27- The Mental Load Reckoning

In this episode, I name the anger and grief that came from years of carrying the mental load while not being believed by the person closest to us. I talk about what changed when our roles flipped, why self-justifying is its own kind of exhaustion, and what real repair requires after gaslighting. 
• role switching making invisible labor impossible to ignore 
• anger at needing “proof” instead of being trusted 
• shame and defensiveness blocking accountability 
• grieving lost time, lost connection, and lost self-trust 
• the cost of making anger smaller to stay palatable 
• self-justification as a relationship disconnect pattern 
• choosing between being right and staying connected, and imagining a world where both are possible 
• how couples therapy can collude with gaslighting without a sociological lens 
• the 70/30 split and why emotional and cognitive labor change the math 
• loneliness and safety after years of disbelief, plus what tenderness and apology can and cannot undo 

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Transcript

0:00

In the last episode, I riffed about how Herman and I switched places in our, full-time stay-at-home parent versus full-time working parent dynamic. And my partner and I have been together for 18-- almost 18 years. We have three kids, age 12, nine, and four, and we're homeschooling, so we have a significant amount of daily and, daily, weekly, monthly things to hold in our day-to-day lives that create a lot of, work for us. We've created that for ourselves because we've chosen to doing this homeschooling stuff. And so what I w- named in the last episode is the years of not being believed, the years of having conversations for Herman to step up and to help more, but to be met with a lot of gaslighting and how harmful that was for me. I wanna talk about, establishing a sense of just naming the grief even further, naming the impact, and naming the exhaustion that came with, how it was to live a life of self-justification in this framework

Role Switch And A Hidden Imbalance

1:15

of, "Hey, I do a lot, but you don't believe me," and how that was exhausting too. So the specific life change that occurred that helped Herman understand was the, mental load, imbalance was not a breakthrough moment, but it was a structural shift in our relationship that made the invisible labor really hard to ignore. For me, that infuriates me because it took Herman to step outside of his job, full-time job, and to be a stay-at-home parent to understand that. I don't understand how a person would not just take another person's word. that's what grieves me. That's what angers me, that all those years that I've told him that I do so much in the household and I need more help was not taken seriously. It required for him to switch into a full-time parenting role for him to understand that, and that causes me to feel really hopeless for a lot of people out there. Even though I know intellectually that there is an... Like, you don't have to just step into a full-time parenting role

Anger At Not Being Believed

2:36

to really get it, but part of me believes and feels hopeless for all the parents out there who are continually being gaslit by their partner who works full-time and There's a part of me that believes people need to step into the role to get it, and I know that's not true. Like, but this part of me that is experiencing this feels extremely mad at my partner for not understanding this until he stepped in. Until it became impossible to ignore this invisible labor, he finally understands it, and that Anger is the crap out of me that I wasn't just taken for at my word and it required him to live the role in order for him to understand I work with people, I work with men, male-identified folks that are not full-time parents that are trying to understand, but there's a block for them. There's a block, and I know what those blocks are now. I know the blocks for Herman. he has told me that it's his shame and sense of inadequacy and defensiveness, which is shame-based, that's causing... that caused him to not meet me there, to not take me as my word-- at my word. And it's-- There's nothing that I could have done in that moment in all those years to persuade him otherwise, and that really grieves me too because All those years I've carried the load on my own, that, like, engine that never turns off It did not produce anything, my explanation. My explanations, my words, my verbalizing to him that what I was doing was a lot seemingly does not-- did not matter because he had his defenses up. He was not able to see that, and that really, really bothers me to this day He has arrived. He's seeing everything. He knows that the labor, the invisible labor is so real. He worries about the kids, and he spends hours doing research about schools. He puts in the forms. He calls the schools. He sends the emails. He interfaces with the other parents. He does all of this emotional labor to worry about the future of our kids But, and I love that. I love that he is such a responsible, competent person. And it took him living it to believe me, and that is what fe- feels so nasty. It's-- I'm, I'm so thankful, but I'm so in grief that it took him living it to understand it That's not to say he doesn't have the shame still. I think he-- I think what has happened is that, what I know to be true is that people who flip roles, and for men to really see it, male-identified folks who really see it, women like, like me don't ever get that acknowledgement and that apology for all the gaslighting. Now, I think if he didn't work with that shame, to meet me in the repair work that now we're going through around that gaslighting, and that defensiveness. He's very apologetic. He's very tender. He's very soft about how-- and aware about the impact of his gaslighting and how that was extremely, extremely damaging But I know that this is what it means for me is that I still have to sit with the grief of all those years that I lost trying to justify myself and for us to be completely disconnected in our relationship So that is something that I'm sitting with right now. Number one, The time that passed inside our relationship where there was a disconnect inside an unacknowledged balance, imbalance. Like, there's actual time, actual costs that there was imbalance, and it was not named, and in fact, it was gaslit. Two, the conversations that went nowhere. Every conversation that did not land created more disconnect and more doubt in me that my perceptions were wrong and more defensiveness and shame in him that he is right. And those conversations were more about who's right and who's wrong rather than addressing the imbalance itself, and that is something I'm grieving. The next thing I'm grieving is the relationship that could have been if the seeing arrived sooner and if the seeing didn't have to involve him stepping into the role full-time. And the lateness in how it's arrived, like how many years into our marriage,

Grieving Lost Time And Self Trust

8:07

fourteen years into our marriage. The lateness in how it's arrived has its own grief. Like, I am really grieved that we've arrived in him acknowledging the imbalance so seemingly late in our relationship. And I know a lot of folks who are like 30, 40, 50 years in their marriage who still don't have it, so I'm grateful for this acknowledgement even if it's late. But I grieve all those years that I didn't have with anything being acknowledged. And the last thing is I grieve the person that I was in that relationship- in that version of our relationship that spent so much time self-justifying myself and doubting my own perception, and really believing that my feelings of overwhelm and my asking for help are not valid That I grieved that version of myself that was in that relationship, that not only did I carry all the load, most of the load, but I doubted whether or not I was carrying as much as I, actually was. And that second, doubt of whether or not I was carrying the weight of what I was actually carrying is heavy on its own. And I also grieve the part of me that had to manage my own anger In a way that was more palatable for my partner. My anger was so accurate, and I-- that version of me made it smaller because I did not wanna be perceived as a woman with unmanaged anger. And that is something, or was something that really is a difficulty in our... was a difficulty in our marriage and still sometimes is, is my partner and I are not really good at holding each other's anger. But I think systemically, outside of our relationship, which it's a microcosm of... Our relationship is a microcosm of our society at large. Women people who are female identified have there's a strong social message around not being angry. And I am really, really regretful that I didn't, I wasn't... I didn't connect with my anger enough during that season to really allow my anger to tell me their truth And the other thing that I'm grieving right now is the work that I put in to prove and justify myself rather than to simply live inside my reality. I think there could have been a different way where if I were to stop justifying myself, I could have Had more options to connect with my partner at that time. But at that time, a big part of me said, "If I don't justify myself, if I don't prove that I work harder than Herman and I do way more, then Herman won't help." And I know a lot of us live inside of this reality because I talk to a lot of y'all on social media in my DMs, and y'all be telling me the same thing over and over again, that my partner just simply does not believe that I do more than them. And there's something about that self-justification that feels really important for our partners to know, right? And really, what I wish I could have done is recognize that that labor to prove that I work harder than my partner was exhausting. It was so exhausting, and I really wish I could have really worked through that part of me that feels

Self Justification Versus Real Connection

12:28

s- like it's so important to justify my labor, because I didn't... It, it robbed me of my ability to live life. And a lot of you might be wondering, well, okay, so if we don't make the invisible labor visible, if we don't s- like justify ourselves and, and explain to our partners how much we actually do, how are we supposed to split the labor? How are we supposed to split the load if we, if our partner doesn't see that we... part of me, that says, "I need to explain all the stuff that I do on a daily basis for my family. And my partner needs to see that, and my partner really needs to know this is what's involved because I don't think they have a clue about what's involved, and I don't think they're willing... If they don't have a clue, how are they able to share into it with me?" And so that part of me really is extremely strong and really loud, and it spent a lot of time proving my reality to Herman. And the reality is, Herman, that was not a way to connect with Herman. It was not a way that brought us closer. It actually brought us further apart and created a lot of, distance and disconnect with us. In my grief around all those aspects that were lost in my life, my 14 years of being with a person who that version of himself was extremely unwilling to connect, and we were both unwilling to connect. We were both really wanting to be right. And honestly, I am right. In a lot of ways I am right, and a lot of folks who do the invisible labor, the truth, the objective truth is that we do more invisible labor that contributes to the upkeep of our household. That is a truth. But what I sit with today, and I'm still sitting with this because A big part of me just feels like so tied to being right, even at the cost of losing my husband. So a big part of me wonders, do I care more about being right than I do connection with my partner? I don't know. I don't know and, but what I do know is that I know a world where both could happen. I could be right. I could, I could really... My objective reality about how much work it takes to run a household and how my partner is not sharing into it fairly could be held, and there could be a way to connect with my partner I didn't know how to do that at that time We saw a therapist, and our therapist did not understand. They gave us horrible advice around gaslighting. my therapist colluded with the gaslighting in my partner. So even mental health therapists like myself in my previous versions of myself, this is how it co- this is how couples walk into the office. The The female-identified person in a cis hetero relationship who are parenting young children would come into my office, and the female-identified person would say, "I'm doing so much, I'm exhausted." And then the male-identified person would say, why do you keep saying that you're doing so much? I'm doing so much. Look at how much childcare I do. Look at how much, meals I cook. Look at how much laundry I, make. Look at how much garbage I take out. Look at how much of the house I maintain with house projects. Look at how much I contribute to the financial stability of our household. Look at how much I comfort our kids." And then the therapist, me, would say, you're right. You do. Both of you do a lot." And if I didn't have a sociological mind that I do now, I would

When Therapy Reinforces Gaslighting

16:53

collude with the male-identified person of accounting for their accounting of the labor while not believing the female-identified person to say they do more, which actually statistically women-identified folks, female-identified folks do do more in the household. And then I would ask the female-identified folks to, to delegate better and to make sure that they're, really outsourcing more. And that's how it typically goes, and that's what I was told all those years. Even therapists colluded with my partner. And so that's also what I grieve, that I didn't really have anyone in my corner to validate the feelings that I had around my own reality. Now I know as a mental load coach, relationship coach, and relational therapist that women do do more, and male-identified folks in cis hetero relationships do only thirty, around thirty percent of the contributing to the household labor, while the female-identified folks statistically do about seventy percent, and this is, this includes physical, cognitive, and emotional labor So the 70/30 split is physical tasks. If you were to account for the logistical and emotional labor, I would say that female-identified folks, my guess is do 90% of the physical, emotional, and cognitive labor, while male-identified folks do 10%, if you're talking about a more holistic definition of what household labor is, which these research statistics don't account for. This is to say that it's really important to have a sociologically-minded therapist and to really notice a power imbalance and to notice the

Naming Power And The 70 30 Reality

18:55

responsibility imbalance and not-- And I wish I had that. I wish I had that because I was stuck in deep loneliness for a really long time for not being believed, and that caused me to put up a lot of walls with my partner around connection. I did not feel safe with my partner for a really long time because there was so much gaslighting, and I grieved that my words were never enough, even for a person that is a therapist for a living. I use my words for a living, and the person who has the language, the frameworks, the clinical precision could not make my experience legible to my loved ones and, or the people closest to me until my partner lived in it himself. And there is some bitterness around that. There is some bitterness. I have bitterness in this season around that. In my future episodes, I'll dive more into this, and for now, peace out. Take care, and if you're living in this madness, just know that I'm in your corner and I got your back. Take care.