acting outward. That simple shift reveals the tender beliefs under vigilance and opens the door to real change.

From there, we map a path toward shared adult leadership. You’ll hear how to build trust through small, low-stakes tasks, align on “good enough” standards, and practice repair after misses, so safety lives between adults instead of in one parent alone. Kids don’t need a perfect hero; they need to see responsibility shared without anyone disappearing to keep the peace. If your routines keep getting tighter and your resentment keeps growing, this conversation offers a humane reset and practical next steps.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a co-parent, and leave a review with one belief you’re updating first. Your story helps others find their way back to shared care.

Come follow me on instagram @MentalLoadCoach and subscribe to my newsletter here. Looking forward to adventuring with you!

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, I'm so glad to be back on again and I am doing like a little series about the mental load and the impact of the mental load on your partnership and your parenting. And I'm really speaking to mental load all ours here. And most of us are majority sign female at birth or are people of color. And if you're not, this is still for you. So don't feel like this space does not belong to you. It still belongs to you. If you're listening to this episode, you probably already know that there's a pattern. We talked about how you might overfunction from a place of where in your childhood, your history, your culture, safety was not guaranteed. And the basic things were not guaranteed, like a financial stability or sense of cohesiveness in your family. And even knowing how and why you're overfunctioning doesn't stop you from stop overfunctioning. And somewhere along the way without quite deciding to you may have made a quiet shift. You stopped expecting your partner to really get it. You stopped trusting them to take things as seriously as you do. Instead, you lean in harder with your kids, you become more connected with your kids, you become more attuned, and you start picking things up more with your kids. You start being more responsible, you start being more involved because they feel safer. This is what is the big misconception, what you believe you have to do in order to make things work. Here's a belief that most parents don't realize they're operating from. And that's something that I fell into for a really long time. I tightened up my routines, I enforced my standards more unilaterally without even consulting my husband. And I corrected my husband more often. I emotionally withdrew from my partner, and I built a deeper relationship with my kids. And not because I didn't want that partnership, but because that partnership felt unsafe and unreliable, because I didn't feel like, or parts of me didn't feel like my partner was on the same page as me in terms of our standards of care around parenting or having the household together. And your logic might be similar as my logic, which is at least my kids need me, at least here my efforts matter, and at least here I'm not being dismissed. And at that time, I didn't realize that I was experiencing a lot of dismissiveness from my or messages that I interpreted as dismissiveness from my husband. And given my life experience around how safety was not guaranteed, around how I did I have rejection sensitivity with my ADHD, that belief makes sense. Of course, I would move away from my husband where I perceived that I was being dismissed and towards my kid. And why this strategy feels so right and is it stupid, is that it's not avoidance, it's adaptation. My nervous system collected data and told me that when I delegate, it's done carelessly. When I relax, things fall through the crack. When I trust someone, then I have to clean it up afterwards. They might do stuff, but it's more work for me to trust someone to do something because they're really not going to follow through. Or if they do follow through, I have to clean up and do more work as a result. So my partnership, I didn't realize this, but it didn't feel very safe. And I moved towards where safety was. And my safety at that time felt more reliable with my kids. With some, my vigilance feels like it's meaningful. My care feels like it's welcome. My effort feels necessary. And so, unlike with my partner, there's no power struggle with my kids, too, because they depend on me. And maybe sometimes there's a power struggle with screen times and stuff, but we've actually done a lot of work to reduce that power struggle. And this is the proof why this doesn't actually bring relief. Why moving towards your kids doesn't move doesn't bring relief. And this is the part that's really painful, even for me to name, because this was a painful lesson for me to learn, is that this strategy doesn't calm your system. Like caretaking and moving towards your kids, it doesn't calm your system, it actually intensifies it because you're still carrying the mental load. I was still carrying the mental load. And I was more resentful towards my partner. And I'm emotionally closer to my kids than my partner that I am with my partner. So I felt I started to feel not only resentful towards my partner, but like a risk. And the safe feel higher. Even though I really wanted to blame my partner because I did not feel like he was stepping up at that time. I, when I did an honest reflection, I could trace this belief back to my childhood. And it didn't come from my kids either. It came from a time when I had to grow up really fast. I knew that nobody was going to come rescue me and that mistake had consequences. And if you're like me, if you grew up with parents who were emotionally immature or who were immigrants and just survived and try to make things work and left you to figure out and fend for yourself, this is probably something that you could maybe relate to. And this is the game changer for me. This is what actually helps you move forward instead of leaning into your kids as a survival strategy. The solution is not asking your partner to do more. It's not pulling away from your kids. It's not forcing yourself to trust in the process or shaming yourself for being too much. The vehicle that helps you move forward is something called self-leadership. That means updating the internal overfunctioning manager inside of you instead of dismissing them and bringing curiosity to the alarm system that's inside of you instead of agreeing with the alarm system. Noticing when your system is choosing your kids over your partner for safety and gently turning inward before acting outward. And that's where the practices like the U-turn really matter. And I share the U-turn as a freebie in my link tree in my bio, where it's a guide to help you look inside first before you act. And so what happens is instead of how do I fix my partner? Or you're asking yourself, why am I like this? You ask yourself, what does my system think will happen if I don't stay this close, this alert, and this needed? And that question changes everything because it leads you to the tender parts beneath you that are beneath the hypervigilance. That part learned, I'm alone. No one will come, and I only matter if I'm useful. And so those are the three beliefs that have been a burden in my system for so long. Because I grew up the way I did, is I truly internalize that I am alone, that no one's gonna come help me. And I my output is what makes me useful and worthy of being loved and accepted. And here's a reframe that your system will need, not all at once, but over time, is that your overfunctioning system is not wrong. It's just overworked. It doesn't need to be silenced or suppressed or deleted. It just needs updating. And safety does not come from choosing your kids over your partner. It comes from shared leadership inside you and between adults. And your children don't need you to be the only person that they can rely on. That's their emotional safety person, but they need to see adults sharing their responsibility and repairing after conflict happened or disagreement happened. And they need to see care that doesn't require you to disappear or shrink or erase yourself. And if this episode or this live stream stirred up some discomfort, that's totally okay. You're not failing, you're not too attached to your kids, you're not broken, you're just now becoming aware of the problem that's before you. And the next step isn't doing more or even pulling away. It's learning how to lead your system out of permanent crisis mode. So safety doesn't live in one person alone, but it's shared. And that's where the real relief comes from. If this resonated with you, drop a note in the comment to let me know about what how it resonated. And drop your questions to me in the DMs or in my post. I'll post this up in my grid, and you're welcome to replay it. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I look forward to hearing from you.