Overwhelm: Is our exhaustion a sign that we’re CareTicking time bombs?
June 15, 2021
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, it’s Glennon. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. So the episode we’re launching today, we almost didn’t air at all. We recorded this conversation on a day when my sister was feeling really overwhelmed and kind of angry, she was feeling the entire weight of the world and our business and the complicated future of her two neurodiverse kids on her shoulders and her overwhelm was causing a deep rift between her and her partner, John. She felt resentment for him because while she knows he’s a deeply good man who loves her and their babies, she also knows he doesn’t carry the same emotional load that she does. That because she’s a woman, she is expected to do endless hours of invisible work that he isn’t expected to do. That because her partner, John, doesn’t carry the constant caretaker ticker that runs through her mind all day and night about what everyone in her life needs now, and tomorrow and a decade from now, he has more free time and energy and space in his day and in his mind, which means he has more free time and energy and space in his life. And in the end at discrepancy means he has a fuller life, more time to be human. And that pissed her off. After we recorded this conversation, we thought, well, that was a good sister conversation, but we won’t make it public because this is personal. This a unique situation. People might not understand. But then a couple of weeks ago we aired the Fun episode and we talked about how so many women don’t know how to play, how to have fun, that often we forget how to play as young girls, because fun requires being unselfconscious and little girls are trained to care more about how we appear and how we feel. And as we get older, we are further trained to care for others needs instead of our own, we forget how to play. When we learn how to constantly please and serve, we don’t get to play because we have too much work to do. And so we end up having less joy and less life than we should. And the response to that episode was incredible. My sister and I have read through hundreds of your reactions and comments and reviews on social media, on our voicemail messages, from women who are wives and parents, and from women who are single parents and from women who don’t have kids, but are single-handedly caring for aging parents or ill siblings. And for women who are not caring for family, but find themselves the default caretaker of their offices or their wider community. We have sat silently together and listened. We have read your stories aloud to each other. And the common denominator has been, women are overwhelmed and a bit angry. You want to share the weight of the world. You want the world and your work and your families to stop expecting you to keep them spinning alone and invisibly. You want some life back. You want to get to live. And I learned once again that the more personal we get, the more universal we are, that no life is really all that unique at all. And that one woman’s issue is usually millions of women’s issue and that we are never alone. So let’s begin here.
GD:
What hard thing are you bringing?
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. My hard thing these days is that I feel like I am walking around in work, in my family, in taking care of my kids, in my house, life, everything like on the outside, I look like I have my shit together. Like it looks like I’m just calm, just getting it done. But one millimeter beneath the surface is like frothing lava. Like I am a dormant volcano and God help you if anything happens, anything at all, anything that’s just normal part of life. And then I am just ready to just spew and destroy the world. Like that’s the feeling that I have in all times. And I think I realized that recently that it’s just that I feel like my mental space is the equivalent of that like a lava at the very top of the volcano that there is no breathing room in my mental space. And it’s just like this constant. It’s like a CNN ticker. That’s like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Here’s all the things you should be doing right now. And while you’re doing those, please do all these other things. And by the way, you need to call the kids’ therapist. And by the way, have you worked on the 50 4plan? And don’t worry because you have to ask your neighbor if she can get you in that one soccer team for the kid and there’s like all the kid lists, then there’s the work list. Then there’s the home list and there’s that. And it’s like all of the things that come together to architect a life, it feels like those are happening through my head all day long. And God forbid, the inevitable happens where one thing takes 20 seconds longer than it should. And then it throws me off completely because all of the tickers keep running right now. You’re behind, I’m behind. I’m always and will never not behind. And I think what I realized recently, and it’s been a challenge to me and in my relationship with my husband, John, because I realized that there is an unequal distribution of the ticker, and this is how I realized it because my husband, John, God bless him and keep him. And he is a good, you know, insert here, all the things we say about our kids before, about to say how they’re being assholes. He is very good and he always wants to help. And he’s always asking how he can help. So posit how privileged a position that is that I am in. However, the asking for how he can help made me realize, wait. So if you’re asking how you can help, that means you don’t have the ticker because I never have to ask what’s on the to-do list. I’m the one spending a hundred hours of invisible labor, figuring out what even needs to go on the to do list. And you’re sitting there in this very privileged position to just take an item off the to-do list, which means you’re not carrying it. So you’re not an architect and a co builder of this structure of our life. You’re a handyman, right? I mean, and not disparaging handymen.
GD:
No, no, no.
AD:
But, but it is a concern. It’s a conceptual shift of mental space. It’s though, when you tell me what needs to be done, I will happily and gladly do it. And again, that’s a privilege to have that. But what I’m saying is I’m not ever thinking about what the 10 steps that need to go into one item on that to-do list. And that means that I’m jealous.
GD:
Absolutely.
AD:
Because I live in my head. Right. And so if I live in my head and everything that’s in my head is this ticker all day long, then that means I’m having an unequal life.
GD:
Exactly. And we’re pretending like we’re both parenting or we’re both building, right? Like we are co-parenting. But actually if one person is doing all the building and tickering and list-making, then what you have is an assistant. You don’t because if you say two people are running a business, okay. What do you, what do people that are running a business called?
AD:
Business owners.
GD:
Business owners. Okay. Say there’s two business owners, one doesn’t walk in each day and be like, oh, I’m so sorry. You’re stressed out. What can I do to help? No, two business owners are expected to know with equal measure exactly what the business is exactly what’s necessary and come in each day with their own agenda to keep the business running. And we seem to have accepted that on a corporate level, but in co-parenting in the domestic level, we still allow that generalization, but true that one gender in a mixed gender marriage is the CEO. And the other is just an assistant that pops in and says, what can I do to help? And then we’re supposed to pat that person on the head for being helpful.
AD:
Right. And I think maybe sample would help. So we are equal and that we equal, equally participate in all of the decisions for our kids, but it’s summer, right? With two full-time working people, you have to figure out what the hell you’re going to do with your kids for 10 weeks of the summer. So the invisible labor that goes into that is how do we find 10 camps within budget that we could actually afford, how I need to text all 20 parents who we know to make sure there is their schedules align with our schedules, so there’ll always be one kid in each camp, how I’m mapping out the drop-offs and pick-ups to make sure that there is that logistically feasible for us to drop off and pick up every day. Do they have aftercare? Can we do that? Who’s going to be in that? The hours of invisible time and visible effort that go into the equal, sit down and say, which camps should we do. I mean, the spreadsheet has taken me 40 hours to build an are equal decision of camps to do. And I think that’s part of it. I think the invisibility of that time, that the emotional labor of all of that is part of the problem. It’s like I’m walking around with this 200 pound pack on my back all the time that no one in my, no one in my family and my home can see. And so, you know, in addition to not appreciating that I’m carrying that pack all day. They’re actually just pretty annoyed that I walk around hunched over all the time. So it’s double. And then, and then I’m thinking, yeah, I must be doing it wrong. There must be something wrong with me that I’m always so stressed and tired. And I have no mental space because I’m the only one hunched over all the time. So I’m the one doing it wrong. And it just ends up making me feel even crazier than I’ve already made myself, because why can’t I be more relaxed and take it easy. But then I think if I put down this pack, this shit falls apart, right. Cause I’m holding up the sky around here.
GD:
So what is it? Okay. I used to think this was completely gendered and it is mostly, but I had the ticker in my last marriage. Okay. And then I got married to Abby and I thought since I’m entering the same gender marriage, this is going to be some nirvana, nothing’s going to be gendered. We’re going to be so free from all gendered roles inside a domestic partnership. Right. It’s going to be amazing. And then a year in, I was just stressed and stressed with the kids stuff with the kids, stuff, with the kids stuff, with the work stuff. And Abby started coming in and saying, okay, just tell me what I can do to help. And I remember I sat down with her one day and was like you asking me what you can do to help is just making visible the fact that you don’t know that I am the mental runner of this show and that you feel like your job is just to pop in and ask what to take from the list. But the fact that you have to ask, don’t you understand that someone had to make someone has to make all the lists. Right? Like I need somebody else. Who’s making lists not who’s just asking me what they can take from the list. Because what that implies is that it’s my list. If we’re co-parenting care, it’s not my list. Right. So what we did is we actually sat down and said, okay, I don’t know anything. Craig is so good at like, we have three parents. So that’s a huge, huge privilege and blessing. Cause we have a blended family. So Craig, you know, all their doctors stuff, you, you have the medical, ticker now everything to do with the kids. Like if they don’t go to the dentist for three years, that’s your jam. Abby, clearly, you know, all about the sports. Okay. If these children don’t do sports, if they don’t go to practice, if they miss a tournament, that’s your jam. Right. So it was like the division of the categories of tickers helped us. But in order for that to work, two things have to happen. The other co-parent or partner, if you’re lucky enough to have other partner, like we talk about the single moms and single dads who have all the tickers all the time, but the other person has to step up and do things well. And then the original ticker caretaker has to allow the other person to do things in their way. So have you, what does it look like when you do pass over responsibility? Or have you ever, I know we both have tiny, barely perceptible control issues.
AD:
The tiniest kind, only the tiniest kind of control. No, it has like it and I have successfully transitioned a couple of tickers and they’ve nailed them. He’s nailed them. But I think for me, it’s all of the ones, you know, we have two kids who are neurodiverse and I can’t, those kinds of things like who are going to be their therapists and how do I get the 504 and how can will the insurance cover it and all, you know, the full-time job that is, I honestly don’t see myself releasing that. I don’t, so I have to own that. But at the same time, I also have to own that I have this relationship that my frustration at the mental load that I’m carrying is obvious. So for anyone who’s listening and thinking, wow, you must be a damn joy to live with. I mean, correct. It’s not working for anyone. I think is happening in, I have to think this is happening in a lot of families like your carrying this around because you believe you either have to, because you do actually have to because the other person who is going to do it or believe you, you believe you have to, because you’re you believe that this is so important to your, to your work, to your kids, to your life, to your home, that only you can carry it. So you have that load, but then you also have this exhaustion and anger about having to do that and about this unequal enjoyment of your life that you see the other person having, but then they don’t actually have a more enjoyment of the life because you’re so bitter and pissed as you walk around all day that you’re poisoning everything. I think I’ve noticed lately that because so much of this is invisible, all of this work is invisible, that I’ve just kind of made visible. I just walk around like a ticking, I did this yesterday and I called them today. I did this. It’s like, let the record show at least that I, I don’t, I’m doing that. And that is not fun for anyone. It’s not fun for anyone.
GD:
And then talk about how John sends you an article.
AD:
So my sweet husband is just always trying to like connect us more. And clearly, because of my mental space, you know, I’m overloaded. And so …
GD:
Like you don’t want to make out all the time?
AD:
Just only every other time. And so he does this like precious thing where his love language is like sharing and talking and quality time of discussing things. So he will in the middle of a crazy day where I haven’t like peed in four hours, he will text me an article about like geopolitical developments in Asia. Okay. And say something like, this is really interesting. We should discuss. And instead of receiving that, the way it was given, which is a wonderful gesture from someone who’s interested in actually talking to you and hearing your thoughts. I’m like, you have got to be freaking kidding me. Like you had the time, how many articles did you read before you got to this one? So you telling me you have the time to identify and digest soul and mind edifying content. And then you have the audacity to suggest that we have the time to discuss it when I haven’t taken a shower in four days. And it just feels like I legitimately receive it as an insult to all that I’m carrying as opposed to an outreach of him trying to connect us. And that’s just what I mean, it’s not working. It’s not working. So I need to figure out, I need to add to my to-do list, figuring out how to make this work..
GD:
Fix your life. So if someone is listening right now and saying, this is not that, but I was talking to a new friend this weekend. She a single mom. She’s just working her butt off at work with home, with her baby, all of the things. And she said, you know, every night I have to take my dad dinner and I was like, oh, you take your dad dinner. And she’s like, yeah, he can’t cook. He can’t clean either. He can’t cook or clean. And I said, oh my gosh, what’s wrong with him? Like, is he, he’s really sick. And she said, oh no, he’s not sick at all. And I said, what? And she said, no, he’s 60 years old, completely healthy. He just can’t, you know, he can’t really cook and clean. And I was like, dear God, like what these people have pulled off, like what? And sometimes what we allow them to pull off. Right. He can’t? Do you mean he won’t? Because you’re a single mom holding up the entire sky of your child and your life? But your dad who is healthy and living in his home …
AD:
He’s never been required to.
GD:
He’s never been required to. Right. So part of this right is like it’s hard to decide how much we are enabling and martyring ourselves. Right. And allowing things not to be required of co-partners of co-parents of fathers, husbands, sons. So what part do you think you have in that? Or do you?
AD:
I think I do have that. I think I also have a desire to have things be done the way I think they should be done. And it’s worked for me. See, here’s the thing. Here is that here is the crux of it. It has always worked for me and it has always not worked for me. So the outcomes that I get when I do shit myself are amazing. Yes, I have the things in my life that I want and I have built them.
GD:
Yep.
AD:
And I am also most of the time miserable.
GD:
Yes. Yeah. And this is the theme of all the things. I mean, you know, I would say for sure, the most stressed-out person in our family. Right. Of like the four of us, my mom, my dad, me and you. And so there’s this dynamic, which is the same with our nuclear family, which is the same with our business, which is the same with your little family, with John and Bobby and Alice, which is that whenever hits the fan, you’re the one who fixes it all. Like we depend on you to fix things, but then we also really worry that you’re stressed out. So I feel like sometimes I really feel like you in your whole life, you’re like Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men. And you’re like, You need me on this wall! You can’t handle the truth! And everyone in your life is like, get off the wall. You’re so stressed out and annoying, like relax. life should be relaxing. But then when it hits the fan, we’re like, don’t worry Sister’s on the wall. So I hear this.
AD:
I mean, I don’t want to get down off the wall because I that’s the way I love my people. That’s the only way I know how to love is to do and to help and to solve problems. And so, I mean, it reminds me of in the episode we did about your anxiety, where you said that you think at the crux of it, you often believe that your anxiety is love. And for me, that’s the same way with all of that mental load, by carrying that load for my kids, by carrying it for our business, by carrying it for our family, I want to take those things and carry them for people, because that’s how I know I’m loving them as hard as I can. The problem is the effects of carrying that are often that the people that I want to love don’t feel my love, because my effort is in the carrying and not in loving them the way that they need to be loved themselves. And then when they look at me and say, not with their words, why are you investing in us? Why aren’t you giving me what I need in my heart and in my mind? I’m like, I am giving more than I have. I’m giving every ounce of myself. Every moment I have no mental space, no physical space, no hours that are not carrying for all of you and loving you. And, so I feel like I’m pouring that out. And then sometimes I feel like I’m getting back, Well, put it down. And I feel like, put down my way of loving? I don’t understand like, the way that it’s tricky, the whole thing is tricky.
GD:
Yeah. I mean, I do feel that same way with the anxiety stuff. It’s like, that’s how I know to love is freak out about everything and worry. I worry, you know, Abby will suggest I stopped worrying. It’ll all turn out fine. So she says, it’ll all be okay. And I’m like, it doesn’t be okay. It bes okay. Because I made it okay.
AD:
Amen.
GD:
But like, Sister, you make it okay. By doing things. I literally just sit in my house and freak out. Okay. So, but, there is a part of me that will always, and forever more, no matter how healthy I get, believe that I am worrying us all into success. Okay. That if it worked out, it is partly because I made myself miserable. Okay. So I don’t have a solution for this, but it is an interesting idea that I am loving people by being anxious for them. And that often makes them feel unloved because my anxiety forces me to not be present ever. And that your way you’re loving is by project managing and controlling and staying on the wall and what your people are saying sometimes fairly or unfairly is that when you’re not on that wall, you’re not with us.
AD:
Correct.
GD:
You are not present. And so this idea of the way we are deciding to love the crap out of our people so that they can feel it right.
AD:
We’re loving them so hard that they can’t feel it.
GD:
They are unloved. (laughing) Okay. So on that note, not that we’ve not solved any problems. We are
going to take a quick break and then we are going to answer some hard questions.
GD:
Welcome back to our segment that we purposely don’t call a Q and A, because to me life is just endless Q’s and no A’s. And we say, I don’t have answers. I have a response. I probably have a story. Let’s get to our hard questions. The first one is from Ashley.
Ashley (caller):
My name is Ashley. And my question is around becoming a mom, how can you be a mom and not lose your entire self? How can you be a mom and be a woman and a wife and a worker and a human that is still independent of your children? I don’t know how people do that. Is that possible? Is that just something that you kind of give up when you become a mom? Is that part of the gig and how do you do it? I guess that’s my major question, my name is Ashley. Thank you.
GD:
Okay. Ashley already gets the Q and A, because she said she didn’t even say, I need your answer. She just said, I need your question. Ashley, I too have questions. First of all, I just love Ashley. I loved her voice. I loved her vulnerability. When you said, is giving yourself up part of the gig. It made me think, yes, the way it’s structured right now, right? The way that our culture presents motherhood to us, part of it’s like implied that in order to be a good mother, we will bury ourselves. Right? That right now, the way things are structured, the way the definitions of motherhood are given to us that yes, part of the gig is losing ourselves completely. And the only people who can change the definition of that gig is us one woman at a time, right? The only way we can change the definition of that gig is if we look at it real, real hard, and we say, no, no, no, no, no. My children will do what I do. And so my gig is to not accept any life, any relationship, any community, any nation that is less true and beautiful than one. I want my child to one day, except that is the gig.
AD:
Yep. I love that. And Ashley completely nailed it because that’s the entire question, right? Is this what we signed up for? And is that just inherent in being a mom? And I think that the way she described that is really interesting. And as she said, this the gig, I’m thinking of a job description. I’m thinking of if motherhood was actually a job description, what you would see you are signing up for, if you are signing up for a heterosexual marriage, with children, as a mother, your job description includes the following, you are 10 times more likely than male partners to bear the burden of the childcare. The senior care, the chores, the scheduling of your children, the home management, the school volunteering, the staying home when the kids get sick. Your job description includes poor per week, 10 more hours of housework, and six more hours of childcare than your male partner. You are twice as likely to manage the entire household. And three times as likely to manage the kids’ schedules, that’s your job description. Want to sign up, want this job? So that’s literally part of the gig, but we have not as a society described it that way, it’s just you walk into it. It becomes that gig. And you say, I’m having trouble managing the weight of this gig. In addition, by the way, to the fact that I am working just as many hours, if not more on my paid work outside of the home. So what I think is that half of the way to make all of this invisible unpaid labor that we do on the regular not bury us is to name it and make it miserable. You are not struggling because you are doing something wrong. You are struggling because structurally the way this gig is set up is horseshit. You are working outside the home doing just as much work statistically, and you are also expected to, as part of this gig, invest 16 more hours per week at least. That is just the housework and the childcare. Not to mention that the mental load of planning the school, the volunteering, the whose birthday party it is and what the present is, all of that per week. So there is a reason you lose yourself. There is a spiritual reason like you discussed, cause you think you’re supposed to give up your needs. And there is an actual tactical on the ground reason you lose yourself because who the hell has time to find themselves when all of their hours are booked according to their gig.
GD:
Yeah. It’s interesting. The constant refrain of making the invisible visible. Because when I think about what you’re saying, that’s what we Craig and Abby, and I did. The wild privilege of having three parents. Like, I don’t know how anybody does it with two or one, but that was what we did, I guess actually sit it down and say, here’s all the tickers running in my brain. You take one, you take one, you take one. Interesting.
AD:
And I think maybe, maybe the answer is this. Maybe the answer is unfortunately, Ashley, apparently this is the way our society has decided the gig should be, or is, notice who wins in this gig arrangement and heterosexual marriages, of course, that this would just silently happen because it’s better for one side than the other. Right?
GD:
But also they’re connected intrinsic. Like they’re ridiculously connected because if you’re going to overtax women of their time, of their money, of their energy, of all of it, then in order to make it sustainable in a patriarchy, what you have to do is hold up the ideal of a woman as that as a woman who is serving constantly to the extent that she has no self, how do we make that desirable? Oh, I know we will create this idea that the epitome of womanhood is this selfless woman, right? So then not only will we not be pissed off about not having time for herself, we will chase it like a dirty pink bunny, because they’re telling us that is success. How many of us talk about our mothers as, oh God, she was so selfless as if that’s some kind of compliment, as opposed to an actual commentary on women in the world that the epitome of success would be to lose yourself completely, to not have a self, to not have a life? That’s it. That’s the golden ring.
AD:
Yep. And maybe that, that just each generation, this is what it is now. We’ve got to do the work within the relationships that we have to help become more full of ourselves and give ourselves a role in the gig and a value in the ecosystem of our families and then make it, make the gig different.
GD:
Exactly.
AD:
Alter the job description for ourselves. And then, so that the job description that our daughters and sons walk into will be a different job description, because this didn’t just happen. This job description didn’t just occur. Like anything you sat down and said, what’s gonna work for the people who have the power.
GD:
Yes, exactly. And what I know about women after listening, it’s my job. My main job is just to listen deeply to women, right? Occasionally a man, definitely non-binary people. What I know is that women desperately want to be good moms and caretakers and lovers. That is what they want. It’s just that we have to alter what that means, right. For ourselves. Yes, yes. Live to be a good lover. But what does that mean? We must include the idea that love does not require us to disappear. Ever. That love insists that we show up fully. Right. Love is about fully emerging. And we have to just say yes. Okay. I want to be a good mom, but is a good mama a martyr? Is that what I want to pass down? Or is it part of the job description to live fully? So that one day, these little ones will give themselves permission to live fully because I know so many people who are desperate to let themselves live and feel guilty about it because of the legacy that a mother martyr passed down to them. That’s the chain we have to break and create another golden ring. Right. That is the definition of good motherhood. That includes modeling refusing to slowly die. Okay. Let’s go to another question. Here we have one from Catherine. Okay. Um, my mom has chronic illnesses and lives alone. he has doctor’s appointments every week. She needs groceries every weekend. She can do these things on her own, but it’s a struggle and she doesn’t want to bring in extra help. My brother and I live close by, but it’s me that keeps track of all the appointments, helps her get there when I can and does all the laundry and errands every weekend and some meals during the week. My brother pops in and out those things when asked, but I’m shouldering all of this alone and it doesn’t bother him at all that our mom needs help. When I asked him if he doesn’t worry, because I take care of all of it, he said, no, he wouldn’t do anything differently. If I stepped back, do you think it’s possible that women are just wired to be the caretakers? This question reminds me of this meme. I just saw my brain, like many of us, it’s just a large file folder of memes. That said that this one person asked a soon to be father, I think his partner was pregnant, if he wanted a boy or a girl. Can we just, we’ll just put a pin in this ridiculous situation where we continue to ask future parents what the gender of their child, like as if gender is something that can be defined at birth, right? It’s like saying, so is your child going to be an optometrist? Or, it’s like, I guess we’ll find out, right. Gender is not something that we can assign. It has to be revealed over time. But besides that, the dad says, you know, I’m just hoping that it’s a girl, just because, you know, girls are just so much more nurturing, you know, caretaking and loving. And so I’m just really hoping it’s a girl. And now when I think about that, I think, okay. He was probably trying to be sweet, like to him that probably felt like progressive, I’m a dad. He wants a girl. Yay. But I just kept thinking, oh my God, even this fetus has a higher emotional load. Like even female fetuses are in there with already expectations that they will freaking take care of us.
AD:
Right. And, think of how insulting that would be to his male fetus. So you little one I am already anticipating will not be able to understand the emotional and physical needs of the world around you and respond to them appropriately.
GD:
Right.
AD:
It’s so strange.
GD:
It’s insulting to all genders beyond gender, all the, to everybody. It’s just insulting to everybody. Um, to answer Catherine’s question directly. I can only tell you what I think. I think that we are conditioned to be caretakers. I do not believe that we are inherently born one way or the other. I think the second we’re born, we start getting messages about what we need to do because of our gender. And so do little boys. Right. And that just gets solidified over time. What’s your take on this?
AD:
I don’t know. I don’t know scientifically anything about hard wiring, I do know that when half the population continues to take care of things, the other half of the population will never know whether they have the capacity and the ability and the joy of participating in things because they won’t ever do it.
GD:
Yes, it’s so true. I mean, I, when you said that, I was just thinking about when Chase was first born, Craig lost his job. And so I was teaching and Craig was home with Chase for a while, like during what should have been my maternity leave or something. I don’t know. But I think of that as this huge blessing for us because Craig never got to have the learned helplessness that we all, as a culture foist upon men, by pretending they can’t do things like change diapers or you know, feed the baby all day or all like crap. There was none of that learned helplessness. Like it was sink or swim, just like it would have been for me if I was the one home. And so Craig learned and I learned early on that he was just as capable of caretaking as I was. And that carried throughout the kids’ lives.
AD:
I just wonder, I sometimes think about what the next generation is gonna look at us and say is absurd about our arrangements. Because I mean, when I talk to my peers of my age group, the things that they say about their parental dynamics that are absurd to them, like the way that their father will walk into a room and talk about, I wonder when we’re having lunch, and then the mom will go prepare the sandwich, an implied helplessness of a 65 year old man to put together a sandwich, nevermind that he was, you know, the manager of a business, but there’s no world in which she may make his sandwich. What are the things like? We should not think that we are more evolved than that. We are a little further down the road, but there are so many dynamics in our relationships right now that are the equivalent to the sandwich making.
GD:
Yep. That’s right. All right. Let’s go on to Danielle.
Danielle (caller):
Hi Glennon. My name’s Danielle, I am newly married. And in the past year, I’ve began to feel very overwhelmed with my new job and all the responsibilities that I have in our household. I see my husband taking time for himself, reading books, going for runs, watching TV, having fun. While I spend all my spare time, clean cooking and doing everything to maintain our home. How do I release some of these responsibilities I have so that I can have time for myself, too. Thanks so much for your help.
GD:
You have recently released something. And so I wonder if you might be able to respond to Danielle.
AD:
Yes. So recently John and I sat down and just looked at our lives and all of the things that need to be done on the regular and decided on a distribution, which goes back to Ashley’s question. When you never decide on a distribution, you end up with the default job description, the horseshit one we talked about where you get 25 less hours in your week than your heterosexual male partner. So, if you don’t talk about it, that’s what you get. And in order to talk, in order to opt out of that job description, you have to talk about it.
GD:
If you don’t make it all visible together, the woman will default to the culture’s standards of what invisible work she should do.
AD:
Right. So we talked about it and in, and we decided that one, and John is amazing. I mean, he is, he’s an amazing human. And he wanted to help. He wanted, but it was invisible. He didn’t know where to help. This is a while ago, he decided that he was going to be the ticker of the groceries and the house inventory. So, you know, all of that stuff, how much toilet paper do we have? Will have enough for the school lunches? You know, all that inventory, life thing, he took that on and put it on his ticker. So I have not been to the grocery store since I don’t know when, and it has made a giant difference in my life. I literally never think about whether we have enough food in the house, whether we have paper towels in the house, whether we have whatever. It just magically shows up here.
GD:
Wow. So you feel a little bit like a man feels just the magic.
AD:
Exactly. The magic thing, that’s constantly happening. The magic thing where the thing you have, what you need in your life and you didn’t do it yourself. So it’s so interesting when we were talking about this, you were talking about talking about that.
GD:
Oh. And I said, we can’t talk about that. I said, no, that’s too privileged of a situation, that is too lucky. Like who has a husband that does all the grocery shopping. We can’t talk about that, but people will just be like, oh, well, that must be nice. That she’s so lucky. And then you said …
AD:
I was pissed.
GD:
You were pissed at me.
AD:
Because I said, so we can’t talk about this because I am in the correct positioning in our marriage, because we have sat down and decided, this is an unequal distribution. You do all of this. And I need to take some of that on so that we can attempt to establish some balance. And that is something to be ashamed of? That is something to feel like I am somehow cheating the system. And you know what, you know, what is horseshit? How many men out there are looking at their male friends going, damn bro, you are so lucky. Your wife does a grocery shopping every week?
GD:
That’s what got me. That’s what got me. When you said that.
AD:
You are so lucky, do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how few dudes have their wives go out and go grocery shopping every week? You know, they don’t even think about it. They live in the land that I now live, which is that they have crackers when they need them all the time. And that is because that is because that’s the default. And so I, it has made a difference in our lives. And I appreciate it so much. That’s the other thing. Every time we have what we have in our house, every time he comes home from the store, I’m like, thank you. That’s awesome. I appreciate this. And also, how many husbands do you think when their wives walk in have that deep level of appreciation? They don’t know it because they, most of them haven’t experienced it. They just add it to the list of the stuff that their wife automatically gets done. And man, what would we do without her? You know what you do without, or you’d go to the grocery.
GD:
Okay. And when you explained it to me, that way, I said, yes, ma’am let us discuss the groceries. So what we would like to say to this person is you release something. You get it all visible and then you renegotiate, right? And then you are deciding, you are seeing all the invisible work and you two can divide it up. Is that what our recommendation would be here?
AD:
Yeah. And you’ll find out whether your partner is amenable to that. Whether your partner really does want you to have equal enjoyment of your life that they have, and that will be information. And if your partner is not willing to make an equal distribution of the responsibilities associated with the privilege of living, according to how you live, you will find out. And if not, then you’ll be in a position to, instead of reassigning the responsibilities, to decide whether you’re going to release some of them, whether there are things that you may just say, okay, well if you’re not willing to take that on, that’s actually just not going to get done in our house because I’m not going to continue to do it all.
GD:
You got to hold the line, gotta hold the line. I think I’ll just say this and then we’ll go to our next right thing. But I do, when you’re speaking about all of this, I’m thinking about Abby and me and the difference in the same gender marriage. And we were actually just talking about this last night that, so Abby does the cooking. I do all the laundry and we both feel so deeply grateful for it each time. Like every time I put a pile of clothes in Abby’s closet, she literally is still like, thank you so much for doing the laundry. And I feel the same way when she’s cooking. And I think that’s not because it’s a special love it’s because there are no invisible expectations because there’s no default to, oh, you’re the girl, I’m the guy. And all of our internal conditioning kicks in about what each is supposed to do. That’s not there. So you actually see it all as an offering or something.
AD:
I think. But I think that’s true for John and me. I have never felt closer to him then when we sat down and we said, we’re going to do this and we’re doing it. I feel like we are equal partners. The resentment is not there anymore. Literally.
GD:
Just after that.
AD:
It’s like, when I see him do those things. So yes, there’s going to be tension in those conversations for sure. But if you’re able to get through to the other side of them, it’s actually an investment in your relationships. I mean, it’s the willingness to confront that. And if you get through, it will actually make you closer. So all of that kind of grumbling inside of you goes away and you can truly appreciate and be grateful for and know that you’re both holding up the sky and you enjoy it instead of looking at your beautiful ecosystem that you’ve created and being pissed and bitter about it because you know, you’re the one who made it happen. Yeah. You can grateful for it and you’re grateful for them. It helps your relationship for sure.
GD:
Yeah. Because everybody needs a wife, every damn body.
GD:
Next right thing. What’s our next right thing for these beautiful people? What are our pod squats going to work on to this week? I think that there’s two things I think we could get to the release of something. We could practice just releasing something, like you released groceries, and then hold the line of whatever happens next. And if it doesn’t happen exactly as we want it to happen accept.
AD:
Go back and listen to Boundaries.
GD:
And then go listen to the Boundaries episode for sure. But I also think there’s something to this, just beginning to make all of the invisible work, visible, just getting it all down on paper, getting the ticker from your brain out on paper so that all of the partners in our lives can see what’s being done visibly
AD:
Yes. I think that’s correct. I think that if yes, writing, going back to Ashley’s point what’s the gig here, you know, what are all the things in the gig that makes your household run, that makes your life happen and then figuring out what you can give. So it’s making the invisible visible, then it’s figuring out how you can redistribute that, really talking about it. Then it’s both the holding the line and letting go. So you have to be willing to, if you give the ticker of the groceries to your partner, whatever groceries come in the house, you say, thank you so much.
GD:
Even if it’s just crackers.
AD:
And I’m a control freak. And I have never, you know what, I’m never going to say a word about crackers. Whatever food is in the house. I’m so grateful for that. But on a more serious note, you really will have to cede some control over how those things get done.
GD:
Okay. And also just before we stop, I want to also say this isn’t just about households. I mean the amount of messages we listened to people who feel the same way outside of their small nuclear family, to their extended family, the women who are taking care of the whole family, get that invisible, ticker out, show your brother what it is that you do, show your mother what it is that you do. The messages we got from women who somehow default have to take care of the whole office, all that the women do to keep offices together. Right?
AD:
It is the equivalent in the office space in the workspace. This studies that look at the invisible work inside of the home and the ratio of disproportionate execution by women are the exact same as in the workplace, the unpaid work in the workplace, right? All the holiday parties, all of that. When I read those studies, I was full of rage because you know what? The men don’t do the unpaid work in the workplace.
GD:
Okay. So we’re gonna reel this in to see, because I just, we’re gonna save the workplace rage for another episode because I know you have enough.
AD:
I have enough range for this.
GD:
You cannot spell courage without a little rage. Y’all okay. So, next right thing in big ways or small ways to make the invisible visible this week. All right. We love you. This stuff is hard, but We Can Do Hard Things.