February 12, 2024 • 39 mins
Sustaining a relationship has a lot more to do with the division of domestic, emotional and physical labour. A massive component is the mental load - the additional energy that goes into organising, scheduling and managing the daily tasks, chores and things that need to be done whilst also accounting for your partners needs. It's not a secret that women carry a lot more of the mental load than their male counterparts and in this episode we break down exactly why that is, how an unfair division of cognitive labour can lead to resentment and relationship breakdown and how we can address this in our relationships, including our friendships. Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to this show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode where we break
down the psychology of our twenties. Today is a special
episode because at the time I'm recording this and at
the time you might be listening, it is Valentine's Day,
(00:49):
and each year on Valentine's Day, I like to pick
an episode to do with how we can build and
sustain healthy relationships, not just the romantic kind, of course,
but our platonic ones as well, and how we can
kind of apply psychology to better understand all the forms
of love that we experience in this lifetime, specifically in
(01:11):
our twenties of course, but also some of the concepts
and theories that we should have like a good understanding
of before the decade is out to really set ourselves
up for good, healthy love. And in today's episode, we're
going to do just that. We're going to be discussing
the idea of the mental load, so I wouldn't be
(01:35):
surprised if you hadn't already heard about this concept. This
term the mental load has been doing its rounds on
TikTok and Instagram recently. It is the latest term that
has become part of the psychobabble. But I really have
my good friend Aaron to thank for this episode. If
you are a longtime listener of the show, you'll know
(01:58):
that Aaron, my best friend, is where I get a
lot of my inspiration because she thinks about these things
very deeply. She thinks about self awareness. She's very self aware,
very thoughtful. She's always introducing me to so many new
theories and ideas that I actually never came across when
I was studying psychology. She's just like a book of knowledge.
(02:20):
And last time I was visiting her, we got to
discussing the idea of the mental load in our relationships.
Because we are both in very committed long term relationships
with very lovely men. And although we love our partners
so deeply and they are such good people, we've chosen
very well. There is a lot of invisible mental and
(02:43):
emotional labor that just happens to fall on women in relationships.
Even if you think that your partner is very much
your equal, Even if they are, there is such a
hidden facet, a hidden component of love and effort that
sustains a relationship that women often take on. So also
(03:07):
known as cognitive labor. Mental loads specifically refers to the
kind of extra energy and efforts women take on in
order to organize the lives of themselves and their partners,
specifically in hetero relationships. You know, the time taken to
plan what we're having for dinner, when people's birthdays are,
what we're doing on the weekend, what we need to
(03:27):
bring to the family gathering on Friday, The mental logistics
of the week and of our lives. You know, the
date night that's coming up that we need to plan
and organize. All of these small mental kind of gymnastics,
all these small mental tasks that contribute to kind of
the I wouldn't say domestic burden, but the relational burden
(03:50):
that each member of a partnership is kind of carrying.
For example, say that you know your partner's parents are
coming into town next weekend, which means we have to
make plans for dinner that night that they come in,
but they don't like Italian food and it would have
been a really long flight, so we should make dinner
at home, which means I'll need to go to the
grocery store before then, and I have to make sure
the bed sheets are washed and pick up extra toothbrushes.
(04:13):
But the bed sheets can't go on the dryer, so
I'll have to make sure that they're getting washed on
a day that's really sunny. That will have to be Friday.
But we're out of laundry detergents, so we'll pick that
up as well. It's this running to do list of
tasks that is honestly never ending, and that I think
sometimes men in relationships don't pick up on. I think
(04:35):
we're all very aware these days of the unequal division
of labor in relationships, particularly in the past, how one partner,
normally the woman just seems to be instantly more responsible
for household chores, even when they work the same amount
of hours as their partner or have other obligations. How
women are often more responsible for child rearing activities, domestic duties,
(04:59):
that sort of thing. However, it goes a lot deeper
than just performing the task, Women also spend a lot
more time thinking about what tasks have to be done,
playing almost the role of admin for the lives of themselves,
their partners, their families, even their friends. As one study
(05:19):
published in the American Sociological Review describes it, women just
spend more time anticipating needs, identifying options, making decisions, and
ensuring that what they asked someone to do is actually completed.
In my mind, we've all reached a point where we
understand that men are expected to do more labor than
(05:41):
their fathers or their grandfathers. Did you know we do
split things fifty to fifty, But that doesn't always fully
take into account the added cognitive labor that goes into
getting those things done, you know. And I think a
lot of times people just partners. Male partners in particular,
sometimes need to be told what to do. They may
(06:01):
respond of like, oh, you know, you're upset that I
didn't do the dishes, Well, why didn't you just tell me?
You know, I would have done it if you had asked.
But the very act of needing to ask for help
and expecting your partner to tell you everything that needs
to be done, means that you're kind of still treating
your girlfriend, your wife, your partner as kind of like
the manager of the house, the manager of the chores,
the manager of your lives. It's kind of a lot
(06:23):
like a workplace, where obviously, in a workplace, like we
have the employees and we have the boss, and the
boss is always going to be more responsible for what's
going on. And as an employee, you go back to
your boss and you ask God, what needs to be
done next? Was some tasks that I should do. But
a relationship is not like a workplace. You know, no
one is the boss, no one is the employee. Both
(06:45):
people need to be truly invested in the outcome, in
it together, looking for things that need to be done,
looking for things that are going to make the other
person's life easier. And I don't think that that is
always what occurs. You know, we understand physical and domestic
labor needs to be equal, but the mental burden remains
(07:07):
very strong. And with that, the psychological burden of having
to overlook certain things, suppress resentment because he's still doing
what you asked, but you kind of wish you didn't
have to ask, and also just having less mental space
for other parts of your life and your identity and
your interests. I personally believe this wears down a relationship
(07:30):
in a lot of invisible ways, because maybe you can't
quite articulate why you feel exhausted in your relationship or
why things feel unfair. You can't tell your partner why,
you just know you feel that way, and I do
think a lot of answers lie in this invisible cognitive
and mental labor. Now, before we get into why exactly
(07:54):
this occurs and the impact and some solutions, I do
want to make a little bit of a disclaimer. I
think this is by no means a rant on how
men are terrible and incompetent and idiotic and deliberately make
women's lives miserable. I don't believe that. And I also
know my boyfriend listens to the podcast, and I'm sure
he's probably thinking that if I was saying that some
(08:15):
of those statements aren't particularly fair, I will say I
am very lucky that this does not describe our partnership.
My dad also was a stay at home dad, and
I saw him take on so much more of the
mental and domestic load than my mom at times, So
I don't think that if we date men, if we
know men, we are doomed to fail and kind of
(08:35):
constantly be under the thumb of the mental load. By
no means, I don't think that, and I don't want
this episode to kind of like find its way onto
the anti feminist feeds on TikTok and have a bunch
of people coming at me. We are all about the
science here and the psychology, and the mental load is
simply an identifiable and measurable relationship pattern and factor that
(08:57):
I've become a lot more aware of recently. I think
it really deserves some exploration and curiosity because, in my opinion,
it's definitely a subconscious reason why relationships struggle and fail
and become unequal. We see a lot of people say, oh, yeah,
you know, my partner, my husband, he contributes so much,
but I'm still so mentally exhausted. I feel unappreciated, but
(09:21):
I cannot articulate why. That is at the core of
what we're talking about today. You are describing the mental load,
So let's quickly break down why exactly it occurs. And
I want to talk about three reasons in particular. The
first one is socially conditioned gender roles the second is
(09:42):
weaponized in competence, and thirdly, it is just like deliberate
ignorance and disrespect. I think this is the harshest reason,
and I would also say it's the least common, but
it's still worthwhile to discuss. I also want to talk
about how the mental load applies to friendships well, because
I think that that is an aspect of this that
(10:04):
our conversations around the mental load often overlooks. Let's get
back to that first factor, though, I want to talk
about socially conditioned gender roles in their contribution. We have
come a long way in terms of gender equality, but
that doesn't mean that boys and girls aren't still raised differently,
socially conditioned differently. Even with our best efforts, even with
(10:27):
all of our progressive rearing skills and progressive ways of
teaching boys and girls, that traditional way of viewing gender
is still incredibly ingrained. There are centuries and centuries of
tradition there, and I don't think that one or two
generations is going to fully eliminate some of the stereotypes overnight.
(10:50):
So we know that within society exists this blueprint or
guidebook on what behaviors are female and what behaviors are male,
what character traits are female, and what character traits are male.
We all kind of know what I'm talking about, hopefully
without meaning to tell you. I'll just elaborate for the
sake of it. You know, the type of typical male
(11:11):
behaviors that are acceptable are very different from those we
expect from women. Boys are allowed to be rough and
independent and strong, and women are instructed to be passive,
nurturing and pathetic accommodating. These are all skills and character
traits that will eventually make them more likely to take
(11:32):
on that additional cognitive, emotional, and mental labor in a relationship,
in a family, in a home. Now, when we talk
about social conditioning in psychology, this refers to the ways
in which we learn how to act by picking up
clues or cues in our environment. When we behave in
(11:52):
a certain way, especially as children, we are either reinforced
or punished for that behavioravior. The simple premise is, when
we are rewarded for a behavior, either through the addition
of something that we want or the removal of something bad,
that behavior is sustained and we learn to perform it
more regularly. When we are punished, we associate that behavior
(12:15):
with a bad outcome, Naturally we perform it less. That
is a form of learning. So when girls as children
act in a way that is motherly and nurturing and accommodating,
they're applauded for that with praise, with kind words, all
of which are a form of positive reinforcement, and it
(12:38):
means that those behaviors are encouraged and are more likely
to be performed again. In contrary, when they act in
ways that are counter to gender norms, they're scolded or
they're punished because it's not aligning with society's blueprints and expectations.
For example, a young girl might be called bossy for
(13:01):
standing up for herself, whereas a young boy is called
a leader, he's called authoritative. He receives praise, the kind
of praise that we only receive when we're kind and nurturing.
I think that that is like a very basic feminism
one oh one lesson. But how it relates to psychology
is that these small moments, although we might disregard them,
(13:21):
although we might look back on them and find them
quite irritating, they are actually learning experiences, and our young
brains absorb these like a sponge and carry them with
us as a guide for how society expects us to act.
So from a young age we kind of know the
roles that we should be fulfilling, even if no one
(13:42):
has explicitly told us we are caregivers. We are givers,
we are meant to be responsible. I think further to this,
we think about the toys that we played with a children,
the movies that we watched, the kind of patterns that
we were exposed to. The other example I always think
of is when a female student who is studious and
(14:03):
caring and hard working is made to sit with a
rowdy male student and like help him do his work
and help him stay focused as if she is his
parent or the teacher herself, when actually she is just
a student. She is there to learn as well. In
those instances, though, we are playing this role of kind
(14:25):
of the cognitive planner, the mental planner, the one who
has to have everything organized out in our brain for
how to get something done. The other factor here is,
of course, observational learning. Girls often learn about domestic duties
by observing their parents, particularly their mothers. And no matter
(14:47):
how progressive your family was, my family was incredibly progressive,
like my dad was a stay at home dad, but
there were still times where I saw my mom take
on more of those how use hold chores. The chores
were still divided along gender lines. You know, women do
a lot of the domestic duties boys. Men are a
(15:11):
scientists that are perceived as more physically demanding, traditionally masculine
yard work, taking out the trash. All of these are
cues to us. They are a learning experience, and we
model our behavior on these expectations. We model our behavior,
we mimic our caregivers, and that is how we become
(15:33):
the people we are today. We know in psychology and
from some of those early experiments with Bundura, that a
lot of what we learn is through observation and replication.
There are so many other factors here. The final one
I will say is that we also see this pattern
a lot of men being allowed to have like a
(15:56):
longer period of adolescence compared to women. I'm going to
explain that a little bit more. I think that it
is very kind of acceptable for men to be irresponsible,
for men to make dumb mistakes, for men to like
not know how to cook, not know how to clean.
It's quirky it's funny, whereas with women it's kind of like,
(16:18):
you hit twenty one, Are you an adult? Yet? If not,
you're you're immature. You're not growing up fast enough, like
you're just acting like a child. Men are allowed to
stay in this period of infancy and adolescence and lesser
responsibility for a lot longer. So women are the ones
(16:39):
who are gaining those cognitive and mental skills around organization,
around responsibility a lot earlier than their male counterparts, and
that is then reflected in hetero relationships. I think just
the simple premise is that the reason we see the
mental load again and again and again is that men
have not been socialized in the same way as women
(17:01):
to be attuned to the needs of others and to
apply kind of the same level of cognitive processing as
women do. It may also come down to genuine differences
in personality, and I feel like I need to throw
this in here. There has been a lot of research
that has shown that women are more empathetic than men,
and we know that empathy really at its core is
(17:23):
the ability to recognize and relate to what's going on
in someone else's mind. That includes that invisible list of
things that need to get done around the house, in
the relationship, whatever it is. And it just might seem
that men are not as clued into the inner workings
of someone else's brain as women are, not just because
(17:43):
they haven't been socialized that way, but also because they're
levels of empathy may be a little bit less. Empathy
is a skill, it's a muscle, and I think that
it can be built up if you're prepared to kind
of do the work. And I think if you care
about someone else, if you're around them a lot, eventually
should be able to pick up on the way that
(18:03):
they do things, what they prioritize, what they need to
get done, what creates stress for them, and kind of
act without needing to be asked. I want to talk
about one final aspect of the mental load and its
causes here, And you know what, maybe this might piss
somebody off. I don't really mind, because I think that
(18:25):
it is highly relevant to this discussion, and that has
to do with weaponized incompetence. Again, this has been making
its rounds on social media. I think because people are
getting a lot more clued in to the labor that
women do that isn't just domestic and physical and in psychology,
weaponized incompetence refers to a deliberate or strategic use of falsified, fake,
(18:53):
incompetence or ineffectiveness as a tactic to avoid doing something,
in this case taking on the mental life keywords in
that it is deliberate, it's strategic, it's false, and also
obviously in competence, like it's not that this person actually
is incompetent, they're pretending to be, so they're weaponizing it,
(19:13):
you know, Weaponized incompetence sounds like you know, Oh, you
just do it so much better than me. Oh, I
don't know how to do it. I'll just make more
of a mess. You're just you're so much more organized,
you have a system, Like I'm just gonna screw it up.
Why don't you just let me know what I can
help with? And by intentionally appearing incompetent trying to elevate
(19:34):
your ineffectiveness in certain areas, this lowers expectations for you
to actually get stuff done, and it also causes you
to gain sympathy whilst avoiding responsibility. I have seen so
many videos of this in recent months, where a woman
asks her husband to do something while she's away and
he just does a terrible job, as if she hasn't
(19:54):
you know, he hasn't seen her do it a million times,
or you ask him to like do your to do
li or take something off your agenda, and sometimes you think,
like this person cannot possibly be that incompetent. They have
a full time job, like they're probably very respected at work.
You married him for a reason. Like this has to
be deliberate in some ways. And you know what's worse
(20:17):
than having to ask someone to do something, it's asking
they're having them do it, and then you having to
redo it later. It leaves you feeling really angry and disappointed.
But you also don't want to sound like a nag
because at least they put in the effort, and that
is weaponized in competence. Again, we can look for the
origins of this behavior. Sometimes it is learned from childhood
(20:37):
where boys men are allowed to escape responsibilities, and they
may have learned that if their parent has asked them
to do the dishes or fold the laundry and they
did a really terrible job, or they said that they forgot,
they would get away with it. And so now it's
a tactic to avoid doing a task altogether. We can
make excuses, we can have reasons, we can have explanations,
(20:59):
but regardless, I think it's really exhausting, especially in like
a day and age where like no one really has
the time to be doing more mental labor than they
have to. And I know we've been talking a lot
about this in the context of long term relationships where
there is maybe a home to maintain or children whatnot,
but this can also occur on the early stages of
(21:21):
dating as well. If you're just like you've been dating
someone for a couple of years, whereby once they realize
that you'll take on more of the responsibility of maintaining
your lives together, of course they're going to say yes
to that, because that's less responsibility on their plate. The
biggest example I think that I've been that I've seen
(21:43):
in like friends relationships, not necessarily my own, but I
see it quite a bit is planning date nights. You know,
you say to your partner, Hey, I'd really like to
do a date night, but like every time we do it,
I plan it. I'm always the one who has to
find something fun, something that's open at eight pm on
a Monday, Like can you do it? And As the
(22:05):
date gets closer and closer, there's nothing planned. They keep
saying they'll think of something, until you're at the stage
where you have to decide whether A you just plan
it or B you wait for them to do it,
and you're disappointed because it's another night of sitting at
home watching TV ordering takeout. That is not what you deserve.
And I think although no relationship is perfect, when you're
(22:29):
with someone that you love and who respects you, you
both still need to show up for each other, even
if you're not feeling one hundred percent, you know. I
think it's once again linked to that empathy thing. If this,
if your partner is like, well, I'm just so exhausted
from work, I'm so tired, like I never think of things,
you're probably also in that same boat. Make sure you
communicate that like they should want to step up for
(22:51):
you to make it equal on both your parts. We
also see the mental load in friendships. I think it's
talked about enough, but I think that a lot of
us relate to this kind of experience whereby our friends
just begin to expect that where the ones who will
always make plans, we will make sure that the reservation
(23:14):
is booked, the tickets are purchased, everyone has transportation, everyone
knows what's going on. The endless list continues, yet again.
Friendships take effort, much like romantic relationships, and sometimes that
effort can become unbalanced. You're always the one reaching out,
You're always the one needing to think of fun things
(23:36):
to do. And I think that that is an example
of where someone has begun to expect you to take
on the cognitive labor of sustaining the relationship. There comes
a point where you have to evaluate if I love
this saying, but like if the juice is worth the squeeze,
Like whether this person has just come to expect you
to take on all the mental energy of sustaining your connection,
(23:59):
and what is that making you feel? Like? How is
that making you feel? The answer is probably not amazing,
probably not great, because you never want to feel like
a relationship is unbalanced in such an extreme way. You know,
you don't want to feel like someone is not mirroring
(24:19):
your efforts, because what does that say about the respect
they have for you, the respect they have for your connection,
the respect they have for your relationship. I think it
takes so much mental energy to initiate a conversation about
these things. And maybe you don't have it in you
to vote even more of your finite cognitive space and
(24:40):
time to this one side of relationship, but I think
it's worth it, and there is a way to approach
this and this conversation in a manner that gets kind
of the best outcome and the solution for everyone. I
really don't think it's a matter of like, oh, this person,
you know, my partner is not taking on the mental load,
failing to communicate that that's what you need done, and
(25:01):
then just leaving them without giving them a chance to
maybe adapt their behavior. And I think the same thing
goes with friendship. The older we get, the further into
our twenties, I think the more we realize that you
can't just cut people off willy nilly. You can't just
have issues and not communicate them, because you will end
up just hurting yourself more as those relationships break down.
(25:22):
So what we're going to talk about next is how
to manage a conversation about the mental load in your relationship,
how to kind of get to a place where there
is a solution either in your friendships, your relationships and
other forms of connections that you might have, so all
of that and more after this shortbreak, when you feel
(25:47):
that you're taking on more of the mental load and relationship,
that is going to have a number of bleed on effects,
a lot of impacts not just on the relationship, but
your health as well. The primary one I think is burnout.
Of course, a lot of research on this has been
done with mothers who don't only have partners, but children
(26:08):
to look after it as well. Nearly nine to ten
mothers in this one study felt that they were solely
responsible for managing and organizing the family's schedule, and it
left them feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to make space for themselves.
Similar study found that seventy two percent of working mums,
(26:28):
so not just stay at home mum's. Working moms feel
that it's their job to stay on top of kids' schedules.
Fifty two percent of them are also facing burnout. So
when we think about this from a more psychological perspective, right,
we really do only have a finite amount of mental space,
(26:50):
cognitive space, mental resources. There are always things that are
going to be competing for our time. That includes things
like work, personal things that you're going through, personal dilemmas friendships,
making time to exercise, making time to prioritize yourself. When
(27:12):
we feel like we are responsible for organizing someone else's
life and the life that we share together, that is
just more that is being taken out of this finite
pool of what is available to us mentally, and it's
going to lead to exhaustion if other parts of our
(27:32):
lives don't make space for that growth in that area.
I think it's important to see it this way and
see it almost as like how we want to visualize it,
whether it's like a cup or a pie or anything like,
you really only have that much. Everything that you choose
to put on your plate, you choose to devote your time,
(27:53):
to your energy, to your love to takes away from
that finite amount of thing that you have, and so
what it requires you to do is sacrifice other things
that are important to you. And those are the kinds
of sacrifices that women often have to make more than men.
Those things that they sacrifice first are normally going to
(28:14):
be the things that they can live without, but they
can't sustain themselves without things that actually contribute to self care,
to a good sense of emotional wellbeing. If you have
a really busy life, if you've got a lot going
on and you know that you need to prioritize work,
you need to prioritize your partner, you need to prioritize
(28:36):
your family, and you don't have time for anything else.
The things that are going to get chopped, that are
going to get discarded is going to be things like exercise.
It's going to be things like seeing your friends, things
that are important for your self care. That it's going
to further the cycle of burnout. That is the main impact.
I also think that you just start feeling that exhaustion
(28:56):
long before you feel burnt out. And that exhaustion also
contributes to a sense of resentment in your relationship. You
don't feel respected because this person is not contributing what
you feel like you are contributing. They did a study
on this back in two thousand and one, right when
the mental load was really starting to take off, and
(29:19):
they found that when women in particular feel they're doing
more of the cognitive labor, the amount of satisfaction they
report in their relationship declines. More mental load, less happy
in relationship. It's a very i think simple correlation. When
(29:40):
you're at that point where you're feeling really disappointed in
your partner, but as we said before, you're not quite
sure why, because the mental load and cognitive labor isn't
as recognized as domestic labor. What you're going to do
is unconsciously, subconsciously find ways to get their attention, find
ways to bring them into a discussion in which you're
(30:02):
allowed to kind of air your anger and air your resentment.
What I'm talking about here is emotional bids. Now we've
spoken about this on the show before. I can't remember
one episode, but essentially, emotional bids are like these efforts
that we make to bring our partner's attention to some
problem and have them reassure us. The best example I
(30:24):
think of is picking a fight, or you know, being
like Chipana, oh, hey, look at this, and then they
don't look at it, and your emotional bid has been neglected. Essentially,
what you're asking from your partner in those moments is
for attention and is for their compassion, is for them
to contribute to the partnership. When you start to pick
(30:46):
fights and you don't even know what the problem is,
I find that you're probably not going to find this
allusion to it either, and it's just going to end
up wearing down on both of you, creating a lot
of stress, further exacerbating that resentment and leading to relationship breakdown.
And I've seen this happen in a friend of mine's relationship,
(31:07):
where after just so many times of trying to get
her partner to do more for her, to just plan
things to just like not have to ask her constantly, Hey,
weds dinner tonight? What time? What am I meant to
be wearing? Did you get my mom a birthday present? Like?
She had asked so many times for him to understand
where she was coming from that the relationship ended up
(31:30):
not working out because she realized that he couldn't be
a good partner. And I felt bad for him because
I think that he had such an opportunity there to
correct his behavior. All he required was a bit more empathy.
So I want to talk about how we can fix
this dynamic in which you might be taking on more
of the mental load. I think the first step in
(31:50):
any relationship dispute whatever you want to call it, dissatisfaction
problem why not, is to make sure you were both
on the same page about what the problem is. So
maybe A good first step is to actually send them
this episode, not just trying to get more listens or
(32:10):
anything like that, but seriously, like, I think it's really
important that if they have never even heard of what
the mental load is, if they have no clue what
you're talking about, that conversation is not going to be productive.
And I also think that I think sadly the conversation
will fail because they will immediately be defensive. Not to
(32:32):
say that they should be, but I think that going
into it with a mutual understanding of what you want
to discuss and what you're actually referring to is super important.
Maybe they listen to this episode they go, oh my god, absolutely,
I totally get where you're coming from. We don't need
to talk about it anymore. I'm going to step up.
After you have that genuine like mutual understanding, mutual knowledge,
(32:53):
you have to decide whether you're going to tolerate a
continuance of this behavior or not. That is not a
conclusion that I can reach for you. I don't know
the pros and cons of your relationship. I don't know
your dynamic, but you know you know your emotional state,
you know what you can tolerate you know what you're
(33:15):
willing to tolerate, not just what you can, what you're
willing to what you feel like you deserve. And if
you're at this stage where you are so mentally fed
up you're having the same fights over and over again,
that is a good indicator that the ceiling of your
relationship needs to shift upwards, particularly that someone is not
doing their bit, especially as it refers to the mental load.
(33:39):
I think when it comes to having this conversation around
a sense of dissatisfaction that someone's not pulling their weight, sadly,
the burden will probably fall on you to bring this
up and discuss it with your partner, but hopefully it's
a one time chat. I would say going into this,
make sure obviously firstly they know what you're talking about,
but also be mindful of the response ability bias. So
(34:01):
this is this idea in psychology that basically we are
only really aware, fully aware of what we're doing. We
only know what we're responsible for, We only know our actions.
We only know the times that we cleaned out the bin,
not the times that you did. You know, and if
you haven't verbalized the efforts that you're going to to
(34:21):
keep the house up to scratch or to contribute to
the relationship. It might be hard for them to know,
and they're immediately going to come in with their perspective,
and their perspective is, in my mind, here are all
the things I'm doing. I have absolutely no clue how
much you're doing. That is where communication is your best friend.
(34:42):
Give them literal examples, but try not to guilt trip
them in the process. Remember, you want this to work,
like you want this relationship to work, That's why you're
putting in this effort. Talk them through what it takes
for you to do all this extra mental labor. What
does your to do list look like? What is the
extra stuf, extra ingredients that you're putting into this relationship
(35:04):
that they could take on. Is it planning dates? Is
it understanding when flights need to be booked for a
weekend away? Is it making plans? Is it just listening
and being aware of your schedule the way that you're
aware of theirs. These are all small important things that
they might not realize you've been doing until you communicate them.
(35:24):
Was something that a friend of mine was telling me
the other day, which when I was asking her about
this episode, I was like, okay, so what would you
do in this situation? And she used this really she
gave me this really amazing advice, which is put a
list of everything that you do each week on the fridge,
everything that needs to be done, and each person gets
a different colored pen and you take them off. It
(35:46):
sounds so rudimentary, but it's really important to actually be like,
is my resentment coming from a fair place or is
my partner actually doing an equal amount of labor. It's
just that I have this responsibility bias going on. I
can't actually see what they're doing. Also, you can use
some of that reverse reinforcement. You know, if they don't
(36:06):
buy the birthday present for their mom, the mom doesn't
get a birthday present, that is some negative punishment right there.
They're gonna feel really bad. They're gonna feel the shame.
It wasn't your responsibility. They're gonna learn through that if
they don't plan the date, you go and do something
else because they didn't make plans. Even if you're in
a relationship. I know it sounds harsh, but it is
(36:29):
this thing of like you need to continuously be dating
me in a sense, and if you're not, like I
am not just like your backup option. You're not just
my backup option. We are like actively trying to be
partners and be in each other's lives and make each
other's lives better and easier and more vibrant. And if
that's not what we're doing right now, I am going
(36:49):
to find other ways to do that. I need you
to step up. It might sound harsh, I think it works,
especially when it's combined with really good communication and a
really good open dialogue of like, how are you both
actually feeling right now, and how are you feeling that
you're taking on more of the mental load? What are
some of the things that they might not know that
(37:10):
it is creating for your mental state, for your limited
cognitive resources, for your well being. Over communicate and then
let them make a decision. You cannot control what they
choose to do with that information. If you find yourself
continuing to just like having to ask them and nag
them and bring them up, bring it up again and
(37:30):
again and again, I think that is a different conversation
that is no longer a conversation about mental load. I
think that is a conversation about disrespect and a lack
of empathy, and maybe it's important to start thinking about
when it is time to walk away and find someone
who you don't need to tell this to. They already
know how to do it. They already have done the work.
(37:54):
They've already learned what it means to be an equal partner.
It's not just domestic labor, it's not just physical labor.
It is cognitive labor as well, being equally responsible for
the life that you share. I really hope that this episode,
this fun Valentine's Date episode, has been helpful. I'm realizing
that it got a little bit less fun at the end,
(38:14):
but I think it is an important reminder that just
because you love this person, just because they're like your soulmate,
doesn't mean that you have to be dissatisfied with areas
of your relationship. Doesn't mean you need to tolerate something
that can be fixed through a conversation and through like
reverse reinforcement and learning and reconditioning. So I really enjoyed
(38:36):
this episode. I found it like super fascinating to look
further into the science and the psychology. As I said,
my very good friend Erin actually suggested this topic and
she knew so much more than I ever did, so
Thank you Aeron, love you Hapes. I'm glad that our
relationship does not suffer from mental load problems. If there's
someone you think would enjoy this episode, please feel free
(38:58):
to share it with them, send them a link. Make
sure you are leaving us a five star review if
you enjoyed this episode. If you have an episode suggestion,
they have been flowing in recently, but I always do
like to read them, even if I cannot reply to
every single one. Please follow us at that Psychology Podcast
to send your thoughts, your theories, your qualms, your questions.
(39:21):
Give us there and have a lovely rest of your week.
We will be back on Friday with another episode.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to this show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode where we break
down the psychology of our twenties. Today is a special
episode because at the time I'm recording this and at
the time you might be listening, it is Valentine's Day,
(00:49):
and each year on Valentine's Day, I like to pick
an episode to do with how we can build and
sustain healthy relationships, not just the romantic kind, of course,
but our platonic ones as well, and how we can
kind of apply psychology to better understand all the forms
of love that we experience in this lifetime, specifically in
(01:11):
our twenties of course, but also some of the concepts
and theories that we should have like a good understanding
of before the decade is out to really set ourselves
up for good, healthy love. And in today's episode, we're
going to do just that. We're going to be discussing
the idea of the mental load, so I wouldn't be
(01:35):
surprised if you hadn't already heard about this concept. This
term the mental load has been doing its rounds on
TikTok and Instagram recently. It is the latest term that
has become part of the psychobabble. But I really have
my good friend Aaron to thank for this episode. If
you are a longtime listener of the show, you'll know
(01:58):
that Aaron, my best friend, is where I get a
lot of my inspiration because she thinks about these things
very deeply. She thinks about self awareness. She's very self aware,
very thoughtful. She's always introducing me to so many new
theories and ideas that I actually never came across when
I was studying psychology. She's just like a book of knowledge.
(02:20):
And last time I was visiting her, we got to
discussing the idea of the mental load in our relationships.
Because we are both in very committed long term relationships
with very lovely men. And although we love our partners
so deeply and they are such good people, we've chosen
very well. There is a lot of invisible mental and
(02:43):
emotional labor that just happens to fall on women in relationships.
Even if you think that your partner is very much
your equal, Even if they are, there is such a
hidden facet, a hidden component of love and effort that
sustains a relationship that women often take on. So also
(03:07):
known as cognitive labor. Mental loads specifically refers to the
kind of extra energy and efforts women take on in
order to organize the lives of themselves and their partners,
specifically in hetero relationships. You know, the time taken to
plan what we're having for dinner, when people's birthdays are,
what we're doing on the weekend, what we need to
(03:27):
bring to the family gathering on Friday, The mental logistics
of the week and of our lives. You know, the
date night that's coming up that we need to plan
and organize. All of these small mental kind of gymnastics,
all these small mental tasks that contribute to kind of
the I wouldn't say domestic burden, but the relational burden
(03:50):
that each member of a partnership is kind of carrying.
For example, say that you know your partner's parents are
coming into town next weekend, which means we have to
make plans for dinner that night that they come in,
but they don't like Italian food and it would have
been a really long flight, so we should make dinner
at home, which means I'll need to go to the
grocery store before then, and I have to make sure
the bed sheets are washed and pick up extra toothbrushes.
(04:13):
But the bed sheets can't go on the dryer, so
I'll have to make sure that they're getting washed on
a day that's really sunny. That will have to be Friday.
But we're out of laundry detergents, so we'll pick that
up as well. It's this running to do list of
tasks that is honestly never ending, and that I think
sometimes men in relationships don't pick up on. I think
(04:35):
we're all very aware these days of the unequal division
of labor in relationships, particularly in the past, how one partner,
normally the woman just seems to be instantly more responsible
for household chores, even when they work the same amount
of hours as their partner or have other obligations. How
women are often more responsible for child rearing activities, domestic duties,
(04:59):
that sort of thing. However, it goes a lot deeper
than just performing the task, Women also spend a lot
more time thinking about what tasks have to be done,
playing almost the role of admin for the lives of themselves,
their partners, their families, even their friends. As one study
(05:19):
published in the American Sociological Review describes it, women just
spend more time anticipating needs, identifying options, making decisions, and
ensuring that what they asked someone to do is actually completed.
In my mind, we've all reached a point where we
understand that men are expected to do more labor than
(05:41):
their fathers or their grandfathers. Did you know we do
split things fifty to fifty, But that doesn't always fully
take into account the added cognitive labor that goes into
getting those things done, you know. And I think a
lot of times people just partners. Male partners in particular,
sometimes need to be told what to do. They may
(06:01):
respond of like, oh, you know, you're upset that I
didn't do the dishes, Well, why didn't you just tell me?
You know, I would have done it if you had asked.
But the very act of needing to ask for help
and expecting your partner to tell you everything that needs
to be done, means that you're kind of still treating
your girlfriend, your wife, your partner as kind of like
the manager of the house, the manager of the chores,
the manager of your lives. It's kind of a lot
(06:23):
like a workplace, where obviously, in a workplace, like we
have the employees and we have the boss, and the
boss is always going to be more responsible for what's
going on. And as an employee, you go back to
your boss and you ask God, what needs to be
done next? Was some tasks that I should do. But
a relationship is not like a workplace. You know, no
one is the boss, no one is the employee. Both
(06:45):
people need to be truly invested in the outcome, in
it together, looking for things that need to be done,
looking for things that are going to make the other
person's life easier. And I don't think that that is
always what occurs. You know, we understand physical and domestic
labor needs to be equal, but the mental burden remains
(07:07):
very strong. And with that, the psychological burden of having
to overlook certain things, suppress resentment because he's still doing
what you asked, but you kind of wish you didn't
have to ask, and also just having less mental space
for other parts of your life and your identity and
your interests. I personally believe this wears down a relationship
(07:30):
in a lot of invisible ways, because maybe you can't
quite articulate why you feel exhausted in your relationship or
why things feel unfair. You can't tell your partner why,
you just know you feel that way, and I do
think a lot of answers lie in this invisible cognitive
and mental labor. Now, before we get into why exactly
(07:54):
this occurs and the impact and some solutions, I do
want to make a little bit of a disclaimer. I
think this is by no means a rant on how
men are terrible and incompetent and idiotic and deliberately make
women's lives miserable. I don't believe that. And I also
know my boyfriend listens to the podcast, and I'm sure
he's probably thinking that if I was saying that some
(08:15):
of those statements aren't particularly fair, I will say I
am very lucky that this does not describe our partnership.
My dad also was a stay at home dad, and
I saw him take on so much more of the
mental and domestic load than my mom at times, So
I don't think that if we date men, if we
know men, we are doomed to fail and kind of
(08:35):
constantly be under the thumb of the mental load. By
no means, I don't think that, and I don't want
this episode to kind of like find its way onto
the anti feminist feeds on TikTok and have a bunch
of people coming at me. We are all about the
science here and the psychology, and the mental load is
simply an identifiable and measurable relationship pattern and factor that
(08:57):
I've become a lot more aware of recently. I think
it really deserves some exploration and curiosity because, in my opinion,
it's definitely a subconscious reason why relationships struggle and fail
and become unequal. We see a lot of people say, oh, yeah,
you know, my partner, my husband, he contributes so much,
but I'm still so mentally exhausted. I feel unappreciated, but
(09:21):
I cannot articulate why. That is at the core of
what we're talking about today. You are describing the mental load,
So let's quickly break down why exactly it occurs. And
I want to talk about three reasons in particular. The
first one is socially conditioned gender roles the second is
(09:42):
weaponized in competence, and thirdly, it is just like deliberate
ignorance and disrespect. I think this is the harshest reason,
and I would also say it's the least common, but
it's still worthwhile to discuss. I also want to talk
about how the mental load applies to friendships well, because
I think that that is an aspect of this that
(10:04):
our conversations around the mental load often overlooks. Let's get
back to that first factor, though, I want to talk
about socially conditioned gender roles in their contribution. We have
come a long way in terms of gender equality, but
that doesn't mean that boys and girls aren't still raised differently,
socially conditioned differently. Even with our best efforts, even with
(10:27):
all of our progressive rearing skills and progressive ways of
teaching boys and girls, that traditional way of viewing gender
is still incredibly ingrained. There are centuries and centuries of
tradition there, and I don't think that one or two
generations is going to fully eliminate some of the stereotypes overnight.
(10:50):
So we know that within society exists this blueprint or
guidebook on what behaviors are female and what behaviors are male,
what character traits are female, and what character traits are male.
We all kind of know what I'm talking about, hopefully
without meaning to tell you. I'll just elaborate for the
sake of it. You know, the type of typical male
(11:11):
behaviors that are acceptable are very different from those we
expect from women. Boys are allowed to be rough and
independent and strong, and women are instructed to be passive,
nurturing and pathetic accommodating. These are all skills and character
traits that will eventually make them more likely to take
(11:32):
on that additional cognitive, emotional, and mental labor in a relationship,
in a family, in a home. Now, when we talk
about social conditioning in psychology, this refers to the ways
in which we learn how to act by picking up
clues or cues in our environment. When we behave in
(11:52):
a certain way, especially as children, we are either reinforced
or punished for that behavioravior. The simple premise is, when
we are rewarded for a behavior, either through the addition
of something that we want or the removal of something bad,
that behavior is sustained and we learn to perform it
more regularly. When we are punished, we associate that behavior
(12:15):
with a bad outcome, Naturally we perform it less. That
is a form of learning. So when girls as children
act in a way that is motherly and nurturing and accommodating,
they're applauded for that with praise, with kind words, all
of which are a form of positive reinforcement, and it
(12:38):
means that those behaviors are encouraged and are more likely
to be performed again. In contrary, when they act in
ways that are counter to gender norms, they're scolded or
they're punished because it's not aligning with society's blueprints and expectations.
For example, a young girl might be called bossy for
(13:01):
standing up for herself, whereas a young boy is called
a leader, he's called authoritative. He receives praise, the kind
of praise that we only receive when we're kind and nurturing.
I think that that is like a very basic feminism
one oh one lesson. But how it relates to psychology
is that these small moments, although we might disregard them,
(13:21):
although we might look back on them and find them
quite irritating, they are actually learning experiences, and our young
brains absorb these like a sponge and carry them with
us as a guide for how society expects us to act.
So from a young age we kind of know the
roles that we should be fulfilling, even if no one
(13:42):
has explicitly told us we are caregivers. We are givers,
we are meant to be responsible. I think further to this,
we think about the toys that we played with a children,
the movies that we watched, the kind of patterns that
we were exposed to. The other example I always think
of is when a female student who is studious and
(14:03):
caring and hard working is made to sit with a
rowdy male student and like help him do his work
and help him stay focused as if she is his
parent or the teacher herself, when actually she is just
a student. She is there to learn as well. In
those instances, though, we are playing this role of kind
(14:25):
of the cognitive planner, the mental planner, the one who
has to have everything organized out in our brain for
how to get something done. The other factor here is,
of course, observational learning. Girls often learn about domestic duties
by observing their parents, particularly their mothers. And no matter
(14:47):
how progressive your family was, my family was incredibly progressive,
like my dad was a stay at home dad, but
there were still times where I saw my mom take
on more of those how use hold chores. The chores
were still divided along gender lines. You know, women do
a lot of the domestic duties boys. Men are a
(15:11):
scientists that are perceived as more physically demanding, traditionally masculine
yard work, taking out the trash. All of these are
cues to us. They are a learning experience, and we
model our behavior on these expectations. We model our behavior,
we mimic our caregivers, and that is how we become
(15:33):
the people we are today. We know in psychology and
from some of those early experiments with Bundura, that a
lot of what we learn is through observation and replication.
There are so many other factors here. The final one
I will say is that we also see this pattern
a lot of men being allowed to have like a
(15:56):
longer period of adolescence compared to women. I'm going to
explain that a little bit more. I think that it
is very kind of acceptable for men to be irresponsible,
for men to make dumb mistakes, for men to like
not know how to cook, not know how to clean.
It's quirky it's funny, whereas with women it's kind of like,
(16:18):
you hit twenty one, Are you an adult? Yet? If not,
you're you're immature. You're not growing up fast enough, like
you're just acting like a child. Men are allowed to
stay in this period of infancy and adolescence and lesser
responsibility for a lot longer. So women are the ones
(16:39):
who are gaining those cognitive and mental skills around organization,
around responsibility a lot earlier than their male counterparts, and
that is then reflected in hetero relationships. I think just
the simple premise is that the reason we see the
mental load again and again and again is that men
have not been socialized in the same way as women
(17:01):
to be attuned to the needs of others and to
apply kind of the same level of cognitive processing as
women do. It may also come down to genuine differences
in personality, and I feel like I need to throw
this in here. There has been a lot of research
that has shown that women are more empathetic than men,
and we know that empathy really at its core is
(17:23):
the ability to recognize and relate to what's going on
in someone else's mind. That includes that invisible list of
things that need to get done around the house, in
the relationship, whatever it is. And it just might seem
that men are not as clued into the inner workings
of someone else's brain as women are, not just because
(17:43):
they haven't been socialized that way, but also because they're
levels of empathy may be a little bit less. Empathy
is a skill, it's a muscle, and I think that
it can be built up if you're prepared to kind
of do the work. And I think if you care
about someone else, if you're around them a lot, eventually
should be able to pick up on the way that
(18:03):
they do things, what they prioritize, what they need to
get done, what creates stress for them, and kind of
act without needing to be asked. I want to talk
about one final aspect of the mental load and its
causes here, And you know what, maybe this might piss
somebody off. I don't really mind, because I think that
(18:25):
it is highly relevant to this discussion, and that has
to do with weaponized incompetence. Again, this has been making
its rounds on social media. I think because people are
getting a lot more clued in to the labor that
women do that isn't just domestic and physical and in psychology,
weaponized incompetence refers to a deliberate or strategic use of falsified, fake,
(18:53):
incompetence or ineffectiveness as a tactic to avoid doing something,
in this case taking on the mental life keywords in
that it is deliberate, it's strategic, it's false, and also
obviously in competence, like it's not that this person actually
is incompetent, they're pretending to be, so they're weaponizing it,
(19:13):
you know, Weaponized incompetence sounds like you know, Oh, you
just do it so much better than me. Oh, I
don't know how to do it. I'll just make more
of a mess. You're just you're so much more organized,
you have a system, Like I'm just gonna screw it up.
Why don't you just let me know what I can
help with? And by intentionally appearing incompetent trying to elevate
(19:34):
your ineffectiveness in certain areas, this lowers expectations for you
to actually get stuff done, and it also causes you
to gain sympathy whilst avoiding responsibility. I have seen so
many videos of this in recent months, where a woman
asks her husband to do something while she's away and
he just does a terrible job, as if she hasn't
(19:54):
you know, he hasn't seen her do it a million times,
or you ask him to like do your to do
li or take something off your agenda, and sometimes you think,
like this person cannot possibly be that incompetent. They have
a full time job, like they're probably very respected at work.
You married him for a reason. Like this has to
be deliberate in some ways. And you know what's worse
(20:17):
than having to ask someone to do something, it's asking
they're having them do it, and then you having to
redo it later. It leaves you feeling really angry and disappointed.
But you also don't want to sound like a nag
because at least they put in the effort, and that
is weaponized in competence. Again, we can look for the
origins of this behavior. Sometimes it is learned from childhood
(20:37):
where boys men are allowed to escape responsibilities, and they
may have learned that if their parent has asked them
to do the dishes or fold the laundry and they
did a really terrible job, or they said that they forgot,
they would get away with it. And so now it's
a tactic to avoid doing a task altogether. We can
make excuses, we can have reasons, we can have explanations,
(20:59):
but regardless, I think it's really exhausting, especially in like
a day and age where like no one really has
the time to be doing more mental labor than they
have to. And I know we've been talking a lot
about this in the context of long term relationships where
there is maybe a home to maintain or children whatnot,
but this can also occur on the early stages of
(21:21):
dating as well. If you're just like you've been dating
someone for a couple of years, whereby once they realize
that you'll take on more of the responsibility of maintaining
your lives together, of course they're going to say yes
to that, because that's less responsibility on their plate. The
biggest example I think that I've been that I've seen
(21:43):
in like friends relationships, not necessarily my own, but I
see it quite a bit is planning date nights. You know,
you say to your partner, Hey, I'd really like to
do a date night, but like every time we do it,
I plan it. I'm always the one who has to
find something fun, something that's open at eight pm on
a Monday, Like can you do it? And As the
(22:05):
date gets closer and closer, there's nothing planned. They keep
saying they'll think of something, until you're at the stage
where you have to decide whether A you just plan
it or B you wait for them to do it,
and you're disappointed because it's another night of sitting at
home watching TV ordering takeout. That is not what you deserve.
And I think although no relationship is perfect, when you're
(22:29):
with someone that you love and who respects you, you
both still need to show up for each other, even
if you're not feeling one hundred percent, you know. I
think it's once again linked to that empathy thing. If this,
if your partner is like, well, I'm just so exhausted
from work, I'm so tired, like I never think of things,
you're probably also in that same boat. Make sure you
communicate that like they should want to step up for
(22:51):
you to make it equal on both your parts. We
also see the mental load in friendships. I think it's
talked about enough, but I think that a lot of
us relate to this kind of experience whereby our friends
just begin to expect that where the ones who will
always make plans, we will make sure that the reservation
(23:14):
is booked, the tickets are purchased, everyone has transportation, everyone
knows what's going on. The endless list continues, yet again.
Friendships take effort, much like romantic relationships, and sometimes that
effort can become unbalanced. You're always the one reaching out,
You're always the one needing to think of fun things
(23:36):
to do. And I think that that is an example
of where someone has begun to expect you to take
on the cognitive labor of sustaining the relationship. There comes
a point where you have to evaluate if I love
this saying, but like if the juice is worth the squeeze,
Like whether this person has just come to expect you
to take on all the mental energy of sustaining your connection,
(23:59):
and what is that making you feel? Like? How is
that making you feel? The answer is probably not amazing,
probably not great, because you never want to feel like
a relationship is unbalanced in such an extreme way. You know,
you don't want to feel like someone is not mirroring
(24:19):
your efforts, because what does that say about the respect
they have for you, the respect they have for your connection,
the respect they have for your relationship. I think it
takes so much mental energy to initiate a conversation about
these things. And maybe you don't have it in you
to vote even more of your finite cognitive space and
(24:40):
time to this one side of relationship, but I think
it's worth it, and there is a way to approach
this and this conversation in a manner that gets kind
of the best outcome and the solution for everyone. I
really don't think it's a matter of like, oh, this person,
you know, my partner is not taking on the mental load,
failing to communicate that that's what you need done, and
(25:01):
then just leaving them without giving them a chance to
maybe adapt their behavior. And I think the same thing
goes with friendship. The older we get, the further into
our twenties, I think the more we realize that you
can't just cut people off willy nilly. You can't just
have issues and not communicate them, because you will end
up just hurting yourself more as those relationships break down.
(25:22):
So what we're going to talk about next is how
to manage a conversation about the mental load in your relationship,
how to kind of get to a place where there
is a solution either in your friendships, your relationships and
other forms of connections that you might have, so all
of that and more after this shortbreak, when you feel
(25:47):
that you're taking on more of the mental load and relationship,
that is going to have a number of bleed on effects,
a lot of impacts not just on the relationship, but
your health as well. The primary one I think is burnout.
Of course, a lot of research on this has been
done with mothers who don't only have partners, but children
(26:08):
to look after it as well. Nearly nine to ten
mothers in this one study felt that they were solely
responsible for managing and organizing the family's schedule, and it
left them feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, unable to make space for themselves.
Similar study found that seventy two percent of working mums,
(26:28):
so not just stay at home mum's. Working moms feel
that it's their job to stay on top of kids' schedules.
Fifty two percent of them are also facing burnout. So
when we think about this from a more psychological perspective, right,
we really do only have a finite amount of mental space,
(26:50):
cognitive space, mental resources. There are always things that are
going to be competing for our time. That includes things
like work, personal things that you're going through, personal dilemmas friendships,
making time to exercise, making time to prioritize yourself. When
(27:12):
we feel like we are responsible for organizing someone else's
life and the life that we share together, that is
just more that is being taken out of this finite
pool of what is available to us mentally, and it's
going to lead to exhaustion if other parts of our
(27:32):
lives don't make space for that growth in that area.
I think it's important to see it this way and
see it almost as like how we want to visualize it,
whether it's like a cup or a pie or anything like,
you really only have that much. Everything that you choose
to put on your plate, you choose to devote your time,
(27:53):
to your energy, to your love to takes away from
that finite amount of thing that you have, and so
what it requires you to do is sacrifice other things
that are important to you. And those are the kinds
of sacrifices that women often have to make more than men.
Those things that they sacrifice first are normally going to
(28:14):
be the things that they can live without, but they
can't sustain themselves without things that actually contribute to self care,
to a good sense of emotional wellbeing. If you have
a really busy life, if you've got a lot going
on and you know that you need to prioritize work,
you need to prioritize your partner, you need to prioritize
(28:36):
your family, and you don't have time for anything else.
The things that are going to get chopped, that are
going to get discarded is going to be things like exercise.
It's going to be things like seeing your friends, things
that are important for your self care. That it's going
to further the cycle of burnout. That is the main impact.
I also think that you just start feeling that exhaustion
(28:56):
long before you feel burnt out. And that exhaustion also
contributes to a sense of resentment in your relationship. You
don't feel respected because this person is not contributing what
you feel like you are contributing. They did a study
on this back in two thousand and one, right when
the mental load was really starting to take off, and
(29:19):
they found that when women in particular feel they're doing
more of the cognitive labor, the amount of satisfaction they
report in their relationship declines. More mental load, less happy
in relationship. It's a very i think simple correlation. When
(29:40):
you're at that point where you're feeling really disappointed in
your partner, but as we said before, you're not quite
sure why, because the mental load and cognitive labor isn't
as recognized as domestic labor. What you're going to do
is unconsciously, subconsciously find ways to get their attention, find
ways to bring them into a discussion in which you're
(30:02):
allowed to kind of air your anger and air your resentment.
What I'm talking about here is emotional bids. Now we've
spoken about this on the show before. I can't remember
one episode, but essentially, emotional bids are like these efforts
that we make to bring our partner's attention to some
problem and have them reassure us. The best example I
(30:24):
think of is picking a fight, or you know, being
like Chipana, oh, hey, look at this, and then they
don't look at it, and your emotional bid has been neglected. Essentially,
what you're asking from your partner in those moments is
for attention and is for their compassion, is for them
to contribute to the partnership. When you start to pick
(30:46):
fights and you don't even know what the problem is,
I find that you're probably not going to find this
allusion to it either, and it's just going to end
up wearing down on both of you, creating a lot
of stress, further exacerbating that resentment and leading to relationship breakdown.
And I've seen this happen in a friend of mine's relationship,
(31:07):
where after just so many times of trying to get
her partner to do more for her, to just plan
things to just like not have to ask her constantly, Hey,
weds dinner tonight? What time? What am I meant to
be wearing? Did you get my mom a birthday present? Like?
She had asked so many times for him to understand
where she was coming from that the relationship ended up
(31:30):
not working out because she realized that he couldn't be
a good partner. And I felt bad for him because
I think that he had such an opportunity there to
correct his behavior. All he required was a bit more empathy.
So I want to talk about how we can fix
this dynamic in which you might be taking on more
of the mental load. I think the first step in
(31:50):
any relationship dispute whatever you want to call it, dissatisfaction
problem why not, is to make sure you were both
on the same page about what the problem is. So
maybe A good first step is to actually send them
this episode, not just trying to get more listens or
(32:10):
anything like that, but seriously, like, I think it's really
important that if they have never even heard of what
the mental load is, if they have no clue what
you're talking about, that conversation is not going to be productive.
And I also think that I think sadly the conversation
will fail because they will immediately be defensive. Not to
(32:32):
say that they should be, but I think that going
into it with a mutual understanding of what you want
to discuss and what you're actually referring to is super important.
Maybe they listen to this episode they go, oh my god, absolutely,
I totally get where you're coming from. We don't need
to talk about it anymore. I'm going to step up.
After you have that genuine like mutual understanding, mutual knowledge,
(32:53):
you have to decide whether you're going to tolerate a
continuance of this behavior or not. That is not a
conclusion that I can reach for you. I don't know
the pros and cons of your relationship. I don't know
your dynamic, but you know you know your emotional state,
you know what you can tolerate you know what you're
(33:15):
willing to tolerate, not just what you can, what you're
willing to what you feel like you deserve. And if
you're at this stage where you are so mentally fed
up you're having the same fights over and over again,
that is a good indicator that the ceiling of your
relationship needs to shift upwards, particularly that someone is not
doing their bit, especially as it refers to the mental load.
(33:39):
I think when it comes to having this conversation around
a sense of dissatisfaction that someone's not pulling their weight, sadly,
the burden will probably fall on you to bring this
up and discuss it with your partner, but hopefully it's
a one time chat. I would say going into this,
make sure obviously firstly they know what you're talking about,
but also be mindful of the response ability bias. So
(34:01):
this is this idea in psychology that basically we are
only really aware, fully aware of what we're doing. We
only know what we're responsible for, We only know our actions.
We only know the times that we cleaned out the bin,
not the times that you did. You know, and if
you haven't verbalized the efforts that you're going to to
(34:21):
keep the house up to scratch or to contribute to
the relationship. It might be hard for them to know,
and they're immediately going to come in with their perspective,
and their perspective is, in my mind, here are all
the things I'm doing. I have absolutely no clue how
much you're doing. That is where communication is your best friend.
(34:42):
Give them literal examples, but try not to guilt trip
them in the process. Remember, you want this to work,
like you want this relationship to work, That's why you're
putting in this effort. Talk them through what it takes
for you to do all this extra mental labor. What
does your to do list look like? What is the
extra stuf, extra ingredients that you're putting into this relationship
(35:04):
that they could take on. Is it planning dates? Is
it understanding when flights need to be booked for a
weekend away? Is it making plans? Is it just listening
and being aware of your schedule the way that you're
aware of theirs. These are all small important things that
they might not realize you've been doing until you communicate them.
(35:24):
Was something that a friend of mine was telling me
the other day, which when I was asking her about
this episode, I was like, okay, so what would you
do in this situation? And she used this really she
gave me this really amazing advice, which is put a
list of everything that you do each week on the fridge,
everything that needs to be done, and each person gets
a different colored pen and you take them off. It
(35:46):
sounds so rudimentary, but it's really important to actually be like,
is my resentment coming from a fair place or is
my partner actually doing an equal amount of labor. It's
just that I have this responsibility bias going on. I
can't actually see what they're doing. Also, you can use
some of that reverse reinforcement. You know, if they don't
(36:06):
buy the birthday present for their mom, the mom doesn't
get a birthday present, that is some negative punishment right there.
They're gonna feel really bad. They're gonna feel the shame.
It wasn't your responsibility. They're gonna learn through that if
they don't plan the date, you go and do something
else because they didn't make plans. Even if you're in
a relationship. I know it sounds harsh, but it is
(36:29):
this thing of like you need to continuously be dating
me in a sense, and if you're not, like I
am not just like your backup option. You're not just
my backup option. We are like actively trying to be
partners and be in each other's lives and make each
other's lives better and easier and more vibrant. And if
that's not what we're doing right now, I am going
(36:49):
to find other ways to do that. I need you
to step up. It might sound harsh, I think it works,
especially when it's combined with really good communication and a
really good open dialogue of like, how are you both
actually feeling right now, and how are you feeling that
you're taking on more of the mental load? What are
some of the things that they might not know that
(37:10):
it is creating for your mental state, for your limited
cognitive resources, for your well being. Over communicate and then
let them make a decision. You cannot control what they
choose to do with that information. If you find yourself
continuing to just like having to ask them and nag
them and bring them up, bring it up again and
(37:30):
again and again, I think that is a different conversation
that is no longer a conversation about mental load. I
think that is a conversation about disrespect and a lack
of empathy, and maybe it's important to start thinking about
when it is time to walk away and find someone
who you don't need to tell this to. They already
know how to do it. They already have done the work.
(37:54):
They've already learned what it means to be an equal partner.
It's not just domestic labor, it's not just physical labor.
It is cognitive labor as well, being equally responsible for
the life that you share. I really hope that this episode,
this fun Valentine's Date episode, has been helpful. I'm realizing
that it got a little bit less fun at the end,
(38:14):
but I think it is an important reminder that just
because you love this person, just because they're like your soulmate,
doesn't mean that you have to be dissatisfied with areas
of your relationship. Doesn't mean you need to tolerate something
that can be fixed through a conversation and through like
reverse reinforcement and learning and reconditioning. So I really enjoyed
(38:36):
this episode. I found it like super fascinating to look
further into the science and the psychology. As I said,
my very good friend Erin actually suggested this topic and
she knew so much more than I ever did, so
Thank you Aeron, love you Hapes. I'm glad that our
relationship does not suffer from mental load problems. If there's
someone you think would enjoy this episode, please feel free
(38:58):
to share it with them, send them a link. Make
sure you are leaving us a five star review if
you enjoyed this episode. If you have an episode suggestion,
they have been flowing in recently, but I always do
like to read them, even if I cannot reply to
every single one. Please follow us at that Psychology Podcast
to send your thoughts, your theories, your qualms, your questions.
(39:21):
Give us there and have a lovely rest of your week.
We will be back on Friday with another episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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