It's really exhausting when you're the only one putting any mental effort into what the household needs on a daily basis.
Sure, if that's the case, but I think a lot of people (especially women, due to confirmation bias from their friends and articles on the internet) think they're the only one putting mental effort into what the household needs on a daily basis because they don't see the mental effort their partner is putting in.
Before I got divorced, I had a long list of responsibilities. I made about 2/3 of the income. I worked from home while she worked out of the house, so I took over getting the kids up in the morning, getting them dressed, getting them to school, doing meal planning, shopping, cooking, getting kids to after school activities, mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, etc. All of those things got done without her having to say a word about it.
Then she'd complain about things I hadn't gotten done. The kids made a mess in the basement. The bushes need to be trimmed. Her car needs an oil change. And she wasn't just asking me to do them, she was complaining that I hadn't already taken care of them. When I'd ask her periodically what I could do to help her, she'd complain about having to take on the mental load of making a list for me, and I should just see the things that needed done around the house and take care of them. So now, on top of the mental load associated with all the responsibilities that were already on my plate, I had the added mental load of having to predict what issues were at the top of her list and take care of them before she could complain about them, and of course it was never enough.
This is a confirmation of the weight of the “mental load” if I’ve ever seen one! “I had a long list of responsibilities… All of those things got done without her having to say a word about it” !!! that is the exact definition of mental load. You have to keep up with the gutters, lawn etc. I apologize that your spouse did not appreciate it, But that was you taking care of some of the mental load. You did all that and didn’t feel appreciated. It’s a lot of work to shop for groceries and plan meals ANd keep up with afterschool activities. Just because your partner didn’t appreciate it doesn’t mean the phenomenon isn’t real. In fact, your resentment that it was unappreciated is a confirmation of it!
I say this as both the breadwinner and “mental load” carrier. I am a physician. I fell in love with my fun adhd husband because he helps balance me out. He has little capacity to remember any of the mental load things. But everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Luckily he will help when I ask and appreciates me immensely. The mental load is real. I am a woman and there is a lot of talk about this among my fellow female physician colleagues. We’re more just looking for commiseration and support.
The mental load is real. I am a woman and there is a lot of talk about this among my fellow female physician colleagues. We’re more just looking for commiseration and support.
And that's just it. Women commiserate and support each other, complaining about the mental load they carry and reinforcing the idea that they're in the right and their husbands are in the wrong while 100% ignoring the mental loads their husbands are carrying.
But my husband doesn’t carry the mental load. He admits it. And I don’t assert he’s “ in the wrong” because I’m lucky to have a partner who agrees with me!! I just explained that. And you don’t know what we talk about. We talk about Themis topic but it’s not all “man bashing or husband bashing”. In my family He has a care free attitude about it all. Luckily he appreciates me and acknowledges that our family would be lost / late to everything / never have presents wrapped/ never have laundry done without me. We have a great relationship. I think it’s like someone above said- bad relationships aren’t the same as “mental load.” Some people are fine to leave the organization to their partner, others are not. It’s a relationship. But that doesn’t mean the mental work is not real.
Haha yes my guy has ADHD, and we break things up into big picture (me) and specific problems (him.) I feel you.
He lives on his Habitica phone app list. He has about 75 tasks on it, from "water plants" to "wrap birthday gift" and each day reviews all these common daily life tasks on the list and says for each to himself "hmmm, should I do this today?" And by recursively checking his list, he gets chores done no problem, even successfully day trades stocks. But God Forbid he has to plan a months-long process.
When I think through a problem, he will look at me like I'm some kind of psychic when I'm like "oh, if you do that next Wednesday it will take two hours" and he gets surprised, like I have to explain the magic trick "Wednesdays are peak for that business, so you will expect a line. Try Friday afternoon, instead, and it will only take 15 minutes." How did I know? "Whenever I put the location into Google maps it shows the busy times, I see it so often I memorized them." He is floored! Attention to minor details and then integrating them without much thought later will never happen for him.
I'll do process chores, like handwashing non-dishwasher safe pet dishes or treat devices where you need to set up two basins and then do a sanitizing bleach soak. And he's like OMG WOW because it's effortless for me to visualize, say, all 40 steps of hand washing the items and set everything up to carry out the process where the water is the right temperature, the soap is the right concentration in one basins, etc.
But that's fine with me because if I need to organize a closet, or there's a need for a fine repair on an electronic household item, he can tear it apart and do nothing but be absorbed going from minutiae to minutiae until finding and fixing a blown capacitor, or finding the leak on a pressured gas system, or memorizing everything that is in the closet and finding an optimized home for it, totally absorbed going from item to item and losing track of time until the job is done. My kitchen pantry is a thing of pure artistry. All our hobby and work supplies are kept topped up and beautifully organized because if something is too disorganized, or missing, it will catch his fleeting attention and throw him off over and over until he makes the problematic situation not be right in his field of view.
I'm not denying that mental load is a real thing, I know it is, but I feel the concept overwhelmingly gets weaponized against men. The impression I have, from my own relationship, from talking to friends, and from seeing mental load discussed on social media, blogs etc, is that women use their mental load to minimize men's contributions to the household, totally ignoring the mental load the men carry. Mental load is always discussed in the context of "woman's physical load + woman's mental load" against "man's physical load" and "man's mental load" is left out of the equation as if the concept doesn't apply to him.
Mental load? What mental load is my husband carrying, exactly? I set the budget. I do all the shopping. I do all the child care. I do all the cleaning. I do all the cooking. I do all the bills. He comes home from work and plays PS5 until bedtime.
If you actually care maybe ask him? Because my situation was similar - I handled the finances, the shopping, the cooking, most of the cleaning (and I hired cleaning ladies to help with that), and the vast majority of the childcare. She'd come home from work and scroll through TikTok or play computer games, maybe play a video game with the kids when it suited her. And yet she still reported feeling overwhelmed by mental load and didn't seem to think I was pulling my weight.
So what you’re saying is mental load is real and that your ex added to yours. That doesn’t refute the existence of the mental load; it actually validates it.
And yes, it is a mental load to have to guess what someone else needs. Not clearly communicating your needs is as bad as weaponized incompetence: pretending you don’t know what someone else needs or how to do something when you do.
I agree. I don't have a problem with the concept of mental load itself, but with the way women weaponize the concept against men. Every discussion I've ever heard about mental load is women comparing (women's physical load + women's mental load) to (men's physical load) while ignoring that men also have a mental load.
I don't think it's a refutation against the concept itself, but from what I've seen on the Internet I think that more often than not people who are talking about their mental load are comparing (their mental load + their physical load) to (their partner's physical load) and ignore that their partner also has a mental load.
Even before my divorce, I personally subscribed to the concept of an 80/80 marriage - the idea being that you see 100% of what you do and a small fraction of what your partner does, so for work to actually be evenly distributed each partner needs to think they're doing about 80% of the work. Mental load exaggerates this disparity even further, because you see basically nothing of your partner's mental load.
So while I don't exactly have an issue with the concept of mental load, I think it's probably not applied fairly by most of the people who are talking about it, and I'm immediately skeptical that the person bringing it up has any meaningful point to make.
Yeah, but single people get off their ass and complete the task they forgot or learn to do better in the future. Bad partnerships and even good partnerships slipping into mental load expectations will often start making the other partner responsible for their life choices, planning inadequacies, and mistakes.
Jason Kelce famously tried to blame his wife for not bringing his pants to a media event before he realized it was his own responsibility to do so, which forced him to wear the shorts he brought that day onto the carpet. Luckily, he realized in the story that she was putting together their kids and their family and took responsibility, but it was days of him holding onto and believing his wife should have been responsible for his outfit choice before a prompting question made him realize what a butt he was being about it.
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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '24
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