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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our
20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Well everybody, welcome back to the show.
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 20s.
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.
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 our 20s 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 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 psychopath.
But I really have my good friend Aaron to thank for this episode.
If you are a long time listener of the show you will know 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-aware.
She's very self-aware, very thoughtful.
She's always introducing me to so many new theories and ideas that I actually know
never came across when I was studying psychology.
She's just like a book of knowledge.
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 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 known as cognitive labor, mental load 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 heteroreal 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 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 or these small mental tasks that contribute to kind of
the I wouldn't say domestic burden but the relational burden 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 I have to make sure
the bed sheets are washed and pick up extra toothbrushes but the bed sheets can't go in
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 detergent 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 we all very aware these days of the unequal division of labour 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, 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 like admin for the lives of themselves, their partners, their families, even their
friends, as one study 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
labour than their fathers or their grandfather's did.
We do split things 50-50 but that doesn't always fully take into account the added cognitive
labour that goes into getting those things done.
I think a lot of times people just partners, male partners in particular sometimes need
to be told what to do.
They may respond like, oh you know, you're upset that I didn't do the dishes.
Why didn't you just tell me?
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 like a workplace where obviously in a workplace we have 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, oh 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 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 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 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 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 of those statements aren't particularly fair, I will say I'm
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
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 like 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 I've become a lot more aware of recently.
And 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 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 weaponized in components and thirdly, it's 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 as well because I
think that that is an aspect of this that 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 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.
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 know what I'm talking about hopefully without me needing to tell you, I'll just
elaborate for the sake of it.
The type of typical male 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 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 a certain way, especially as children, we are either reinforced or
punished for that behavior.
The simple premise is, when we are rewarded for 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 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 mullily and nurturing and accommodating,
they are applauded for that with praise, with kind words, all of which are a form of positive
reinforcement.
And it 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 are sculpted
or they are punished because it is not aligning with society's blueprints and expectations.
For example, a young girl might be called bossy for standing up for herself.
Whereas a young boy is called a leader, he is called authoritative, he receives praise,
the kind of praise that we only receive when we are kind and nurturing.
I think that that is a very basic feminism 101 lesson.
But how it relates to psychology is that these small moments, although we might disregard
them, 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
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 these 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 a student and caring
and hardworking 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 of the cognitive planner,
the mental planner, the one who has to have everything organized out and out-brained 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 how progressive your family was, my family was incredibly progressive.
My dad was a stay at home dad, but there were still times when I saw my mom take on more
of those household chores.
The chores were still divided along gender lines.
Women do a lot of the domestic duties.
Boys, men are assigned tasks 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 the people we are today.
We know in psychology and from some of those early experiments with Bandura 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 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
them 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 you hit 21, are you an adult yet?
If not, you're immature, you're not growing up fast enough.
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.
Women are the ones who are gaining those cognitive and mental skills around organization, around
responsibility a lot earlier than their male counterparts.
That is then reflected in heterorrelationships.
I think just the simple premise is that the reason we see the mental load, again and again
is that men have not been socialized in the same way as women 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.
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.
We know that empathy really at its core is 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.
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 they haven't been socialized that way, but also because
their 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 you should be able to pick up on the way that
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 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 incompetence or ineffectiveness as a tactic to avoid doing something, in this
case, taking on the mental load.
Key words in that, it is deliberate, it's strategic, it's false and obviously incompetence.
Like it's not that this person actually is incompetent and they're pretending to be
so they're weaponizing it.
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 so much more organized, you have a system, like I'm just going to screw
it up.
Why don't you just let me know what I can help with?
And by intentionally appearing incompetent, trying to elevate 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 asked her husband to
do something whilst she's away and he just does a terrible job.
As if she hasn't, you know, he hasn't seen her do it a million times.
Or you ask him to like, do you go to do list 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 than having to ask someone to do something?
It's asking them to do it and then you're 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 incompetence.
Again, we can look for the origins of this behavior.
And it is learned from childhood where boys, men are allowed to escape responsibilities.
And they may have learnt that if their parent has asked them to do the dishes or fold the
laundry and they do 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.
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 labour 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, what not.
But this can also occur on the early stages of dating as well, if you're just like you've
been dating someone for a couple of years.
Whereby once they realise 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 seen 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, phone, something that's open at 8pm on a
Monday like, can you do it?
And as the 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 or a ring takeout.
That is not what you deserve and I think although no relationship is perfect, when you're
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 100%.
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 you to make it equal
on both your parts.
We also see the mental load in friendships.
This I don't think is 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 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 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 the saying, but like if the juices
worth the squeeze, like whether this person has just come to expect you to take on all
the mental energy of sustaining your connection.
And what is that making you feel?
Like how is that making you feel?
Their 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 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
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 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 20s, I think the more we realize that you can't
just cut people off really nearly.
You can't just have issues and not communicate them because you will end up just hurting
yourself more as those relationships break down.
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.
All of that and more after this short break.
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When you feel 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 to look after as well.
Nearly nine and ten mothers in this one study felt that they were solely responsible for
managing and organising the family's schedule and it left them feeling overwhelmed, exhausted,
unable to make space for themselves.
Similar study found that 72% of working moms, so not just stay at her mom's working
moms feel that it's their job to stay on top of kids schedules.
52% of them are also facing burnout.
When we think about this from a more psychological perspective, we really do only have a fine
night amount of mental space, 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 prioritise yourself.
When we feel like we are responsible for organising 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.
It's going to lead to exhaustion if other parts of our 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 visualise
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 to your
energy to your love to takes away from that finite amount of thing that you have.
What it requires you to do is sacrifice other things that are important to you.
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 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 well-being.
You have a really busy life, you've got a lot going on and you know that you need to
prioritise work, you need to prioritise your partner, you need to prioritise 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 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 2001, right when the mental load was really starting to
take off and they found that when women in particular feel they're doing more of the
cognitive labour, 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 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 labour
isn't as recognised as domestic labour.
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 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 think of is picking a fight or being like your partner, 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 compassionate and is for them to contribute to the partnership.
When you start to pick fights and you don't even know what the problem is, I find that
you're probably not going to find a solution 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 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 Wes dinner tonight, what time, what am I meant to be
wearing?
Did you get my mum a birthday present?
Like she had asked so many times for him to understand where she was coming from that
the relationship ended up 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 any relationship dispute, whatever you want to call it, dissatisfaction,
problem, whatnot is to make sure you are 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 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 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, 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 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
fight 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.
I think when it comes to having this conversation around a sense of dissatisfaction that someone
is 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 responsibility bias.
So this is this idea and 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 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.
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 steps, extra ingredients that you're putting into this relationship
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.
It 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 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 buy the birthday
present for their mom, the mom doesn't get a birthday present.
That is some negative punishment right there.
They're going to feel really bad.
They're going to feel the shame.
It wasn't your responsibility they're going to 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 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 being 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 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 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 it is creating for your mental
state, for your limited cognitive resources, for your wellbeing?
To communicate and then let them make a decision.
You cannot control what they choose to do without 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 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.
They've already learnt 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 Day episode has been helpful in
realizing that it got a little bit less fun at the end.
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 reverse reinforcement and learning and reconditioning.
So I really enjoyed this episode.
I found it super fascinating to look further into the science and the psychology.
As I said, my very good friend Aaron actually suggested this topic and she knew so much
more than I ever did.
So thank you Aaron.
Love you, heaps.
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 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 to
us there and have a lovely rest of your week.
We will be back on Friday with another episode.
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