25- Why My Husband's CrossFit After Work Felt Like Betrayal

I unpack why the baby handoff can feel like salvation to one partner and rejection to the other. We name the invisible “backpacks” behind mental load resentment and the performance of adequacy so couples can stop colliding and start understanding. 
• the stay-at-home parent’s first exhale and why it is not rejection 
• how intensive parenting trains self-erasure and fuels parental burnout 
• resentment as a signal of unequal emotional labor and invisible work 
• the provider’s insecurity of being useful but unseen 
• the “backpack” metaphor for inherited roles from family and culture 
• why unspoken resentment hardens into contempt over time 
• how inadequacy grows when the map for partnership is incomplete 
• opening the backpack with vulnerability and curiosity instead of blame 

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Transcript

Intensive Parenting And Self Erasure

The Provider’s Side Of The Door

Collision Not Conflict

The Cultural Backpack We Inherit

Men And The Performance Of Adequacy

Resentment And Inadequacy Decoded

How To Open The Backpack

Compassionate Closing And Next Steps

1:15

Hey, I'm back for another episode, and I wanna talk to you about something that has happened to one of my clients, but also is something that's all too familiar for all of us, and I myself have been through it too. Picture yourself with the baby all day, and specifically, it's a person like me. I was a stay-at-home parent. I had been in a position where I was working all day at home, managing the kids and thinking about the appointments and taking care of my child's feeding and burping and changing and napping and juggling all these mental tasks, doing research about the best feeding methods for baby-led weaning, et cetera. And specifically, I'm talking about that season of life before you have that one or two-year-old birthday, right? For your kid. This is the most intense time is before they're two years old. And at that point, the stay-at-home parent, who happens to be me in this story, let's say, has been at home all day by themselves. And I remember feeling like I was the only adult in this space, and I literally was. I was alone probably all day, and I had to physically, mentally, emotionally hold it together. And little did I know, I was living inside a version of parenthood that does not allow me to be me, does not allow me to fully show up. And I look at the clock, and I'm just counting down the hours until my partner, Herman, could walk through the door. And when my partner, Herman, walks through the door, I remember running to the door and giving the baby to my partner right away. And I remember those days when he was doing CrossFit after work, and I was so mad that he had the audacity to add one and a half hours at the end of his day to, to take for himself. I was just so livid. So in those thirty seconds are two completely different internal moments, internal experiences of the same moment. One person, that was potentially me, handing the baby off to my partner, and my partner receiving the baby, right? I'm gonna give you my version of- How a person that would identify with the stay-at-home parent would be thinking, and then I'll give you my partner's version. The handoff for the mental load owner, the stay-at-home parent, is the first exhale that I could have all day. It's the first time where I could finally breathe, where I could finally see that relief was coming. And my handing the baby off to my partner was not a sign of rejection of my partner. I wasn't like,"Hey, good to see you. Bye." It's not an escape. It's finally a moment where that pressure had somewhere to go, and that was to my partner. An ideology that I did not know I was subscribing to was called intensive parenting. And intensive parenting has had her tentacles on me since the morning, telling me that I had to be always on, always connected emotionally to my baby, responsive to my baby, and always the primary contact for everyone's needs. And I'm running on a reserve that I didn't know I was drawing down from, and it was on empty. And I didn't hand the baby to my partner because I didn't wanna be a mother. I just wanted to give my partner the full weight of the responsibility so that my nervous system could have an hour of time to not be the most important person in the room that my child relied on. And I have nothing left to give in that moment. So my worry is that if I'm with my baby for one moment more, I might just snap and-- at the baby or my partner, and I don't wanna do that. So I did not know this, but I was living inside a version of parenthood that caused me to erase myself. And I basically, me giving my ba- my baby back to my partner was a way for me to attempt to find my way back to myself. And I really did not... I wish someone had told me this twelve years ago, but now I know what I know, and I've been coming back to myself. But that was the pressure at that time. Now This is the flip side, and I've attempted to really try to get this perspective from my partner, so it might not be accurate to you. But when you come home to your partner who's a stay-at-home partner, and you're thinking,"I just did a whole day of work to provide for my family, and I gave all of myself in order to really make sure that I checked all the boxes as a provider." I am hoping as... This is me speaking in the perspective of someone like my partner, Herman. I'm coming home not to a house, but my partner, and I'm really looking forward to having my partner welcome me. But instead of being met by a person who registers that I'm someone important, I'm just registered as someone that exists and someone who is a receptacle to their stress. And so I'm-- for Herman, he had told me that I basically handed off his sh- my stress to him, and he felt like he was someone who was just... someone who was just used as, a person that received a handoff package and now is responsible for the baby. And instead of feeling welcome, he felt like he was just inundated with this very familiar story that is in his personal history that says,"I'm useful when I'm needed, but I'm invisible the rest of that time, and I'm a function, I'm a form of... I'm a means to an end. I'm a function of practicality, but I'm not actually a person, and I don't actually have-- get to have any needs. I do not get to matter in a way that has nothing to do with what I provide." And me handing off my eldest child at that point twelve years ago was a reminder that he's nothing more than a paycheck, that he's nothing more than someone who's useful, and that feeling is real. For Herman, that is his deepest insecurity, is that he is just a person That performs functions for our family. And that has been his story since the beginning of time with his own family. So he has told me and shared in couples therapy, and I share this with permission, that, that is his biggest insecurity, that his presence is only registered when it's needed, and that feels really hurtful to him, and it deserves to be named. And here's what neither person in that story that I shared with you about, that younger version of Angela, that younger version of Herman knows. This is what we didn't know at that time. I was handing Herman the baby not because Herman was invisible to me. I was handing Herman the baby because I had felt invisible to myself all day. And the stories that he was making up about how he was-- he's only important when he provides is not accurate. That is the thinking that he's inherited from his own history, and it's been in his invisible backpack for years. The resentment that I was carrying is real, but it's not aimed at my partner, even when I try to target him. It is the structural weight of an impossible standard that I absorbed before I even knew I was absorbing it, and that's the weight of the pressure of being on all day, of being emotionally attuned, of centering everyone's comfort except myself, and feeling pressured to be on and available. And both people, both the younger version of me and the younger version of Herman, are walking around in the dark carrying things that-- in our invisible pack-backpacks that predate both of us, and we're bumping into each other and calling it conflict and calling each other names about it. So it's not conflict, but it is collision. It's a collision of our backpacks. It's a collision of our inherited ideologies. It's our collision of our inherited burdens, and my burden is to be the best parent that I can be, and that means being on, being a perfect parent, and adhering to impossible standards. And for Herman, his inherited ideology is to be someone who fixes things, someone who's providing, someone who's... someone who is contributing to the family in a way that's really helpful. And all I have to tell you right now is this episode is for two people. It's for the younger version of me and the younger version of Herman, and all of y'all out there who can relate to that. So let's start before the baby, before the handoff, before the resentment or the inadequacy had a time. Let's start with what you were handed because neither of you walked into a relationship as a blank slate. You walked in wearing something. It's called the backpack. And Eric- Erica Djosa? Djosa? I don't know how to pronounce her name. She-- I learned this concept through her book, and I felt so seen through that. This backpack that she describes is a backpack that was packed for you by your culture, by your family, by every message that you absorbed about what a good parent looks like or what a capable partner is supposed to be. You didn't choose what went into that backpack, but it was loaded before you were old enough to ask questions about it. For the female-identified person, and I recognize that this is not gender exclusive to female folks, but in general, the female-identified person can identify that she or they did not decide to hold the whole world inside their head. She was trained to do it, trained to carry the mental load. Somewhere between the parenting books and Instagram and all these messages really in entertainment and society and role modeling, the way that I learned to show up as a mom was absorbed through the environment around me. And the environment said good mothers are present, emotionally connected at all times, one step ahead, anticipating the need before it's spoken, and they handle the schedules for everyone, and they suss out the emotional climate in the family and with individuals in the family, and they track developmental milestones. They track the dietary preferences, the food preferences, the social calendars, the permission slips, the forms, the backup plans for the backup plans. And this isn't a choice that we made consciously. This is the water that we're swimming in, the air that we're breathing, the environment that we're walking through this thing is called the intensive parenting ideology, and the-this-it-it's a cultural belief that children require constant, optimized, emoti-emotionally sophisticated care from a primary parent, specifically a female-identified primary parent, who's always fully available. And it crept in as love. It looks like love, as dedication, and as a kind of mother, any person would wanna be. And now, this is here we are. We're the holder of everything. And no wonder we find ourselves exhausted in a way that doesn't have a day off. It's like we don't-- we can't even describe this bone-tired exhaustion that we have. Underneath the exhaustion, if we let ourselves feel it, which is rare because there's the ideology that you're not allowed to stop and feel your feelings that comes with intensive parenting, there's something that we're afraid to name, which is resentment. Not because we don't love our family, not because this female-identified primary parent doesn't care about her family, but she was handed a standard of care that was impossible to meet. And now she's been doing it alone, and that's part of the ideology, is that you, the female-identified person, needs to do it alone without asking for help and without talking about it. And you're supposed to make it look effortless. And at some point, the body remembers, keeps a score, even when the mind is trying to be in denial of it. And the resentment is not a character flaw, it's a signal. And it's a signal that nobody talks about enough because we are taught that if we're resentful, we talk about our resentment, it means that we're ungrateful, it means that we're bad parents or bad people. And honestly, it's gotten the message that if we're talking about a resentment, it's really useless because we can't do anything about it. It's not practical to talk about our resentment. But talking and working through and being honest about your resentment is one of the most productive things you could do because that's where it starts. It's a signal that there is something wrong with the distribution of weight of the mental load and not all-- and it-- there's nothing wrong with the people that are-- the person that's carrying it, but there's just an uneven distribution. And if we ignore the signs that resentment brings Or just stay in our status quo. And so the goal is to be honest about it and have enough safety where you're working through that resentment, so it's not just discharged sideways through con-- eye rolls, through contemptuous behavior, stonewalling explosions, et cetera. Okay, this is the part that I wanna shift to, which is the part for your partner, the male-identified individual, and if you're in a queer relationship, it could be a person of any gender. But typically for the male-identified individual, males were not-- people who are assigned male at birth are not trained to see what they carry, too. And they were trained without noticing it and to never under any circumstances let it show. So the male-identified person has a backpack too, and it's heavier than most of us wanna acknowledge, and it's mostly invisible even to the male-identified person. That person's backpack is packed with adequacy and the performance and the maintenance of appearing to be adequate. And the terror that comes with a person that does not appear to be adequate is really scary and to be avoided at all costs. So from early on, the message is consistent. It's to be capable to handle whatever is thrown at you, and don't be too much. Don't need too much, and if something is hard, manage it privately. If something is confusing, figure it out. If something hurts, and here the message is very specific, keep moving on if it hurts. Because men, male-identified folks, who are undone by things don't inspire confidence, and confidence is the whole game. This is a performance of adequacy that there's a pressure to be strong, reliable, together, and not burdened, not asking, not visibly struggling. And for male-identified folks, they've been performing this for so long, when someone points at it and says,"This is a performance," their first reaction is defensiveness because it doesn't feel like a performance. It feels like who they are as a person. So here's the thing about performances that go on long enough. They stop being free. They start being shackles. They become expensive. They cost intimacy. They create disconnect, and they cost a sense of authenticity and honest- And it costs the ability to receive care because you can't receive what you've been trained to tell yourself that you don't need. Underneath the performance, if you-- if male-identified folks get quiet enough to listen, there's something that they don't usually name, and that's the feeling of inadequacy. So not because you're not trying as a male-identified person, but because the standard shifted and the household got more complex and the emotional labor increased and there are demands that are increased, and you as a male-identified person were not given a map for it. So you keep doing things the way that you used to count on as enough, and they-- it's not keeping up with the demands. So you can't-- So male-identified people are confused and can't figure out why my old ways are not working. But this is a trap is that male-identified folks are not able to ask because asking would be its own kind of failure. So I'm gonna shift back to resentment. Resentment is not the problem. Resentment is the messenger. And the re-resentment says something is out of balance. I've been addressing to it, and instead of addressing it, and my body's been keeping score even while my mind was trying to be reasonable. So for her or them, the resentment is pointing out the distribution of labor is invisible, and it's unequal. And this is a key for people to understand. The mental load owner is not resentful because she has a bad partner. She, they are resentful because she has been carrying a backpack that she hasn't chosen on behalf of a standard that was never fair in a household that requires her to be invisible. And sleep isn't gonna fix it. Resentment is asking,"Can someone see the weight?" And not fix it immediately, so there's not, like a fixing that's required, but And not apologizing for that backpack, but just someone to witness that backpack. Because resentment, when it's seen and acknowledged, starts to soften. Resentment that keeps going unnamed, it keeps getting smoothed over or bypassed and set aside in the interest of peace, it calcifies, and then it turns into contempt, and then contempt- Turns into hatred, and then hatred turns into,"I need to divorce my partner. There's nothing that could save this marriage." It turns into hopelessness and disillusionment. Okay, back to inadequacy. What the inadequacy is pointing out is something different. So if you're the male-identified partner, you're performing adequacy in a role whose requirements quietly change without anyone updating you, like the goalposts kinda keep moving. The old version of the role, be present, provide, protect, handle things, you can do, and you've been doing it, but the household that your partner is living in requires something more than that. It requires emotional availability, connection, relationship connection, emotional connection, and the ability to track the invisible load without being asked. The capacity to receive her depletion without taking it as rejection, and no one handed you a map for that. Your backpack didn't come with those tools. It came with stoicism, like to be flat affect, to be emotionless, to be disconnected from your own emotions, to be very self-sufficient, to be deeply embedded with a message that help is the beginning of failure. So you keep offering what you know that you can offer, but it's just not enough. It can't fill in the gap between what is needed and what you have, and that gap is a word. That gap, that word is inadequacy. Not because you're inadequate, but because you were handed a set of tools for a version of you and your partnership that's no longer matching the actual life you're living. So the inadequacy is asking,"Can someone just help me understand what is actually needed here?" Not shame for you not knowing, not punishment for you asking, just give me a door that opens. Because out of-- inadequacy is given in a way that is not about criticism, and that allows inadequacy to move around and to have some productivity around it. Inadequacy that's only ever met with disappointment or criticism or judgment will eventually harden into something that looks like apathy. So a man who says,"I don't care about you and what you're worried about," that's the result of inadequacy that's calcified over time. Who- Has been met with a lot of disappointment and a lot of criticism, who just wanted the map, who just wanted the complete map, but instead was met with that criticism and that judgment. And so when your partner says,"I don't care about you or your mental load," or whatever you're worried about, that is a man who has inadequacy calcified. Part four: opening up the backpack. The invisible backpack does not open itself. You cannot unpack someone else's backpack for them. You cannot point out and weaponize what you know in this episode and use it against your partner in a fight. Please do not do that. For you, the mental load owner, the female-identified person, what it means to name it, it would require you to name the resentment out loud, not as an accusation, but as an honest vulnerability of what you've been absorbing. Not,"You never help. I've been holding everything. I need for things to be visible, and I need everything to be shared equally or differently." That's a different conversation. That is resentment being translated into a request. Let's not do that. Requests could be declined, and disappointment has its own grief, but that's different. Resentment without a request attached to it is vulnerability. So I wanna invite you to consider that. For the male-identified person, what would it mean to stop performing adequacy in the direction of a need you can't meet and start getting curious about what your partner is actually carrying? Not,"What do you want me to do?" but,"I wanna understand what this actually feels like for you. Teach me what I'm not seeing." That's a different posture, and that's a performance of adequacy being set down long enough to make room for something productive and real. And that can be scary because curiosity can lead to things that you might find hard to hear. So-- But the chances of that will help you-- Doing that will help you maximize your chances of connection. And I wanna add to that, which is it's really important to notice where the inadequacy is coming from and to find out what-- where you can find a more complete roadmap. I'll touch on that later in the future episodes. The backpack doesn't disappear. The backpack that you carry, it doesn't disappear, but it gets lighter when someone else finally acknowledges that it's there. In closing, if you are the female-identified person, you've been carrying the invisible backpack of intensive parenting, if resentment is so familiar that you've stopped noticing its texture, I want you to know what that you're feeling is not ingratitude. It's not something you should be feeling guilty or shameful of that you have. But it's an honest cost of an impossible standard that was handed to you before you even knew it and before you had consent to receive it. You deserve to put the backpack down, but not alone. You deserve to have someone do it with you. If you are the male-identified partner, you've been running that performance of adequacy for a long time and you can't even remember yourself without it. It's starting to feel like a verdict on you instead of just something that you carry. And I want you to know that version of you that doesn't know what to do next is not a failure. You're a person who's been given an incomplete map for the relationship that you're actually trying to show up for. And I see that. I see your efforts. I see your intentions. You deserve a door in to that opportunity. Not shame, not distance, but like a real door, an open door. And neither of you chose what to be in that backpack, but you get to choose what you want to do with that now. So if this episode found some curiosity in you or some openness in you, there are two groups that I have. One for the male-identified partner or any gender non-conforming person could join it. It's to work with that performance of adequacy backpack. And for female-identified folks, it's to work with your backpack that you've been given to carry that mental load alone. The mental load of taking care of your family and doing intensive parenting and partnering on your own without any help. So if that resonates with you, the links are in the show notes. Come find me. Come send me a DM. Schedule a consultation with me. And I look forward to seeing you next time.