Emotional Labor

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “emotional labor” before. If you look up the definition it’s completely different from how every social media therapy-speak influencer uses it. For this post we’ll be using their version instead of the actual definition.

It’s this idea that people (usually women) often have the workload of chores even when their partner is doing the chores. Like for example any time we have a party/event at our house we clean up, as people usually do. Now I already have the list: Pick up the baby toys, load the dishes, vacuum the rug, mop the floors, clean the toilet, etc. And I can do the list, but obviously it’s easier to divide and conquer. That means I take on the extra chore of delegating. I have to be a supervisor and a worker at the same time, deciding which tasks to assign that won’t get in the way of my tasks I’m trying to finish.

While Dakota does some housework, I would not say his fair share. This has caused many arguments. A surprise to no one. I once heard a quote from a marriage counselor that was asked what advice she had for couples. She said, “just do the dishes.” I think division of labor causes fights in most households. I’m grateful to have a man that does chores when asked, unlike many less fortunate women, but I hate that I have to ask.

Supposedly 70% of divorces are initiated by women. I don’t know if that statistic is true and while I’d usually link an article I don’t feel like it this time. Fact check it yourself if you care. But anyway, one of the main reasons women initiate so many more divorces? Well… they don’t. It just seems that way on paper. Men just won’t fill out the paperwork.

So perhaps a man comes home and says he wants a divorce. More often than not it’s still the woman’s job to do it. The same way she writes the grocery list, signs up for the snacks for the little league games, remembers parent-teacher conferences and doctors’ appointments and friends’ birthdays… The man says he wants to dissolve the marriage and it still falls onto her plate to actually do it.

To anyone who’s been reading my blog, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I have some resentment around how Ryan has handled his separation from his wife… or lack thereof. Many many months ago, maybe nearly 10 at this point, I joked she was going to beat him to it. I was playfully ribbing him but deep down I had the fear it would really happen. You see, while her filing would have the same outcome, it wouldn’t have the same meaning. Letting her do it means he couldn’t be bothered to do it. My feelings were not worth the effort. And I understand he couldn’t get divorced because of me. I made sure to tell him I didn’t want that, he made sure to tell me I wasn’t the reason (even if I was maybe the catalyst). But to me it feels like if he realized he needed to get divorced anyway, five years after he had initially started filling out the paperwork, my feelings should’ve been enough of a push to get it done in a timely manner.

Instead he asked me to wait. And I did. I’m not really sure why. But he was able to wear me down into accepting the forever changing timeline and wear her down into doing it for him since she’s realized he’s not coming back so she might as well try to get a payout. 

One of the reasons I wanted to be a stay at home mom was to take over a majority of the housework. I was tired of asking for help. And I knew that if I took all of it over while still working it would cause a lot of stress and resentment. So instead of looking at the man I love in a negative light for pushing the emotional (and also actual) labor onto me I just changed our entire lives around so it could feel more fair.

How do I do that with the other man I love? How do I change this situation so that he’s not using the women in his life? How do I not feel some type of way about it? The answer, like always, will simply be to get over it.