26- The Mental Load Grief

In this episode, I talk about the grief that comes from years of carrying the mental load and being told it is not real, even when the household runs on that invisible labor. I dive into how a role swap 14 years into our marriage   brings relief and also resurfaces anger, sadness, and the work of rebuilding trust in ourselves. 
• juggling an aging parent, school changes, and the weight of future planning 
• how camping trips unexpectedly trigger old grief about labor imbalance 
• what our current parenting and work arrangement looks like with three kids 
• why the role swap happened and what it reveals about responsibility 
• the repeat cycle of defensiveness and feeling gaslit over household labor 
• why acknowledgment matters and how it protects trust and dignity 
• concrete examples of invisible labor, emotional labor, and cognitive load 
• books and research that validate the gendered mental load gap 
• repairing trust with my partner and rebuilding trust in my own perception 
• what I want to explore next about breaking the endless proving loop 

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Schedule a free consult with me for my group coaching programs:

1) If you are the primary mental load carrier, click here

2) if you are the partner of the mental load owner, click here

Transcript

0:00

Hi I'm Angela, a licensed mental health therapist of almost 15 years, and I'm also a parent of three kids. I'm right now at a park, and it's really nice right now to do this podcast here, and I'm grateful that I get this backdrop to do that. I am wanting to talk today about a really deeply personal topic that's been weighing heavy on me for a while, and I realize it's one of the blockages that's come up in how I have not been visible on Instagram or podcasting. Whenever I go silent, sometimes it's because I'm processing something and I don't have words for it, so I just notice that I just go in and hide and start exploring what's going on. And I think for me, I finally have the words for it, and I wanna share it out loud. I am in a season of grief right now where There's a lot of things going on in my life. my mom is aging, so I have to think of a plan

Why I Went Quiet Online

1:14

to transition her care here to Seattle. My kids are transferring schools, so that's a big part of my worries is how can I set up my kids to thrive for their future? But also something that we've done and enjoy doing really well is, as a family, is we're going on these camping trips because it's summertime and, the sun is shining in Seattle, which it doesn't for most of the year. And we have our RV and we're planning-- epic road trip around the Oregon Coast down to Florence, back up to Bend and Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens to see the ape caves and the lava tubes. It's gonna be pretty epic. What I've noticed is my grief started to boil up again around the years of

A Season Of Grief At Home

2:18

the household labor imbalance that we've had together, me and my husband. And just to give you a view, CliffsNotes version of my partner and I's arrangement. My partner is a primary parent of our three children who are aged twelve, nine, and four, and they are all homeschooling 'cause they're very neurodivergent. And we have something called a parent partnership program where it's kind of like a co-op and my husband brings them in for some in-person classes, kind of like a college campus format. And my husband is also in charge of breakfast and lunches every day except the weekends. And now he's in charge of The daily upkeep more so than he used to be when he was working full-time, and now I'm working full-time. And the other thing he's in charge of, which he was not in charge of before, was, all the school

Camping Trips And A New Trigger

3:23

communication, everything that has to do with running and upkeeping our family behind the scenes as well as... So invisible labor as well as visible labor, he's now completely in charge of. And I am pretty hands-on still. I do a lot of active participation with the girls, but less... I'm less on the forefront. And this past, two camping trips ago, what I noticed was he started creating... So this is-- He's packed for our girls before, but this is the first... We went to Austin a while ago, and he was in charge of all the packing for the girls, all the mental prep that came with, making the lists and making sure the kids were all ready to go with the packing. And he's also in charge of all the packing, all the preparation, all the to-do lists related to our camping trip too, with our food and, the girls' belongings and also, kind of like the mechanics of the upkeep of our SUV as well as our RV. So he has a lot going on right now in terms of what he's in charge of. And I basically had to just pack for myself and show up the day of. I didn't really have a lot to do mental load-wise, and I thought that that would make me so happy. I was kind of looking forward to this new stage of my life after, might I add, around... We've been married for eighteen years. And, Oh yeah, the CliffsNotes version is that I am now a full-time

When He Owns The Packing

5:13

parent, and Herman is a part-time working parent. He does some, like, property management work, about one to three days a week, on his cellphone. He has, like, very flexible working hours where he just, like, works off his cellphone when he's with the girls. And, we basically, when our last girl was born, when our four-year-old was born, we basically switched roles. Like, I was the primary parent doing all the homeschooling things, and he was the person that worked outside the home for 40 hours a week. And now we switched. When my latest one was born, he quit his job, and he wanted... We both really wanted, to have a chance to experience what the other person got all these years. And I really wanted to invest more in my career, and Herman really, really wanted to invest more in the home life, because he felt like being a weekend dad was really difficult for him. He didn't really have a lot of familiarity with the girls, and he was really hands-on, but he wanted, like, a deep familiarity with the girls. And especially with the last child, our four-year-old, he wanted to have a chance to raise her from birth to, you know, to whenever he decides to not be a full-time dad anymore. But he wanted a chance to be a full-time dad with the youngest child. He was never a full-time

How Our Parenting Roles Switched

6:46

dad, stay-at-home parent with the older two girls, and so when we, accidentally got pregnant, he decided that this was a really good chance. It was the best, accident we can have to really realign our values, reconsider what was important to us. And for him, serving in the role of being, a philanthropy director of a nonprofit was not how he wanted to live out the rest of his prime years. And for him, it was really important that he would consider a deeply, a more domestic role. And so we both agreed, and we made the big switch four years ago. And this is what kills me is that We've had so many conversations around how the household labor distribution was imbalanced and how I, as a stay-at-home parent at that time, required a lot more participation from Herman than he was able to offer me. And he would have so much defensiveness around how our conversations went with feeling really accused that I wasn't, that he was doing as much as I was, and blamed and attacked and very defensive about his contributions. Basically, the conversations went like this: "Hey, Herman, I'm really overwhelmed. I'd really like you to have more, participation in the girls', you know, in this aspect of the home or that aspect of the home." And he would reply with, "I'm doing so much. What you're-- You don't know how much I'm doing, and by you asking me to do more implies that I'm not doing a lot." And that

The Years Of Labor Imbalance

8:49

kind of conversation would go on repeat over and over and over again. So, in our years that I was a stay-at-home parent he was very involved in the physical tasks of the home, the home maintenance aspect, and doing some meals and doing a lot more childcare than his dad did, which was none. but what I noticed was there wasn't a sense of responsibility of being the person that was ultimately responsible for certain aspects of the home. Almost no aspects of the home besides the finances and the maintenance of the home. And whenever I asked him to take more responsibility of the different aspects of the home, he shared that he already was, and that simply was not the case. And after now, doing all this work around the research around the household labor imbalance and how gendered it is, I've learned that my story is not unique. It is very, very, very not unique. A lot of people have these struggles that I had with my partner. What people don't have is the experience that I do have right now, which is their partner finally seeing things that there is an imbalance. Like Herman now can acknowledge that he was gaslighting me. He was really defensive. He was, felt really shameful of, felt really attacked and blamed, and around my asking him for more help. And he can now acknowledge and apologize for the impact of his words and for gaslighting me. and now what a lot of people don't have is him really understanding how much work it takes to run a household. I mean, he actually will never understand how much work it takes fully because I own so much of the responsibility of the household as a full-time working parent. And, when our roles were switched, he never really had that experience. He had a person like me, who was me, who owned almost 100% of everything. Now, both of us sharing pretty much 80/20 or 70/30 of the household labor in our family. He owning 80, me owning 20, or 70/30. And I, in that season, owned 95% and he probably owned 5%. But You know, after all this, all these years, I think I have a part of me that really grieves that that gaslighting went on for so long and that we that I was not believed around how much work I actually do. There was not an ability for my partner to really see it and acknowledge it and share gratitude over it. Not that I'm doing it for the gratitude, but to be doing all this work and to be told that he's doing just as much as I am is really preposterous and really hurtful and really harmful. That's not to say that he's not doing any work, and I think that's how he interpreted it, and so he wasn't able to meet me where I was at and really acknowledge, "Okay, Angela, you are doing a lot for the home," and that doesn't mean I'm less of a person. That doesn't mean I'm not doing anything at all. That doesn't mean that my work

Why Gaslighting Hurts So Much

12:54

is dismissed or devalued. It means we're both doing a lot of work, but you're actually doing more than I am, and that doesn't mean that I'm a bad person. I really wish I could have heard that. And I really wish I could have heard some acknowledgement and some validation that I am doing more. And this part of me really, really I think values being heard that I am doing more for the home. As a stay-at-home parent, of course I'm doing more as... in the home. Like, that's a given. But- I know a lot of people right now who have-- who are working just as much as their partners, outside the home, and are doing a lot inside the home, more than their partners, and are still not getting that acknowledgement. Why do I think that's so important to get that acknowledgement? Because it's basically saying, "I value that labor, and I see that labor, and I see my lack of participation, and I acknowledge my lack of participation negatively impacting the home." Like, for me, that is really important for me to hear, and I wish I could have heard that. And I know that a lot of you are in that situation right now, where you are not-- you are in a deep imbalance in the home, labor-wise. And you are not getting that acknowledgement that you are doing so much for the home. You are making those lists around what to pack for the kids for holiday vacations. You are thinking about their food preferences on these trips and their airplane activities. You are thinking about their mental health and wellbeing with who they're gonna socialize with, next year when they go into a different grade level. You're thinking about what teachers, would be a best fit for them if you had more of a choice. You're thinking about their IEP plans and 504 plans, and you're worried about their mental health and wellbeing with social media. You know, all these things are part of how you contribute to the wellbeing of your household, in addition to the mental calculations you make with Tetrising the schedules in with this extracurricular and this play date, and making dinner at the same time.

What Invisible Labor Really Includes

15:26

I mean, all these things are laborious, and I knew I was doing a lot of that, and yet all these years, it did not-- it was not seen. And if anything, I, I think that not seeing that is not as bad as being gaslit and told that my husband was doing more. Like, that just feels really disgusting to be told, like, not only is all this labor... Like, I don't know. I just feel... I, I feel like the gaslighting is way more harmful than him not seeing how much labor I do, and they go hand in hand. 15 years ago, we didn't have these books. Like, these are, these are amazing books that I love, and for those who are listening, on the podcast, without the YouTube visuals, the books here are Releasing the Motherload by Erica Didier, and Drained by Leah Rupinar. These two books, especially the Releasing the Motherload, at the beginning of every chapter, there's, like, this list related to the cognitive and emotional labor women do concerning each sector of the home. And when I, I listened to the book on audiobook, but whenever she played out and listed all the, the labor that women do in each sector of the home, it was so good for me to hear that, and I think these books that we have now help women like me or people who are doing most of the labor in the home like me really see all the little things that we do and how they all add up to this reason that we're so drained And to be gaslit and to be told, "I do more than you," from

Books And Research That Named It

17:28

a person who clearly I know does not do more than me. It's not a competition of who does more, but it's about not gaslighting your partner. And to really be honest with yourself, and I know that it's not like men don't wanna be-- male-identified folks don't wanna be honest with themselves, but the research shows that male-identified partners overestimate the amount of time they spend on the mental load. And women-identified folks underestimate the time that they spend, or more accurately identify how much time they spend and what labor they do. And the research also shows, according to that women-identified folks are able to share accurately about the amount of labor that their male-identified partner does, more accurately than their male-identified partner themselves. And so that is something that I just feel so... When I read that, it created so much anger in me and grief that I was right all along, and I felt so invisible all along. So if you are grieving this period and you're experiencing a partner that literally does very little of the household labor, but tells you every day that they do just as much as you do, I hope that you can know that I'm in your pocket, that it is really, really, really, really insane that this gaslighting happens and super anger-provoking. And I know on the other side of things, as I've done some therapy work with Herman, that that gaslighting is a really good defensive mechanism for him to not confront the shame that's underneath and the inadequacy that's underneath. And so for me, I have a lot of compassion for him and his, defense mechanisms. Not that I'm letting that- them off the hook, but now I understand, oh, that was really necessary for Herman to do at that time because he couldn't confront his own, shame and inadequacy. And it doesn't mean that that's okay, but it really means that, like, in order for trust to be rebuilt with Herman, there needs to be some acknowledgement of that. And there actually, for me, needs to be trust that's rebuilt within myself because my own sense of perception around my own reality was doubted for so long that I started to doubt my own perception of reality. And for me, I think it's been really important for me to repair with myself, to be like really acknowledging

Rebuilding Trust With Him And Me

20:30

that I can trust my experience, and my experience of reality can be, can be validated even if it's not validated by Herman. In future episodes, I plan on sharing more about this grief and more about what I felt like what lessons I've learned and what I wish I could have done instead of kind of being in that endless loop of proving the mental load imbalance. And, I will work on that in future episodes, but for now, peace out. I hope you had a good time week this week, and I look forward to seeing you next week. Bye.