276 - I'm Not Your Mother
Mom role
It seems as though, in relationships where two or more people live together, that one person always ends up taking on more of the household workload. In cisgender, heterosexual relationships, this often falls on the female partner to take on more of a “mom” role in the relationship and shouldering a larger share of both mental and physical housework.
Why is this an issue? When a partner isn’t motivated to help around the house, it sends messages such as:
You don’t care about me.
You don’t respect me enough to help out.
I feel undervalued.
I feel unappreciated.
I feel like I can’t rely on you for support.
If there’s an unequal labor division, over a long period of time there can be detrimental effects to the relationship:
Resentment.
Loss of intimacy.
Lack of sex.
Increased stress.
A characterization of how someone may view the entire relationship.
Overall relationship withdrawal.
Changing the pattern
It’s crucial to recognize if your relationship is falling into these patterns of inequality, and take the action to start breaking out of it.
On the micro level
Schedule a RADAR. Even if you don’t already do RADARs with your partner, it’s never too late to start.
Track the time you spend doing household chores as well as the time spent planning for them, and share your findings with each other. Try to establish ways in which the two of you can share the load and take the burden off the person doing the most work. Do your best not to have one person delegate and instead work together to problem solve.
Figure out a way to completely step away from the tasks you’re giving to the other person and temper your expectations of how well that task may be achieved at first.
Use metacommunication and what you know about your partner’s likes and dislikes to anticipate their needs while collaborating on a task to strengthen intimacy.
On a macro level
Advertising companies are starting to remove gendered stereotypes and roles from their ads.
Companies should also be encouraged to offer both men and women flexible work hours, rather than standard 9-5.
Companies should offer mandatory paternity leave so the stigma of taking it can be lessened.
What NOT to do when asking for help
Pursuit/withdrawal. See episode 228 for more on this pattern. Avoid these behaviors in order to have a more productive discussion.
Don’t criticize or micromanage your partner for doing something “wrong.” Sometimes partners may not want to try at all for fear of being chastised.
Try to refrain from a dynamic where one person is the “leader” or delegates most of the decisions. This can mirror a parent/child relationship, which can be unhealthy and unsexy.
Avoid the four horsemen: stonewalling, contempt, criticizing, and defensiveness.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast. We're not your mother. Just kidding, we actually are. You're all our little babies.
Now, the topic for today is that sometimes in relationships where two or more people live together, one can get stuck doing the majority of the household tasks and emotional labor. In other words, being the archetypal mother role. Today we're going to be talking about the unfair division of labor that sometimes happens within households, how toxic that can really be to relationships as well as some tips to help change those patterns that cause this inequality to happen.
Emily: I was thinking about this just because when I have been living with my partner and basically only seeing him for the last three months, while we've been social distancing and staying inside here, it's seemed like I've become very domestic and taken over many roles like doing the dishes every single day. I'm the one who goes out and gets all the groceries and stuff.
Dedeker: You see, I've become domestic in the sense that I'm knitting a sock.
Emily: Oh, well, that's very drastic as well. I wish I could knit, but I can't and it was funny because I was getting really angry about this and fed up. Then I came home after getting some groceries and all of the dishes were done and the sink was cleaned and he was like, "Oh, I realized how much you were doing this lately and I felt like I should help." Which was very nice and so that was really kind of him to do, but I did think maybe other people are out there right now having a hard time with those as well sometimes and feeling like, "Hey, maybe I should figure out how this division of labor can become a little bit more equal."
Have you all read this article "She divorced me because I left my dishes in the sink?" It came out in 2016.
Dedeker: It was not a famous article that I was aware of, but I did read it when you sent me the link.
Jase: Yes, I only read it when you sent it here for this episode.
Emily: Oh really?
Jase: No, I hadn't seen it before.
Emily: I thought it went viral back in 2016.
Dedeker: Oh, did it?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: There was a lot going on in 2016 I must have missed it.
Emily: Oh, I know. You're absolutely right.
Jase: I've forgotten 2016 entirely, just blocked it out.
Emily: Yes, let's just pretend like it never happened. We're going to soon add 2020 to that list, but yes. What it was is it was this guy wrote it after his wife had filed for divorce from him and he says that she filed for divorce because he left his dishes by the sink, instead of doing them or putting them away, he just would like leave them there and leave. He realized that he felt just this entitlement to his wife's love and her care simply because they exchanged vows and became man and wife and so that to him gave him all of this entitlement.
He told himself over and over again, like "If my wife just told me what I needed to do, then I would do it, but she didn't want to have to tell me, she didn't want to have to be my mother, she wanted me to figure it out for myself and for us to be partners, not like parent-child kind of relationship."
It was interesting and I remember reading it and thinking, huh, I wonder how I feel about that because we are this podcast that talks about communication, and they clearly didn't have good communication, so I'm like, should I be thinking that that's wrong? That he actually should have figured out a way to talk to her and she should have figured out a way to talk to him? I don't know, what did the two of you think when reading it?
Jase: This article goes to so many different places. I found it to be quite rambly actually in terms of just--
Dedeker: Yes, I think he made good points. It was just all over the place a little bit.
Emily: It was clearly like a dump, after just so I'm going to--
Dedeker: Yes, definitely.
Emily: Yes, I'm going to put it all out there and not really being very coherent and where I'm going and cohesive.
Jase: Right, I do think something that's interesting, even just in the way you described that right there and his sort of thing about like, well, if she had only told me then I would have done it and it's one of those things where it's like, yes, one could make the argument that there was a communication problem there. Either her not feeling able to communicate directly or him not listening when she was communicating, like not getting it, even if he was listening.
Then on the other side, there's also this other problem, which comes from culturally, how we're taught to be men and women specifically if we're raised in those roles and those ways of thinking is that really a lot of this shouldn't be her job to communicate to him but we're stuck in this.
Dedeker: Which he acknowledges that.
Jase: No, I know. I'm just saying for the sake of our discussion here, I think that's part of what's really interesting about the discussion at all.
Emily: I guess he realized that as, Dedeker, was saying like finally at the end, when it was too late, ultimately.
Dedeker: Yes, I think in this article, he makes two very important points that I think are relevant to this bigger, broader discussion. One of them being that point that you just highlighted, Jase, that it's not as simple as like, Oh, you should just ask me what you need done around the house and I'll do it, and it's your fault for not asking me because I didn't know. He recognizes that wasn't the problem because she was expecting me to also take responsibility in thinking about what needs to be done and acknowledging what needs to be done and then doing it instead of just waiting for orders from the top, essentially.
Then the second important point that he makes in his article being about that, the fact that like leaving the dish outside the dishwasher is not about the dish or the glass, it's about his wife feeling respected and feeling like he cares about the kind of home that she wants and that he has listened to her requests and that he respects her.
Jase: That one really hit home for me in some roommate relationships that I've had too where their explanation for not doing the things that I request in terms of cleanliness or whatever is based in some sort of well, I'm going to logic it away. He kind of talks about this in the article too, where he acknowledges the fact that for him, he's like, well, yes, I put it there, I've got a ton of reasons to put it there and not put it in the dishwasher because I might use it again. There's not an urgent need to do that, all these things.
Dedeker: Right, I don't care unless guests are coming over it's okay if he leaves the glasses on the counter-top.
Jase: Right, and for her though, it was like, okay, so you're not willing to do this very tiny thing out of a sign of respect and affection and care for me. When he put it that way, I was like, that explains why I got so frustrated and why I would get even more angry when he would try to logic away his reasons for leaving stuff out when we lived together. Then I know that I've absolutely been on the other side of that. I think especially when I've lived with female partners, it's so easy to fall into those roles even when we're aware of them.
Dedeker: Right, yes. I think so much of it is- we've talked about this on past episodes before, and we'll talk about this a little bit more later on in the episode that when it comes to labor divisions, there is like that labor of the practical logistics of we got to clean the bathroom, we got to clean the kitchen, we got to figure out who's picking up the kids from school, at what time. We got to decide who's getting the groceries and stuff like that, but then there's the other layer of who keeps all this in their mind of when was the last time the bathroom was cleaned and who has that timeline in their mind?
When was the last time that we picked up more eggs or whatever and having that timeline in mind that that's often this kind of invisible labor, sometimes it gets roped into under the banner of emotional labor. Some people argue that definition, but the mental load is what it's usually referred to and that tends to also default onto women or the mom in the house or whoever it is that takes on that role.
Emily: I remember being a kid and looking for things in the refrigerator or the cupboard for food and being like, where is it? I can't find it like, mom, where is that? And she's like, you're not looking hard enough and I would get so annoyed and frustrated, but she was right.
Dedeker: My mom will give me that line all the time.
Emily: She was right because I want to say that to my partner now, I'm like "It's in there, look harder." I know it's there because I literally remember where I put it last time in the cupboard or in somewhere, so it's there, like just look slightly harder, like take more time.
Dedeker: That's really funny, I get the same exact message from my mom.
Emily: Yes, I'm sure. That is funny.
Jase: It's interesting though, that that response though, is coming from a place of like, why don't you step up and figure it out? Almost like this and we'll also talk about this later too but this idea that in the process of getting someone else to take more responsibility and be more proactive, part of that is letting them struggle through it and figure it out. Not just being like, Okay, fine. I'll do it for you.
Emily: Oh fine I'll do it. Totally.
Jase: That's interesting that both of your moms took that approach there.
Dedeker: They did. There's something I noticed that's come up between me and Alex recently, particularly when it comes to figuring out like what we're going to make for dinner, is that I get really frustrated because sometimes he comes to me like, what do we have? What do we have in the house and I want to be like, go look.
Emily: You figure that out
Dedeker: You can also keep like the mental inventory of like what food is in the house?
Emily: Yes, that is why, goodness.
Jase: All right. We want to start out this episode by talking about some stits and stats one of our favorite things to do but first I want to give a little caveat here about the stits and stats and also about this whole episode. Basically, that's that all the data about this, almost all the data about this is heterosexual cisgender couples. That's who gets studied the most. This problem of unequal division of labor is certainly not unique to cis head couples. However, they are much more prone to it being this invisible problem kind of like we've talked about or like there is a rut that you fall back into because of the way that we are raised and acculturated into these gender roles in this very invisible way.
We'll talk a little bit about some research specifically on trans and non-binary people and how it's a little bit different. Regardless of that, keep in mind as we're talking about this, if we bring up gender roles for males and females, specifically, we're saying that because those are the roles that are most prone to falling into these patterns because our culture drills that into us so heavily. The principles and all of this can apply to everybody so just keep that in mind and see how this might apply in your life.
Dedeker: Yes, so let's dive into some stits and stats on this. We all know the old adage about how it takes a village to raise a child. I do believe that that's true, however, in many heterosexual and I'm willing to bet also homosexual monogamous households in Western culture, we're really set up for there to be only two people to do the bulk of the child-rearing as well as two people to tackle all the household work and two people to tackle the work of bringing in money.
Emily: Today, a lot of people do actually go to work at the same time. They'll have men and women or two men, two women, whatever your configuration is, going to work instead of just one person doing that while the other person stays at home and does the child-rearing although--
Dedeker: come these days
Emily: Exactly but there was this longitudinal study of 8500 heterosexual couples done between 2010 and 2011 by the University College in London. Oh no, it's not in London it's just University College London.
Dedeker: I'm assuming it is also in London.
Jase: Probably.
Emily: I'm assuming too, yes. They found that when both partners worked, women were still five times more likely than men to spend more than 10 hours a week doing housework.
Jase: Yes, that same study also found that 93% of all women, whether they worked or not, did the bulk of domestic duties like childcare and housework and that women do around 16 hours of housework to a man's six.
Emily: 16 is a lot.
Jase: More than double is almost three times.
Emily: Between 2010 2011 but still.
Dedeker: I didn't pull the source on this specifically, but I have heard of a study also that says that in addition to this, women tend to underestimate how many hours of household work they do and men tend to overestimate how many hours of household work that they do.
I was reading this really funny book of essays by Blythe Roberson, she wrote this book called How to Date Men When You Hate Men, I promise it's a lot more funny and light and the title makes it sound, it's all comedy essays. It's comedy essays but she talks about the fact that like, when she is ready to have a child, she only wants to do that with a man who says that he's willing to take on 70% of the wor, because of the fact that men tend to overestimate and so she says, if I aim for someone who's willing to take on 70% of the work, then we'll probably get someone who actually takes on 50% of the work, and then it'll be an equal division of labor.
Emily: That's a big ask but impressive.
Dedeker: Well, it's half-joking, half-serious is the take I get on it. There are other studies that also show that in households where women make the most money, men do proportionately less housework than they otherwise would have if they were the ones making more money.
Emily: I found that really interesting.
Dedker: Yes, so they find that actually in households where even women are the sole breadwinners or if they're bringing in more money that you would think that then that would mean that the men would step up and maybe be taking on more of the household labor. It's the opposite, that men actually do less. They theorize part of this being that like a lot of women, first of all, we'll talk about this a little bit later, but like women are often naturally shoehorned into the role of just becoming the default expert about the kids in the house and so the person who knows where everything is and knows what everyone needs.
Combined with, they think that there's also this blow-back effect of women also feeling guilty for being working outside the home, like to the extent of being the primary breadwinner and then feeling the need to compensate for that for being like this terrible mom who's away from their kids because they're too busy running a company or whatever. I think there's a lot of other factors that go into that, but that's some of the ones that have been tossed around.
Emily: Yes. During this current time, we're talking about COVID-19 that we're all currently living in in 2020, women are 16% more likely to be laid off or furloughed than men. This affects women and people of color even more than it does just men in general. This is interesting because a lot of women of color are front-line workers or essential workers that have to stay in their businesses and do things like that. Then if they're not, then they tend to get laid off at a higher rate than White people do.
Women of color are also often the breadwinners in their households, but they are right now more likely to lose their jobs and have to provide their own childcare because a lot of places are shut down right now and not providing childcare.
Jase: Yes, and even in households where there is a fairly equal division of housework, like we were talking about before, that mental load or emotional labor of keeping track of what needs to get done, what groceries we need to get which ones we have, knowing where everything is in the house, researching doctors remembering who the kid's doctor is making appointments. All of this falls much more on women than on men.
Emily: Yes. We've talked about that a little bit before. I did find a good piece of information that millennial men and I'm assuming Gen Z men as well are trying to step up a little bit. A study done by the Boston Consulting Group found that millennial men are much more likely to step up and carry more of the load of domestic chores than older generations of men. That's some silver lining right there.
Dedeker: You're not off the hook millennial men, sorry.
Let's talk about how this affects homosexual and non-binary couples or same-sex couples. It's interesting to note that in particularly non-binary and trans households, the division of labor does seem to be more egalitarian. There was a small study that was done by Penn State University of 163 transgender non-binary parents. Overall, the study found that transgender non-binary parents reported dividing their household and childcare labor egalitarian ways with this division being uninfluenced by gender or couples design. I'm guessing this it sounds like this study was mostly based on reporting. Emily.
Emily: It was, yes, it was mostly based on reporting and it was like 183 couples, it was pretty small in comparison to the other one, which was like 8500 people so different, but I'm glad that somebody did a study on it at all. That was great. This is from the study itself. It says that one explanation for these findings is that transgender non-binary people conceptualize gender, gender role expectations and sexual identity in a more fluid and dynamic fashion.
This greater gender and sexual identity flexibility could lead TG and B couples to negotiate and decide the division of unpaid labor based on personal preference, similar to cisgender, same-sex couples, and in contrast with cisgender heterosexual couples. I guess that implies that said cisgender, same-sex couples also have more egalitarian practices, which is not surprising to me but yes.
Dedeker: It reminds me of there's this really famous interview that Dan Savage did, where he's talking about negotiating sex and negotiating consent and things like that specifically, and talking about the fact that like with the same-sex couple that he tends to find there's just a lot more willingness to negotiate and talk about sex and like, what are we going to do and what are your preferences? What do you like and what do you don't like and what kind of sex can we have and what kind of sex are we not going to have, versus heterosexual couples where it tends to just like be not a lot of communication from outset about what you want, and we all fall into these defaults because of all the messaging we get around how sex between heterosexual people should be.
It makes me think of that if you don't come to a relationship on this particular rigid track of what your gender role is, even if you're trying to consciously go against that, but you're still not necessarily on that track that I imagine that that would lay the groundwork for much more, again, conversations around just preferences and what you like to do, and what you don't like to do, and what tasks you're good at, and what tasks you're not good at, and collaborating instead of just kind of based on the gender roles and what you saw your parents do, and things like that.
Emily: That's great.
Jase: Why are we talking about this at all? It's basically that it is something huge and that's invisible to most people. This is something like the fact that we're saying that most men will overestimate how much work they're doing and women will underestimate it. It's things like that, and this invisible, emotional labor or mental load that's taken up by organizing the household and things like that, that this can be a problem, even if neither of you realize it for quite a while until it's become so much of a problem that it explodes and blows up or you're just living your whole life with one of the two of you being a lot more overburdened and stressed even if that doesn't blow up your relationship.
In either case, that's a bad outcome in my opinion. I would rate those as bad outcomes. What's important to remember here is that this is an important issue. Studies show that couples fight about chores just as much as they fight about money. We've often talked on this show before about how money disagreements are one of the leading causes of divorce. As far as fights in couples, chores is also one of the big top hits, greatest hits of fights.
When someone is not motivated, or just isn't stepping up to do the work to help their partner around the house or with childcare or other forms of mental labor, to them, it might just seem like a logistical problem, but to the person not receiving that help, it has a deeper more emotional meaning like, "You don't care about me. You don't respect me enough to help out. I'm undervalued. I'm unappreciated. You think the work that I do doesn't matter, that only your work is the important work? I can't rely on you. I can't count on you to help me."
I think for a lot of men who really embrace their role as men and breadwinners, knowing that your partner, if you're not helping around the house, gets the message, that they can't rely on you, that feels like a little bit of a punch in the gut of like, "Hey, you're failing completely at the thing you think that you're doing."
Dedeker: When there's this unequal division of labor, and mental load, and emotional labor, over a long period of time in a relationship, that can produce things like resentment for sure. I think we're all familiar with that. A loss of intimacy, that can also be tied to a loss of physical intimacy as well. I know a lot of women in particular talk about if you feel like you're slowly creeping towards just the "the all mother of the whole house" including your partner, you don't want to have sex with that person because it feels like just another one of the kids that you're taking care of rather than your sexy lover that you want to be seduced by.
Again, it's like these are things that I think can get internalized and embodied even if in your logical brain, in your front brain, you're like, "No, no, no, I shouldn't feel this way. No, no, no, we're working things out. It's going to be equal." Stuff like that, that it's like, these things can still get embodied and can still affect the way that your sex drive responds, for instance.
It can be things like increased stress. It can influence a general characterization of how someone views the entire relationship, that if there's this ongoing sense of feeling undervalued or unappreciated, that can bleed over into feeling, "My partner is just not there. My partner doesn't see me," which influences other areas of the relationship as well. That can cause overall relationship withdrawal as well.
Emily: A couple of weeks ago, we talked with Hadassah Damien about money, which was a really amazing conversation. She discussed a little bit about contributing in different ways to the household. It was a little hard for me because I hear these words contributing like that contributing to the relationship that it's like a quantifiable thing that you have-- all of these things that you can contribute or this much that you need to contribute, and each of you needs to do it in equal ways.
I get where she's coming from, and I appreciated what she had to say about that, but what did you two think about it? I guess where I'm going with this is that perhaps somebody would think, "If I am being the breadwinner, if I'm being the person who gives the most money and goes to work or pays more in rent or something along those lines, then that means that I'm giving a lot to this relationship. Therefore, in turn, my partner needs to do more around the house in order to make up for that." What do we think about that? Because I don't know if I necessarily agree.
Dedeker: I thought that the answer that we got from that question, and maybe I'm confusing or gas-lighting myself or something, I thought the answer that we got from that was more that like this isn't like a one size fits all solution of it's a natural thing. One person makes more money, so the other person needs to step up and do more chores. That it's going to be a little bit more of an organic process of figuring out like, "Okay, maybe this person brings in more money, but what is their work-life versus what is my work life versus what needs to get done in the house," and more massaging out what feels equal instead of it being necessarily--
I think it's hard to come up with a one-to-one there. I think, especially because the fact that there have been so many studies that have found that the unpaid labor of women, if women earned the minimum wage on the amount of unpaid labor that they do in the household, they would bring home six figures essentially.
Emily: Absolutely. That was talked about in a lot of the articles that I looked at.
Dedeker: It's like if we want to reduce it down to it being about money versus labor, then it would be like, "Okay, fine. Then the person who is bringing in more money still needs to do extra labor to make up for that." If we're going to be so I guess mercenary about it and just reducing it down to money versus labor, that's what I think.
Emily: I'm not saying that Hadassah was saying one thing versus the other, and I agree that she was hoping for more conversation to potentially happen between couples, but it was just an interesting way to think about it. I think a way that some that I know in relationships that I've had, that that's how it's thought of. It's like, "Well, okay. I'm bringing in more. Therefore you need to step up and do more in other ways, and that includes taking care of the house essentially." I guess I just wanted to talk about that one more time a little bit with the two of you.
Jase: I think we acknowledged this a little bit in that episode too, but you can't really just break it down and quantify it into numbers. You just can't. We've just talked about all the reasons why that's not so clear. People who try to take that approach, I think you're missing the whole point here. The point of this conversation should be to make your relationship feel better for both of you and feel right. Not to use some numbers or some justification to justify why you get to do exactly what you're doing and they just have to deal with it and do all the stuff you don't want to do.
There's a lot of other factors there about, say I'm the breadwinner and I work 60 hours a week. It's like, "Okay. Gosh, look, I'm working so much and I'm bringing home all or at least most of the money for our household." Another way to look at that is go, okay. Perhaps you also love what you're doing. That 60 hours a week is fulfilling for you. Then the other partner, their life's goal isn't to clean a house every day or to cook every day. There's that kind of a difference in addition to just all of that invisible labor that's going on, that's not even getting counted in this.
If we're trying to use these external models for measuring it, they just don't work. They just break down. That's just one example of the many ways that that doesn't work. Yes, I think we all agree. It doesn't work-
Emily: It’s not a method necessarily.
Jase: -to try to convert it to numbers that way.
Emily: Exactly. Before we move on, we are going to talk a little bit about how we can change these patterns in ways in which-- these patterns are already changing at a micro and a macro level. First, we want to discuss some ways in which you can help support our show so that we can continue bringing it to you for free.
Jase: If the first half of our episode scared you into realizing that these might be patterns in your life, we want to spend the second half going over some ways that we can change these patterns both in ourselves and also in the world at large, potentially. Let's start off though from the micro level of within your specific relationship.
The first thing here is to start since we're talking about it. This is your radar to do our radar. Honestly you can go listen to episode 147, where we talk about radar, which is a framework for having these check-ins and conversations with your partner. I love it. Couldn't live without it, but even if you don't do that--
Dedeker: I was going to say part of this whole conversation is the reason why we put household as a topic on the standard radar list.
Jase: Absolutely, because it's something that's easy to just be like, "Oh yes, nothing else to talk about. Okay, let's go on." But if it's on the list, it's like, "Yes. Okay. Let's talk about it and make sure it's fine." Make sure there's not something where someone's like, "Actually this has been bugging me or this is something or even more ideally" I think this is what we're getting to is if you're realizing that you might be the person who is not sharing equally in this work for you to bring it up in a radar or just in general of saying, "Hey, I started becoming aware that this might be something that we're not treating equally and that I might be part of, let's have a conversation about it."
That could look like just talking about it maybe they'll right away be like, "Oh my gosh, yes." Or it might be something where you have to go through and find some ways to talk about this in more detail to get to the bottom of it.
Emily: This was an interesting one that I've found in an article, which is to sit down each of you individually and track the time that is spent doing actual household chores and all of the planning that goes into things like everyday tasks, like writing up to do lists or writing up grocery lists or figuring out what you're going to eat for dinner or any of the above
and then you sit down with your partner and share your findings. I liked that idea, actually making it more scientific and what you're doing every single day and how long it's taking.
Jase: This is something that I've heard a similar approach just for your general productivity. The version that I've heard, that people who do this swear by it, which is to essentially have a spreadsheet or a sheet or something that's marked out in 15 minute increments and every 15 minutes, you write down what it is that you're doing or that you just did in that last 15 minutes. The idea is you do this for a week say, to get this extremely accurate picture of where you're spending your time so that you can then look at it and go, "Gosh, I'm wasting a lot of times scrolling Facebook and not getting done the stuff I want to get done or whatever"
It's normally used in productivity stuff. Something like that could be really useful also for tracking what you're doing around the house because it's often so easy to just forget about the fact that go, "Oh yes, I cleaned up this thing or I folded this laundry or I cleaned some dishes", if you're just doing it spread out throughout the day. I will say though, I've never been able to complete this for productivity. I've never been able to do.
Dedeker: I've seen some, I've been out for a week. I've a lot
Emily: Oh, you're talking about the productivity thing personally, I'd say this is more of an estimate--
Jase: Maybe is not a whole week. Maybe it's just three days, but it's definitely like a number of days that haven't been able to keep doing it longer than a couple hours. I think if this works for you, awesome, do it, people I know swear by it, also, if you can't get yourself to do that, that's also okay. I'm there with you.
Emily: Going back to doing this with you and your partner, is so write down everything that you do in terms of like household stuff, emotional labor, in terms of household things that you have to track and figure out and going to buy groceries and all of that stuff and then sit down with your partner and talk about it and then from that discussion, try to establish ways in which the two of you can share the load and take some of the burden off of the person doing the most work.
With this, especially, try not to have one person delegate responsibilities. The two of you should try to problem-solve and figure out together what the solution is going to be, rather than just have some person be like, I need you to take X, Y and Z thing because that's not a good look.
Dedeker: There's this really famous comic floating around out there by this French artist about the mental load and specifically making the point that we pay a project manager, a particular salary to project manage, but the project manager isn't also then also doing the project at the same time and we fall into these roles where women are expected to be the project manager, delegating all the tasks and also doing many of those tasks at the same time. That's why I go like, I just need my partner to ask me what to do falls apart is because like that in itself is also labor the delegation of tasks figuring out who to delegate to when, how to communicate it is also labor in itself.
Emily: I think ideally, the problem with that also is that it becomes somebody in an authoritative power position over another person. That's also in my opinion, and in a relationship, not somewhere that you want to be, unless that's the relationship that you have here in a BDSM situation, master sub or something with that but in certain relationships you probably don't want two people to be in a mother and kid role because that's probably not very fun or attractive to do and so instead, the two of you can problem solve together, that's the more ideal way to handle this situation.
Dedeker: I know for myself that the moment I feel like a mom, I'm pissed off because I don't want to be a mom at all I don't think exactly. I don't want kids ever and so I'm like, I don't want any part of this momfications. Other than like our patrons and our podcast listeners, because they're all my babies, I'm okay to be their mom.
Emily: The podcast is our baby.
Dedeker: In a very, again all mothership, distantly floating mother way. Anyway I'm going to get back to what we're actually talking about in this episode, which is something else to think about is to figure out a way to step back from the tasks that your partner is taking on and at least at the beginning, temper your expectations of how well that task may be achieved at first.
This is for all the perfectionist like me out there. This is for everybody who has been taking on the bulk of the labor, anyone who feels like they're falling into the mom role is that yes, when you are used to taking on all the work and also controlling how it gets done, that can be the catch 22 here of like, wow, I'm so stressed that I'm taking on all this labor, but also at the same time, I don't feel like anyone else can do it or can do it in the way that I want them to do it, things like that.
I think there are many different approaches to this and some of it is just having trust and being able to let go of a task and accepting that maybe it's not going to be perfect for the first couple of times that it's done and ideally through more communication and back and forth with your partner eventually we come to a place where we find a way that this task is done
that we're both happy with to a certain extent. It's also important to use metacommunication and what you know of both of your likes and dislikes, both of your strengths and weaknesses when you're collaborating on a task. That's things like, I don't know, I think Jase, you and I figured out pretty early on that you get more joy out of vacuuming than I think I tend to, I don't know if joy is really the right word, maybe satisfaction.
Jase: I do get a satisfaction from it. That's true. Yes.
Dedeker: You get more satisfaction. I've gotten closer to that actually not I've been here and doing more vacuuming here at Alex's place. I think I've gotten more of an understanding of that. I would encourage people to be careful with this because this can very easily fall into my partner is just better at doing the dishes, so they're just going to do it and I'm just no good at doing the dishes. I'm just no good at taking out the trash. I'm just no good at making the bed in a particular way because that's another toxic dynamic that could come up as the either unintentional or sometimes intentionally not doing a task very well, because then you won't be asked to do it again. That's no good for nobody.
Jase: In terms of anticipating your partner's needs, it can be as simple as, okay one partner is making dinner that night and so the other partner can open up their favorite bottle of wine and give them a glass to have during the time that they're making dinner, turn on their favorite music, something like that, something to strengthen intimacy and show that you're caring about this person while they're doing something nice for you.
Jase: Then to go back to what Dedeker was talking about this idea of, oh, I'm just not good at this thing or they're better at it, so they should do it. I think there's also a hidden dynamic there where with the gender roles that we're taught that women will also reinforce that idea on men that they're not any good at these things. Part of why they might not be any good at it is because they haven't been doing it. They haven't been doing it very much in their life and they haven't been doing it in your household and so there's going to be a learning curve there that like, yes, you will probably do it better than them, but that's not the point.
Emily: We know that you're going to do the dishwasher way better than either of us will and that's just a fact.
Dedeker: All listeners of the show know very well.
Jase: It's like the only thing that people know about me. Yes.
Emily: I guarantee you it isn't, but okay.
Jase: I think that this is something I notice in a lot of heterosexual couples that I know. Like in parents' relationships or friends' relationships where it's that when the man will try to take on some things or help with things, one, he ends up needing to ask so many questions while doing it. Then she gets frustrated and it's just like, fuck it, I'll do it. Like that's not helping her at all. Or he's doing it and then she's like, "This wasn't good enough. Now I need to do it myself." Then it just stops and it goes back.
I think, something that we've learned in trying to run a business and I think people who have run businesses or managed people understand, it's like, yes, there's going to be a bit of a process of training and getting someone the understanding they need to take over something if they've never done it before. I think it's just-- I do want to remind us of that, that part of that letting go of your perfectionism if you're letting someone else take on some tasks, but then also understanding that, they need to know that they're going to have to work to become the expert, because this is their job now. Then also you knowing that, give them time to do that.
Dedeker: Yes, I think this is a good place to drop in, actually. First of all, I want to recommend people check out this book by Eve Rodsky called Fair Play, where she comes up with specifically a very concrete system for tackling this with a partner. She has some great suggestions. I read this interview with her and she pointed out something really interesting that like, in heterosexual couples, women tend to have a lot more context around tasks and what needs to be done. That's part of the mental load.
Then men often end up just with like the executable part, so the example she gives is that, the mom sends her husband out for like, "Okay, this is the grocery list and we need mustard." Mustard is on that grocery list also. She knows that it's a very particular kind of mustard because their child is super picky and only wants like French's yellow mustard and won't have any like fancy Dijon mustard or stuff like that.
He doesn't have that context, because he's not been involved in making lunch for their child for the past six years or whatever. He just knows he goes to the store gets the wrong kind of mustard. Then his experience is just like, oh, well, I got criticized because I got the wrong type of mustard.
Jase: Like, I'm trying to help and I just get criticism.
Dedeker: Exactly. That's also part of the mental load context thing is that often around these tasks, there's so much context that goes into it that's disproportionately put on women to hold that in their brain, but then further contributes to the male partner often feeling like, I just can't do it right.
Jase: Yes. Which then goes back to this idea of sitting down and figuring out how you can both split things up in ways where you each are in charge of different things in the household rather than the old model of just, oh, well, the woman just delegates it out or whoever the person is doing it all.
Dedeker: That's very much the model that Eve Rodsky goes to is like a system for figuring out both everything that needs to get done and then figuring out like, okay, who is the leader on this? Who is responsible from this task completely from start middle to finish, not just bits and pieces of this task. Something else that I would recommend people to do. If you Google Gottman, Art of Compromise, you'll find exercise from the Gottman Institute.
It's not about household chores or labor specifically, it's more about figuring out compromise with your partner. It's a structured conversation around figuring out what are your core needs, the things that are non negotiable for you versus what are your areas of flexibility, which I think would apply really well to this conversation. It enables you to be able to say things like, "Okay, I can be flexible about like, the bathroom doesn't need to be totally sparkling clean at the end of every day. 'm flexible on that, however, my inflexible area is I can't have laundry on the floor."
Then it's also kind of structured questions that they give you for helping each other understand these flexible and inflexible areas so that it becomes less about my partner is just ordering me around to do this and not do that. You get more of a sense of context as well of why these things are important to your partner.
Emily: Real quick, we're just going to talk about a couple different interactional styles that happen when people are doing tasks together. This is from an article in The Atlantic. It was regarding a study of couples preparing dinner together. Basically, they just turned on a tape recorder and taped these couples doing tasks together. They found some very interesting things from it. When they saw that people were collaborating well together, there were four different styles of collaboration.
The first one was called silent collaboration. That was in which both partners, they worked in the same space and went about the task at hand together, I guess without much fanfare or anything. They silently work together well. Then the second one is going to be one person as an expert. That we talked about a little bit but it's in which one spouse was considered an expert or an authority on the task, either humorously or with genuine respect. Jase is amazing at putting the dishes in there. Dedeker and I are learning how to do so and so we are humorously watching him do that. He is cute, yes.
The third one is coordinating together. Both partners verbally organize the activity together and they're able to work on it together. Then the fourth one is going to be collaborating apart in which partners carried out their share of the labor in separate locations. For example, sometimes I'll be doing the dishes, George has to clean the bathroom that day, for example. We'll be doing the housework together at the same time, but in separate locations.
Dedeker: Looking at this list of these four different styles, I can envision this could be another interesting conversation to have with a partner about the ways that the two of you tend to prefer or one of you tends to prefer. I'm going to go out on a limb and make a guess what I know about Jase, I feel like Jase, you tend to prefer the coordinating together style. I think I tend to prefer the collaborating apart style when it comes to tasks both in life and in our business and in the kitchen and things like that. Would you think that's an accurate guess?
Jase: Yes, I would say that was accurate. I was thinking about when we've done our cleaning days, where it's like, what we end up going to is generally that we coordinate who's going to so what, but then it's we put on music and we're both separate in our own areas of the house going through those things. Yes. I just want to toss in here real quick that this is also a conversation to have and something to think about in a relationship that is more than two people as well.
Assuming you all live together and that you are actually sharing the household together and potentially sharing raising kids, but just that that adds another dynamic to this in thinking about this conversation and I guess just to be aware of what might be some of this invisible labor that's happening.
Just bring that to mind and be aware of it and try to look for it because often, the person who's taking on more of this invisible labor might not even be aware of it, and yet they're feeling the effects of it. Just something for you as the other partners to be aware of and try to identify and see if there are ways that you can help with that and let them know that you see that and want to actually take on that role of helping if you can.
Dedeker: Let's talk about-- those are our list of suggestions for things to look at at a micro level for fixing this dynamic within a specific relationship. Of course, this is also influenced by the macro level. This is influenced by our culture at large that still really wants to push us into these particular roles when it comes to who takes on what. We are starting to see more advertising companies working on taking gender roles and stereotypes out of their ads completely.
For example, the UN actually launched the unstereotype alliance to eradicate harmful gender-based stereotypes from advertising, including ones where women do all the housework. I imagine that it also includes often in the same ads where women do all the housework men are portrayed as incredibly incompetent as well.
Emily: Yes, it's talked about that in ads.
Dedeker: Yes. There's this comedian, Sarah Haskins, who used to do critique of specifically advertising targeted at women. She talked about the fact that like, when we see guys in car commercials with women, they're sexy, and they're suave, and they're mysterious, and we really want them and then as soon as they're in a household clear commercial, they're slightly dumber than a dog.
Emily: It's like sitcom type role, yes.
Dedeker: Which doesn't help anything.
Emily: No. If you out there have a company, if you are a part of creating your own company in some way, then maybe encourage, I don't know, men and women to have flexible work options rather than just a normal nine to five work day. This is something that we're seeing with people working from home much more. Obviously, right now we're in this very specific time in our lives where we're at home, a lot of people are working from home in a way that they never have before and perhaps they will get to after all of this is over as well.
Just offering more flexibility to people so that you don't just have to work within these specific hours at these specific times if you still get a bunch of things done but it doesn't necessarily need to fall between the hours of nine to five. Then that will offer for more flexibility and more ability to do other types of things like housework, child care, things like that.
Jase: On that note, things like flexibility in hours to be able to leave work early or come in late for things like taking kids to doctor's appointments or fixing something that broke at the house or going to children's sports practices or something like that. Then this one is cool. It's not just offering paternity leave but the idea of actually taking paternity and maternity leave mandatory because that right there takes away that negative impact that women have in the workplace of like, oh well, she's going to take maternity leave so we're not going to advance her as much.
Instead, it's like no, every employee here if they have a kid, they have to take their maternity or paternity leave so that they can take care of that kid and there is not this gender imbalance there in the workplace.
Emily: Finally, we want to just throw out some caveats and pitfalls that we can get into when we're asking for help or when we want to make things more egalitarian within our relationships. The Atlantic, this article that I've been referring to a couple of times, talks about a thing called Demand Withdrawal. We talk about pursuit and withdrawal a lot of times.
Dedeker: It's the same exact thing.
Emily: Yes, it's essentially the same thing except for like it's demanding something and then withdrawing because of it. This essentially is one member of the two of you. One partner will be the demander and they will criticize or nag or make a demand on the other. Then the other partner will be the withdrawer and they want to avoid confrontation. They become defensive potentially. Then these withdrawing responses can take many forms and they can serve specific functions including avoiding intimacy, avoiding conflict, and angry withdrawal.
Dedeker: Now, if we recall from our Demon Dance Battles episode where we looked at pursuit withdrawal and demand withdrawal, that we get into these dances because we feel dropped or we feel like there's a break in the attachment or we feel like our partner has let us down in some way which I think further serves to reinforce this conversation we had at the top of the episode that it's not about the glass next to the dishwasher.
It's about those much deeper things like I can't rely on you, you don't respect me, you don't care. You're not willing to do the small things that help let me know that you love me and that you see me which I think makes sense why it can also feel that demand withdrawal pattern as well. Something else to avoid is micromanaging and criticizing your partner for doing something wrong. I love to micromanage people.
Emily: We know.
Dedeker: I'm not going to say I get joy out of it but I get something out of it so I keep doing it.
Jase: It feels it's more like a compulsion than a joy-filled activity.
Dedeker: Okay yes, it's a compulsion.
Emily: It's like a knee jerk reaction.
Dedeker: I'm working on it. I came from a very micromanagey family. The result of that means that some partners may not even want to try to take on part of the labor because they fear that they're going to get chastised or get criticized. Remember that yes, it is okay for there to be dialogue and communication. I think I've seen some people really be resistant to this. Well, if my partner loads the dishwasher in a terrible way and I just have to deal with it and they like flood the dishwasher, how am I going to deal with it?
Of course, there are ways to compassionately and graciously have those conversations. That's a great topic for the household portion of your radar or whatever. It is okay to make requests and to talk about your reasons why maybe it's important to try doing it in a particular way versus another way, things like that. Remember, micromanaging and criticizing, they are patterns that can permeate every part of someone's relationship, not just this particular arena.
Jase: The next one is to try to refrain from a system of delegating or where one person is the boss or the mom who is telling the other person what to do. Now, when we talked before about these different ways of collaborating together, and one of them was the one partner as expert whether that's in a serious way or a more joking way, that can work in a situational way but don't rely on that to be the whole system.
If one of you, say for example, is a chef, that's your thing and the other person is going to help, yes you can set up a system where it's like, okay one person is the boss giving their directions to their sous-chef or whatever. Maybe that's a sexy little dynamic for you. Great, but we don't want to fall into that way of doing everything where one person is having to carry the whole load of telling you to do stuff. Then also if they're like, oh I don't want to do this thing when it's because your partner told you to do it and now you're like, oh okay.
That sucks. That feels really shitty for the person who had to tell you to do that thing as opposed to it being your own responsibility and going, oh, shit. I just remembered I need to take out the trash. Oh, okay, yes, I'm going to do it. I'm not saying that you didn't have to tell me to do it. It's my own thing. Does that make sense?
Emily: Definitely. We love the Gottman's and in that spirit try to avoid the four horsemen of the apocalypse in relationships when collaborating on tasks and asking for help. That includes stone-walling, contempt, criticizing, and defensiveness because those are all sure-fire ways these efforts that you're putting in to try to make things more egalitarian, they will ultimately backfire if you include those things within your tasks. What did we learn today? I think we learned ultimately that maybe yes, the guy was wrong. He should have not put his glass over by the dishwasher.
Jase: We're back to the article.
Emily: Ultimately also, the two of them should have tried to sit down and have a radar, figure some ways in which to collaborate effectively with the twos of thems before just throwing in the towel and being like, I'm done with this relationship. Before you get there, use these things first.
Jase: Yes, I would say to the people on that guys side of it. Not knowing and not being aware of this isn't an excuse. That's why you have episodes like this one. Now have no excuse. You know about this. Be proactive. It's going to make your partners' lives better and it's going to make your life better. Just overall better, better, better.
Emily: More sex, more intimacy, and more love.
Dedeker: I want people to take away is to remember the invisible stuff. Remember the planning, remember the mental load. If you're the person doing that, don't underestimate that and when you're doing these exercises of figuring out what goes into the work of keeping the household afloat, remember that. If you're the partner who tends to not take on the mental load, be aware of that. Think about that. Find ways that you can actually divide that a little bit better. Take on some of that because that's also equally important as well.
Jase: Sometimes that takes some very proactive convincing of your partner to let go. It's something that Dedeker and I have talked about before with certain things where she felt like she had to carry that mental load even when I took on a task. We did have to get to this point where I was like, you need to just stop. Let me do it. I'll do it and if it fails, that's my problem and I'll figure out how to fix that but let me take this from you so you don't have to do it. Sometimes it is hard to let go.
Dedeker: Next time around, I'm not going to think about anything.
Emily: That's not going to happen, Dedeker. I know you.