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The universe has good news for the lost, lonely and heart sick.
The sugars are here speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Almond. I'm Cheryl Strayed.
This is Dear Sugars.
oh dear son, won't you please share some bittersweet days with me i check my bell vibes every day Oh, and the sugar you see in my way.
Dear sugars, I don't have a huge burning question, but I'd like to figure out how to get my husband to understand emotional labor without sounding like I'm just complaining.
He has come a long way, but I'd love advice about how to get him to be more empathetic work, and to understand that being in charge of providing the food, clothes, doctors, medicines, activities, and holidays, our two children, and our pets, takes a toll.
When I complain of being mentally exhausted because of how much I do, my husband's typical response is to tell me about all the work he does around the house.
I'm sad to say that we conform to gender roles when it comes to the division of labor, much to my chagrin.
Perhaps an example would help.
This is my morning.
I get up at the same time as my children, who are now twelve and fourteen, as I have done since they were born.
I help them with their breakfast and lunches, feed both of our dogs and make sure they go to the bathroom before they're crated for the workday.
Meanwhile, my husband, who has, quote, trouble getting out of bed, likes that I wake him with a kiss as the three of us leave so he can get ready for work all by himself.
One recent morning, I'd had two grumpy kids.
And our sink, which is literally 2 feet from the dishwasher, was filled with the dishes from the food eaten by my family after I cleaned it up after dinner the night before.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine.
It irritates me to no end.
No matter, I still went to kiss the hubby on the way out the door, but more perfunctory than usual and without much tenderness.
Later, he texted me wondering what was the matter.
Some days I fight the battle, and other days I just say it could be worse, and I know my life is good all in all.
Still, I continue to fight for my sanity.
I've learned through your show that I'm no longer apologizing for my feelings, and that I also need to take care of me.
But really, just once, I'd like for more understanding from my husband about how much effort it takes to manage a house and its inhabitants.
I'm not asking for much, just a thank you and some appreciation for my efforts, which are mostly invisible to those receiving them.
Thank you for any thoughts and advice you can offer.
Signed, one rocking master of her house.
Hi, Steve! Hi, Cheryl!
Do you see the steam coming out of my ears?
I see the steam coming out of I have felt the steam coming out of Erin's ears.
I read this letter and I immediately sent the following note to Erin Hahn.
To me, much of this is logistical slash managerial.
Not emotional, strictly speaking, but all of this is invisible labor.
Here's my list of everything you do for the family.
Please add to it as you see fit.
Shopping for, donating, storing, and labeling clothes, all laundry aside from mine.
gift cards for other kids' birthdays, plus teachers, plus music teachers, hiring, coordinating, paying for childcare, slash school fees, annual physicals, along with management of health records, dentist optometrists, anticipating need for same, signups for camps, music lessons, extracurricular, along with most transport to same, picking up household crap, hiring, paying monthly cleaners, coordinating prep for cleaners, keeping the master's schedule to avoid overlaps.
I know that's not all of it.
I love you. I appreciate you.
I worship you. And her response?
Here's a few more. And this my email tells me that this came in about four minutes later.
School drop -offs, pick -ups, and coordinating with other parents for necessary carpools, letting teachers know if there's any change to pick -ups.
Scheduling play -dates and organizing transportation.
Bill paying and monitoring the balance of the bank account.
Coordinating, scheduling, and paying for any extracurricular for all three kids, including purchase or renting any necessary equipment.
Meal planning and grocery buying, girls haircuts, now what's happening, Sherelle, is that our listeners are just like I'm not sure...
Their eyes are rolling back in their heads.
Eyes are rolling back in their heads, and also there might be, I think, probably my esteem is just gradually diminishing, because I have to tell you, we're not even close to You know, honestly, I think that no straight woman who's in a long -term heterosexual relationship with a man is even remotely surprised, Steve, even you, even you don't know or do most of invisible labor required by your household because you are married to a woman.
That's right. It's funny that you had this experience because it brought me back to a memory of about, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago when, when my kids were toddlers, and it was like the middle of the night and I was up still doing some work because, you know, in addition to all the taking care of the kids and the pets, you know, like everything I, you know, I work full time and, and I was feeling enraged and I made, I opened my computer and I made a our life, and it was like things that we do together, me and Brian, household tasks, childcare, domestic, you know, all of the invisible and visible
work of keeping your life running.
And it was like things only Brian does.
Things we do together and things only I do.
And what was really painful and enraging about that list is there were so many things that only I did in comparison to the things we either did together or Brian did.
And what's so fascinating to me about this thing that really everyone seems to be talking about these days.
Some people call it emotional labor, I call it invisible labor.
And it is essentially the work that almost always falls to women and heterosexual couples that takes on a different dynamic in gay and lesbian couples.
But it's the stuff that nobody quite notices is done.
Like when there's a sink of dirty dishes you see the sink of dirty dishes and when somebody cleans them.
You know they did that work.
We see it, and we can say, thank you for doing the dishes.
Now, invisible labor is the stuff, like not just hiring the guy who comes and replaces the broken screen, but like researching to find the guy who places.
I mean, this stuff can take hours.
And as you saw on Aaron's list, the list goes on and on and on, right?
There's an imbalance.
And the reason I read that list, especially for you, one Moroccan master of her house is precisely because, as Cheryl says, you have to bring this stuff to somebody's consciousness.
And that was my effort to say, here are all the things that I see you doing.
And then Aaron quite politely saying, that's not the quarter of it, Bob.
There's this, this, this, this, and this, too.
It falls into a whole bunch of categories in terms of the precise work that's being done.
But all of it can be included under the rubric of invisible.
But it's not invisible inside the person doing that labor.
In fact, it's hugely disturbing.
So one rockin' master of her house.
That's what we're gonna dig into today.
One of the most, I think, important things you said in your letter.
I know this because I've struggled with this whole question too.
You say I know it could be worse, and what I say and what this episode is about is it could be better.
And so we're going to explore that today.
How do we find more equilibrium and justice really and balance in the domestic sphere when it comes to distributions and divisions of labor?
And you know, I really am so excited about the guests we're going to have on today.
We're going to bring her in now.
Gemma Hartley is a journalist and the author of the viral Harper's Bazaar article on emotional labor titled Women Aren't Nags.
We're Just Fed Up. Her book, Fed Up, Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward, will be out this fall.
I'll tell you, it was really, I read the headline and I saw the images, it was like a rubber glove, dishwashing glove.
I didn't need to read.
I mean, I read the article and I was like, yes, yes, yes.
But the headline alone, it brought up in me like a sense of relief like, oh, here we go.
I don't have to read that essay because I've written it in my head every day.
So please let's welcome Gemma Hartley to the show.
Glad to be here. So your piece struck a nerve.
Yeah. It really did.
It struck about 10 million nerves.
It struck a lot of nerves, and it was very unexpected.
I was sort of just writing out my own experience.
I talked to my friends about it.
But I had no idea it would have the impact that it did.
Right. So, for our listeners who haven't read your piece, Tell us about what happened on Mother's Day.
What happened was I had asked my husband for a cleaning service because I didn't want to go through the process of doing all of the behind the scenes work that goes into that scheduling, doing all the research, finding the right time for someone to come, and my husband did not quite get that that was what I was wanting.
And so he decided that he was going to clean the bathrooms himself on Mother's Day while I watched our three children and the house was falling apart.
And he and I got into a bit of a fight when I tripped over this tub of gift wrap that he had gotten down out of the closet that had been there for days and he just wouldn't put it back on his own, not until I asked him not until I did that work of delegating out the tasks that are very obvious in the home because that is the job that I take on is managing everything that goes on.
Yes, and I think it's really interesting when I was reading your piece and you described what you wanted, which was for your husband to arrange a cleaning service and I know innately all the stuff that goes behind what essentially is domestic labor that that you're actually purchasing.
And in your husband's mind he's thinking why are you complaining I cleaned all the toilets.
I did the domestic labor you asked for.
But you weren't really asking for that were you you were asking for both of those kinds of labors to be performed.
Yeah I wanted them to be done in tandem.
The domestic labor is not such a big deal for me.
It was more the thought that goes into it that emotional labor that goes behind it that goes into managing a household.
Right, within my family what I experience is that what I think of as emotional labor really has to do with the managing of people's feelings.
And I think of it in relation a lot to kids.
You know if a kid's upset, a kid's tantruming, won't do homework as being whatever it is, you have to sort of go in and figure out a way to manage that kid's feelings and you know comfort them and that happens between partners as well.
I think a lot of what I think my wife is trying to tell me is there's a lot of management that goes on and I have a lot of Takes a lot of emotional effort to do that and to feel that it is completely unrecognized and then and this is a part of your piece I really recognized and and sort of with dread but but realization Women in even beginning to articulate the onerous ness and the invisibility of these tasks inevitably because they're intruding upon patriarchal privilege, have to manage their spouse's feelings about this injustice being called to their attention.
And I know that because I get defensive when Aaron says, hey, I'm not happy with this.
This feels like an unjust, unfair arrangement.
And in heterosexual marriages, the wife often feels like she has an additional kid Whose feelings have to be managed and that kid is the husband, you know I think what you're what you're speaking of and I know Jemma's written about this too and and and We saw this in the letter I read at the opening of the show.
Is yeah, you know, there is this struggle, I think even inside of women who are complaining to men who are Basically good guys who are people who are happy to pick up the dang box of gift wrap, as Gemma's husband said, all you have to do is ask me and see, you're sort of looking at that word emotion and thinking like managing feelings.
I'm really talking about managing the tasks.
One thing I say to my husband when we've had this conversation many times over the years is we've been together almost 23 years.
Say we've been grocery shopping together for 23 years.
Okay, he needs me to give him a list, or he needs to text me from a store.
I never need a list from anyone.
I always say I am the list. And you know there is something very heavy about that.
And what I can say in my own marriage is my husband actually does more than 50 % of the domestic labor.
I said when we were preparing for the show I said Brian I would put it at a 60 -40 split on the domestic.
He laughed so hard. he said, you have got to be kidding me.
He was like, no, I do like 80%.
And I said, but here's the thing.
And he granted me this point.
And it helped me clarify in my mind what it is, you know, what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying, what feels unjust to me.
So let's just say that Brian's right.
Let's just say he does 80 % of the domestic labor, which I will.
What happens when he's sick or he travels, or he's just super busy with a project.
a project. Okay. I step in without any preparation can take over 100 % of his 80 % of that work.
I can do the dishes.
I can, you know, be the person who gets up and makes the kids breakfast before school or whatever those things are that Brian does, right?
When I am busy or sick or I travel, who steps in and does my invisible emotional labor?
Nobody, because he doesn't know how, because he's not the manager, because he doesn't even know it's done.
You know why Cheryl?
Because you are the list. I am the list. And I guarantee you, I know we need to talk about this serious subject, but I just want to put a little parenthetical business proposal to you.
I believe we will make a zillion dollars with a t -shirt that says, I am the list. I know exactly what you mean.
No, that's a great idea.
But so do you see my point about this is that it was so illuminating because and it was so wonderful to feel understood because Brian said oh that's true right and so I think I want to hear what you have to say about that Gemma.
I I see you kind of nodding your head as I'm talking.
Yes because it all sounds so familiar and you know my husband I would say especially right now he is absolutely at an 80 percent of doing all of the household work.
He does that domestic labor but the emotional labor that managing everyone's schedules, everyone's stuff, it's keeping the peace in the household and keeping everything running smoothly, and it's very hard to see if you're not the one doing it.
I think that is why it is so hard to talk about because when you're saying, okay, well, I feel this imbalance and they're like, well, I do this, this and this.
What do you mean there's an imbalance here?
I'm doing as much as you are physically doing.
But there is such a burden in taking on all of the mental work and all of the emotional work for an entire family.
So, here's a question.
When Brian and I were, you know, having this discussion, I said, OK, let's just say you do 80 % of domestic labor and I do like 100 % of the emotional labor.
He said, well, so what's wrong with that?
You're good at emotional labor.
And I'm good at doing the dishes and taking the garbage out and all that stuff.
And then here's the thing.
He's not wrong. I love lists, but when I give advice I ask people to make lists.
I think that I also love to schedule and plan and think through details and research and know everything about something before we do it.
And my husband is not like that at all.
So he asked me a fair question.
What is wrong with this division of labor?
And I don't know the answer to that question.
Yeah, well I think the answer to that question is very individual for different couples.
I don't think there is a one -size -fits -all division of emotional labor or domestic labor.
It really depends on your circumstance and who does have that aptitude.
But here's the Right.
So from a very young age to be the person that takes all of that on.
I don't think that my husband meant to put all of the emotional labor in my court any more than, you know, any progressive husband would.
I didn't realize I was doing it to myself for many years.
And you know, it's very hard to break out of that because we've been doing it our whole lives.
so it's a very hard discussion to have, and it's hard for him to take on more emotional labor, because he hasn't been practicing it his whole life.
Well listen, we could talk all day, and we're gonna, but let's go to a break and then we'll come right back and hear another letter.
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We both want children one day and if that ends up being with each other, then I can see how this imbalance will be magnified 10 -fold.
I'm in the thick of motherhood and take care of everyone else's needs all day, every day.
This is not how I pictured my life.
I always thought I would be an artist and a jet -setter.
Instead I spend every morning wiping yogurt off of people's clothes.
He never knows what time we're supposed to be at events.
I field endless questions every day.
Where is this thing?
Where is that thing?
What are we having for dinner?
What time is such -and -such?
Over the holidays, he once showed up two hours late without bringing what he said he would.
They were his friends and I didn't even realize it was a potluck until we arrived.
The thing is, if I don't do it, it won't get done.
My husband seems immune to recognizing the diapers are about to run out, there's no food in the fridge, and no clean socks.
The potlucks, the massage and dental appointments he wanted but wouldn't book for himself, the birthday present he didn't get his mother.
He's also extremely messy.
He can function among the mess.
I cannot. I want our house to look and feel nice.
This puts the burden on me to make it that way.
Because I know if I don't do it, it won't be done, and it will affect us both.
I'm always the no woman.
No we can't afford that.
No we don't have time to do that.
I find myself disappointed and angry when he is so short -sighted and inconsiderate.
Why are men like this?
I suppose I can answer that, I've never seen his father lift a finger to do the dishes.
It just never occurs to him to shoulder some of the load because he's never seen it in practice.
He's a writer and impractical and spacey and disorganized.
I know he doesn't intend to be so oblivious to it and to some degree, what falls on my shoulders does so because he's juggling a million and one balls.
I feel like I've been trapped by the patriarchy.
Like I was tricked into this whole marriage and motherhood thing.
Why didn't anyone warn me that marriage is really just a way for men to do less?
And here's the other thing I must confess.
I like potlucks. I like sending out holiday cards.
I like some of the things that women do that make the world a more pleasant place to be.
But these are the very things we grow resentful of.
I will become resentful if this is an ongoing issue for too long and I feel like a nag.
I don't know why this is something he isn't getting.
I'm open about it. I've spoken frankly about it.
I've made him chore charts that he ultimately ignored.
I've been both passive -aggressive and direct about it.
He said things like, I should do more, or I'm not always a good partner.
He's fully aware of how much I do and yet he won't give up any of his I have the privilege to take away some of my burden.
I want to ask him to be more accountable and considerate, but I want to do it in a way that considers his own feelings and likely interpretation and give some tangible ways to remedy the issue.
But what can he do to make it more equitable?
What should I ask of him?
I can't just dump it in his lap and say, do something with it.
Perhaps I have gone too far, but I can't help but think that it's too late for me And I should just work to make sure my daughter doesn't have to deal with this nonsense.
I'm a feminist, and I will never raise kids in a house where Mom is the emotional laborer and Dad is the benefactor.
I feel as if I'm suffocating, and I've even had the thought.
I wish I would die so that he could understand everything I do.
As you can probably tell, I'm at the end of my rope.
There is a tightness in my chest that never goes away.
Any suggestions? Signed, THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PASSED.
Lost in domesticity.
So Gemma. Yeah. What say you?
There's a whole lot in these letters.
So much to unpack. So much to unpack.
So where do we begin?
I mean, just hearing Lost in domesticity, I could have written that word for word, you know, a couple years ago.
I mean, it is so exactly the same experience that I've had with my husband.
And it just took me right back to that place of feeling really desperate and really exhausted and not knowing how to have that conversation, because it felt like I had had that conversation so many times.
But I just wasn't having the right kind of conversation.
And I think that's a really hard thing to do.
There's a very big difference from having a conversation about emotional labor where you're saying, I have too much on my plate.
You are not doing your part, you are the problem here.
It feels very attacking when you come at it from that angle.
And it wasn't until I wrote the article and we really shifted our perspective into, well, this is not a problem with you and it's not a problem with me.
It's a cultural problem and we need to really approach it from a place of, okay, we've been raised in this certain way.
We have to unlearn a lot of things together in order to move forward. And I think that's the big difference that you need to not come at it from a place of blame.
You need to come at it from a place of wanting to work together.
Yeah, you know, I think one thing I was so struck by in these three letters is they all say, I've tried to talk about this.
And it's either been met with, what are you talking about, I do all kinds of work or, you're right, I should do better.
And then they don't do better.
Or this sense in a letter writer that why even bother even attempting this conversation again, because there's this sense that, that she won't be heard. And I do think that you're onto something really key and lost in domesticity, points this out too, that it's, I feel like I've been trapped by the patriarchy, she writes.
And a lot of what we're talking about, it's made manifest on the micro scale in the form of these relationships, but it's really a macro problem.
And even now, this generation of men, they are doing so much more in the domestic sphere than they've ever done.
And there's that sense of, see, we've changed, which we've arrived.
And then there's a bunch of women behind them saying not good enough, which can feel like blame.
But I think part of the work we're here to do is evolve.
And that next frontier is saying not just, okay, guys, can you chip in when it comes to the raising of the children or the keeping of the house?
But can you actually meet us in the middle?
And what that demands is for women to relearn their roles and their work as much as it does, ask men to do that, to examine why am I good at being the list?
Why am I bad at being the list?
Right. From a male perspective, I think one thing that Lost in Domesticity is expressing is that kind of sounds like learned helplessness.
I can say the words and my husband will say the words.
He will acknowledge, but he won't take action.
And she asks, what should I ask of him?
And I would encourage you to make a list. Like Cheryl Lowey says, it's not enough to be the sensitive guy who says, Gee, honey, I get it, I really should do better, and then to do Jack.
And I think that is a dodge that sensitive men like me try to do.
We say in the moment, OK, I hear it, you're frustrated, it's basically like, let me just give you a sedative of my sympathy without actually fundamentally changing the contract of our marriage.
So that's the first very practical thing, I would say.
The second thing is, I believe that when lost in domesticity, he says, I like potlucks, I like doing the little pleasant things," that when you make that list with your partner, you should acknowledge, I like doing these things, and therefore, I'm going to be better at them.
But I'll bet you there's a whole bunch of things that you really do not like and that feel like drudge work, that feel like you are enslaved and entrapped in this arrangement.
And those are the ones that you have to very explicitly say, I don't like doing this.
And the last thing I would say that I think is really crucial at the end of your letter, loss and domesticity, which I want to emphasize is a quite a beautiful, articulate letter.
It's painful, but it's so beautifully stated, you're so precise about what you're feeling in this marriage.
You say, but I can't help but think that it's too late for me and I should just work to make sure my daughter doesn't have to deal with this nonsense.
And what I would remind you of is the way that you're going to do that is by actively establishing a fair and more equitable relationship with your husband because believe me, that That is going to determine what your daughter thinks of as a marriage.
And if you feel in your marriage trapped by the patriarchy, then you are going to raise kids.
A boy who feels that he's entitled to patriarchal privilege and to really not treat his spouse like garbage, but treat her with a lack of consciousness, with a lack of consciousness, not really see her in everything she's doing and what he might do.
And a daughter who essentially learns that it's her duty to take on the burdens that nobody else wants to shoulder.
So let's talk about the practical changes we can make.
I think it's easy to feel pretty hopeless about this.
You know, Jem and I have both been in that moment that these letter writers describe of just like, I can't seem to communicate this effectively without getting in an argument.
And I think that the Ghost of Christmas Past articulates that desire for communication quite beautifully.
And I do wanna say, I have some hope to offer.
um, I've always had a career.
We've, both Brian and I, have always worked full time when we, you know, since we've been together.
We know we're freelance artists and so there have been times that his career has been busier than mine and when WILD was published suddenly I didn't just have a busy career.
I had, I had like the equivalent of like three careers.
Right. I had two little kids.
We had two little kids and I was so busy and traveling and you know, I would be in all of these crazy situations that I always knew that my male counterpart would not be in.
I would be walking on stage to give a talk before a thousand people, and I would get a text, what time does so and so get picked up from preschool?
And I'd be like, are you kidding?
It would be that kind of thing.
And so we really had a heart -to -heart.
I said, you know, I need you to step up.
I need you to memorize the schedule.
and I need there to be whole categories of our life that I just kind of can trust that you will take care of without any assistance from me in the same way that you can trust that I can step forward and do that when necessary.
And he got that message.
Like he really, I think part of it, too, is I came at Brian with not rage in that moment, but with true vulnerability.
Like I was really saying, please.
And Brian could see like, oh, we are partners and I do want to help you.
And, you know, progress can be made, but you both have to have the feeling, I think, that you're on each other's side that you are genuinely a team.
Gemma, what's your experience of this?
Yeah, so my experience with this has been really different over the past few months.
At the time I started writing the book, my husband got laid off from his job.
So we had this huge switch in dynamics, where now I was really, really full time on my job, and he was the one at home with the kids and he had to take up the torch in a way.
Because he would come into my office and he thinks he's doing the right thing by making the grocery list. And he's coming in to get my opinion on the grocery list and what to make, and I'm like, I'm I am in the middle of work right now.
I need you to handle this 100 percent right now.
I can't be a part of this." And he's really picked that up and he's doing a lot of that.
I love how you talk about getting a text when you're about to go on stage.
I've just been writing about that in the book how constant emotional labor is for women.
Even when we are at work, even when we are on vacation or out with friends, I always have that phone next to me ready for that text that says, you know, how do I heat up this casserole for dinner?
Where is this kid's stuffed animal?
You are always on call for emotional labor and so you never get a true break from it.
And I think that is part of what makes it so exhausting and so hard. And I had to come from that same very vulnerable place with my husband where I was like, I can't do this.
I need you to take this on, not because Because you are like purposely doing anything wrong and I'm not trying to put blame on you.
But I need you to look at how this partnership is working.
And I need you to want to make it work.
And he, you know, he obviously does.
So bringing that to him and being not angry and not full of blame, but saying there are things that are not working here and I need us both to work on them, was a big moment.
And it really changed some things for us.
Well, there's a learning curve.
In the field of practical advice, the ghost of Christmas past writes, I can't just dump it in his lap and say, do something with it.
And what I want to say to you is it might be the only way that he'll actually learn how to do something with it.
You've just heard Gemma say that she said to her husband, you know what, good luck at the grocery store.
I can't play any part in this.
You have to take care of this entirely.
And we were trained as females in this culture to plan ahead and to think these things through and to organize and to manage.
And, and I think that it's part of what's been successful to me in my relationship is to step back and really let my partner do that training to learn those lessons too.
Right. It's interesting because like they say with kids, you know, don't typecast them.
And I think what we're talking about in some sense, and what I hear very powerfully in these letters is, oh well my husband's type his character in the marriage is the absent -minded professor the person who's you know can't really focus.
And I think people are different characterologically but that's really a dodge, you know.
These are duties that everybody can basically manage and they might have a different way of doing it but like Brian's a competent guy.
Yeah, I think one of the very difficult parts of this is we'll have this conversation and then we will not be hands off about it.
We have standards that work for us and they aren't gonna be the same standards that are going to happen when you hand that over to someone else.
Now you can come to an agreement on what the you know eventual goal or the eventual standard is me and my husband have been having that conversation a lot about what end result result will make both of us happy." And then he gets to get to that end result however he wants to get to it.
I cannot micromanage that because that is not going to give him any sense of competence, any confidence in his ability.
I think over the past few months while my husband was at home with the kids full -time, going hands -off has given him so much more confidence in his emotional labor skills.
He went out to get a baptism present for his nephew.
And he came back from the store, and I looked at the book, and it was not a baptism book, it was a, you're gonna be a big brother book.
And I'm just like, this is not the book we need.
And instead of sort of getting really angry and taking it and going back and doing it all myself, I was like, well, back to the store.
Well, and I think one thing that's keeps bothering me, Gemma a lot, this whole conversation seems really heteronormative to me.
Of course that we have so many gay and lesbian listeners who are saying like, okay, well, how does this play out in a relationship where it's two women or two men, how does it?
Yes, it does still play out.
And actually, in Harper's Bazaar, after my article came out, Trish Bendix wrote a wonderful response piece about how she lives with a woman and this still plays out in her relationship.
And she says, you know, this is what happens, we fall into those hetero normative traps just like anyone else because we're still seeing that play out all around us.
So one of us will have a slightly better aptitude for emotional labor and we will take it on in that same sort of fashion that happens very naturally for hetero couples.
But one really interesting thing that I found as I've talked to people in non -traditional relationships, gay and lesbian relationships, is, when they see it, it's so much easier for them to undo it.
Because they're like, why are we doing this?
It doesn't make sense for us.
We aren't deeply conditioned to have this split, so let's work on it.
and you know some of the couples that I've spoken to, I'd talk to them like a month or two later and they're like yeah, it's a lot better.
I'm like well why isn't mine better?
I'm writing a book on this and it's not better.
So you know, it can affect anyone, but there is a lot of it wrapped up in that patriarchal society and in that.
That heteronormativity.
Yeah, that heteronormativity, it'll get you.
It'll get you every time.
Heteronormativity, it'll get you.
It will. You know, here's my theory, that this is actually a much bigger problem in relationships that at least aspire to equality and egalitarianism, and where the man is a feminist and a feminist ally.
And what I mean by that is, in a relationship where both the man and the woman in the relationship sort of don't question those kind of gender norms and gender expectations.
Traditional rules. It's not a problem because it's not that the woman isn't doing 100 % of the domestic and emotional or invisible labor.
It's that she's not angry about it.
So that it's really in these relationships where we are expecting equality and aspiring to equality, that it's a bigger problem.
Yeah, no, I do think that's true that, you know, they still have those frustrations.
But, I mean, I have women telling me, well that's just sort of the way men and women are.
And they sort of have it in their heads that this is how it's supposed to be.
But then those of us who are in these progressive relationships are like, wait, no, this can't be how it's supposed to be.
And we're coming into this moment of awareness around emotional labor and we didn't really have language to talk about it before.
So now we're having these conversations when we've already been in these relationships for a very long time and it's hard to undo all of that when you think you've been on this very equal path all along and you're realizing that that's not really true.
Yeah, I would argue actually that in marriages or unions that have those traditional roles that seem more established, there's less expectation of fairness, justice, equality.
It's not that the woman is okay with the arrangement, it's more a sense of resignation or even kind of learned helplessness like we heard in Lost in domesticity and I'm thinking in particular that there's really a whole literature that is about the experience of kind of female entrapment.
I'm thinking about short stories like, As I Stand Here, Ironing by Tilly Olson or The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman or a lot of Grace Paley's short stories.
There is a powerful literature that is all about what's really living behind those traditional roles where, you know, there's plenty of frustration and sorrow and even rage bottled up in there.
Well and not to mention a kind of, a sort of interesting shift, I guess.
You know, when I was a kid, the idea of a strong woman was, you know, the woman who wants everything, and I'm the woman who wants half.
That's lovely. That's a good woman to be.
I would love it. So here's our next t -shirt.
I want half of everything.
I don't want everything.
I want half of everything.
And I want a partner who has the other half.
And that we hold it together.
Yeah, I absolutely agree, and one of the things that has been really illuminating for me is that when I wrote the article, I was sort of coming from this place of, like, frustration and anger and, like, why aren't you taking on this burden and not really thinking about the value behind the work that we're doing.
And I've noticed, as my husband has taken on more, he's coming more fully into the human experience by taking on the emotional labor.
I think there's a lot of growth and a lot of positive to be gained here.
It's not like I'm saying, hey, I want you to do this stuff that I don't want to do, because I don't want to give up all of the emotional labor.
I still want that in my life, but it's too much to do alone.
And my life wouldn't be complete without it.
So by sharing that with my husband, he's coming more fully into his own.
And I've seen just a lot of growth and a lot of redefining what it means to be a man for him.
Oh, and that is that's so important.
It's also important for your kids to see that.
One of my just most treasured, favorite moments in my life as a mother and a parent is when my son Carver, who's he's now almost 14, but when he was about three or four, we had one of little toy brooms. And he was sweeping with the broom.
And I said, Hey, honey, what are you doing?
And he said, I'm pretending to be a daddy.
Wow. And I just, it just stopped me in my tracks, because I thought that's a revolution.
And it's up to us. This is how masculinity is redefined.
It's also how femininity is redefined.
Those gender roles we pick up because we see them modeled over and over again.
And that's what's exciting and hopeful for me about this conversation, I think that that's how change is made.
Yeah. And I can feel the ground shifting a bit.
Right. Gemma, thank you so much for coming in and offering so much of your insight and wisdom on this.
Thank you so much for having me.
Dear Sugars is produced by The New York Times in partnership with WBUR.
Our producer is Alexandra Lee Young.
She does a lot of invisible labor, I feel.
Our next frontier is an episode on emotional and invisible labor in the workplace.
There it is. Okay. Our editor and managing producer is Larissa Anderson.
and our Executive Producer is Lisa Tobin and our Editorial Director is Samantha Hennig.
We recorded this show at Talkback Sound and Visual in Portland, Oregon with our engineer Josh Millman.
He's over there in the studio.
I have no idea what he's doing.
I probably think there's like one large knob that he turns up and down, but I think it's more complicated than that.
I don't think he's at the grocery store.
But you know what? He is taking care of his little new baby because we were talking about that as he showed up.
Because he's the father.
Okay. All right. Our mix engineer is Brad Fisher.
our theme music is by Wonderly with vocals by Liz Vice.
Please find us at nytimes .com slash dearshugars.
You can send us your letters at dearshugars at nytimes .com that's dearshugars plural at nytimes .com or leave us a voicemail on our hotline at 929 -399 -8477, and please check out our column The Sweet Spot at nytimes .com slash the sweet spot.
And very soon we will have available for purchase on that New York Times website.
The t -shirt. I am the list.
