My husband will never ever understand how exhausted I am, how much I think about and handle silently. I feel unseen and unappreciated. And when we posted this question, So many people DM'd us and said that mental load imbalances is what ended their relationship or even led to divorce. So this is a serious issue. This is not a...
Oh, yeah, like a couple extra things to think about. Oh, you're just making it so much harder on yourself. Like this is leading to divorces and breakups. This is a big deal. Hello and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Morin. I'm a sex therapist with over 20 years of experience.
experience and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step-by-step techniques for improving yours. Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had.
We are 100% recording this time. I can see the green on that left one. I can see the green on that right one. Because two days ago, we recorded this entire podcast. And that was only green on one of the mics. Vanessa's my, we could have actually released the podcast and just been Vanessa's house.
I had some good observations, but, you know, it's fine. It's good enough with just Vanessa, right? Okay, we recorded this entire episode two days ago. It was a long day. We were cramming in so much stuff. We finished the episode. It was like past five o'clock. I'm like, oh, okay. The day is done. Thank God. And Xandra goes, Oh, shit! and discovers that only my mic recorded. That was a tough one. That was a tough one. However, it was also maybe the universe's way of saying that
We just needed to wait. We could do better. Well, one, we could do better, but two, we could do better because if we waited two days, which we now have, you get Xander completely unchained. Free Xander! You have a version of me that no longer has any metal in my mouth. I'm all natural in my mouth. Wow. Wow. Oh, natural. I feel like that's one of those things I've never actually said out loud. I've only written it. Oh, natural. Oh, natural.
Oh, natural. Oh, natural. It sounds so weird coming out of my mouth. Wow. But, um, yeah. There ain't shit in my mouth. No, no titanium. No Invisalign. I do have to still wear the Invisalign for a couple months, but I got my palatal expander removed yesterday. And yeah, so if you've been listening to this podcast since mid-June,
last year, you've noticed some speech impediment that I've had. It was worse at the beginning. It was somewhat better since November when half the device got removed, but It's not been perfect and it's annoying when you're used to talking one way and all of a sudden the words don't quite come out the same way because your tongue is blocked.
It is not anymore, so you're going to get Xander full force today. Unchained. Unchained. Okay, so let's get into what this episode is really about now that we're five minutes into it. Today we are talking about the impact that chores, responsibilities, tasks, and mental load can have on your sex life. So this all started with a question that we asked on Instagram. Does sex feel like a chore to you? And we had 86% of people said yes, it does.
which is pretty wild if you think about it. Yeah, it's really interesting because You know, if sex feels like a chore to you... I would actually suspect that you have a different problem. Sex being a chore, that's not good. No one likes the way that feels. No one is like, oh, I can't wait until sex feels like a chore.
So that's a problem in and of itself, but the solution is actually, it's not about making the sex feel less like a chore. I think for most people the solution is actually different. Okay, so there are a number of reasons why sex could feel like a chore. Maybe you're having sex that's not pleasurable for you. You don't like the way it gets initiated. It's more about your partner than it is for you. It's boring or routine.
Or it could be because you're carrying too much weight between household chores and mental loads. AKA you have too many chores.
Yeah, it's not that sex is a chore, it's that the chores are ruining your sex life. Yeah, you have so many chores, your to-do list is so long that you don't have the ability to just like... have sex when you might want to, or when your partner might want to, or when you think you're supposed to, and so the sex ends up kind of being in the back of your mind something that is slowly shifting onto your to-do list.
And yeah, sex becomes a chore when it is on your to-do list as like, And I want to be careful here because I do think that Having sex on your to-do list can be a really positive thing, if done the right way. If it means I'm prioritizing it. Yes, if it means you're prioritizing it. Vanessa and I will very often, at the beginning of the day, or at any point in the day, be like, hey, I would love to have sex with you later.
That's like literally assuming both of us are like, hell yeah, let's do it. We're literally putting it on our to-do list. But I think the issue is when your to-do list is so long, and we've all been there, it's so long, there's no way you're actually going to get all of it done today. And you have that feeling of dread, like, oh, God, I really wanted to do all this, but I'm going to have to shift.
some of them off to tomorrow right but then like that's gonna like i already have a full list of stuff i gotta do tomorrow so that's gonna like you know it's just like creating a traffic jam of stuff and then when sex is on it still then you're like you're like then you're you're literally like just like you dreaded things you're having to push off like you're like oh god am i gonna have to push off the sex
Oh, like, you know, and then all of a sudden it goes from something that's like exciting that you're looking forward to to something that you're dreading and you're worried about. You're like, oh God, I pushed it off to tomorrow. I pushed it off again. I pushed it off again. I pushed it off again.
And that is no fun. That's no fun for anybody. So in this episode, we're breaking down how chores and mental load can affect your sex life. And I really love talking about this topic because I think so often when it comes to sex, People go to thinking about like sexual technique and spicing things up in the bedroom. But there are so many other factors that.
play into having a great sex life and especially before you even get to technique or exploration or spicing things up yeah this is a prime example like if you're thinking about having a great sex life your brain is probably not going straight to chores and mental load. But these things can have a huge impact on your sex life. And we'll get into the specific impact that it has.
But I just love showing people the importance of these topics. The ways that they can really impact intimacy. Yeah, because we hear from so many people. who are like, you know, like, we're just not having as much sex as we used to, or we don't have it very often. It's not very exciting. Like, I feel like we need to find some new stuff that's going to spice it up or get us excited about it. And my first question is always about
Not actually like, okay, what technique are you using? Or like, here are some things to spice it up. It's like, okay, first, we got to diagnose some earlier stuff, especially mental load. Like, do you actually have the time and the space? to have sex. I think that this is one of the undervalued reasons that people are not having a sex life that they want, but people don't really put it together because of the way we just naturally compartmentalize.
our sex life like oh yeah well it's it's this thing that we do because we're married or in a relationship or whatever and yeah we're just supposed to do that completely independently of anything else going on, completely independently of how much connection we feel, if we're in a fight or not. if our to-do list is a mile long and you're leaving half of it for the next day. So it's so important to get to the bottom of this really first.
But first, we got to read you this week's review of the week. I'm just gonna go straight into it. This course was really the best purchase I've ever made, really. And I don't know why I struggled to make it in the first place because it's so affordable. I actually did the activities every single day and continued after the week was over. My husband and I have been struggling feeling connected.
He wanted more physical intimacy and I wanted more emotional intimacy first. So I took action and he willingly played along. It helped us both feel really connected emotionally and physically. He said that this past month has been the best month of our entire relationship. So yeah, we love getting reviews like this, whether it's on our courses or on our podcast. This is obviously a review of one of our courses, Best Week Ever, which Vanessa will tell you about in a second.
So if this was your review, you have actually won a free month of our brand new membership. deeper. So you want to claim that prize, all you got to do is DM us on Instagram or email us at info at vmtherapy.com. And if you want to enter in the future, because we do this every single week,
All you got to do is send us a review of one of our courses. You can DM that to us, email it to us, or leave a review of Pillow Talks on the Apple podcast page for Pillow Talks. Just scroll the bottom, smash five stars. Give us a couple sentences about what you love about pillow talk.
Okay, and like Xander mentioned, the course that this review was about was your best week ever. It is seven days of connection boosting activities you can do in just 10 minutes a day. If you want to check that out, go to vmtherapy.com slash best. learn more. Or check the show notes. So I discovered something unique about my dad this weekend, which is that he eats tacos. from the top down not like he doesn't turn his head to the side
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Customers love StoryWorth. They have preserved millions of family stories since their founding over 10 years ago. They have more than 40,000 five-star reviews. on Trustpilot, The Wirecutter, The Strategist, CNN, and more, all agree that StoryWorth is the perfect gift for the people you love the most. Give the dads in your life a unique, heartfelt gift you'll all cherish for years, StoryWorth. Right now, save $10 during their Father's Day sale when you go to storyworth.com slash pillow.
gloryworth.com slash pillow to save $10 on your order. Is there any better endorsement of a product than us being willing to spend our own money on it? And that is exactly what we've done with Goodwise. I thought you were going to say, is there any better endorsement than saying my butt loves it? I mean, that too. So when Good Wipes came on as a podcast sponsor, they sent us a bunch of the product to try out and make sure we liked it and approved of bringing them on as an ad partner.
We went through that and then we bought, with our own money, good wipes. Our bathrooms are now fully stocked with good wipes. I can't live without them. They are premium wipes that deliver a superior clean that no dry toilet paper can match. But most importantly for me, they are made with clean ingredients, soothing botanicals like aloe, vitamin E, and chamomile. They smell amazing but free from any harsh chemicals, parabens, or dyes.
They do have incredible scents. I like the rose water. I love the cedar smell. But what I love about these scents is these are natural scents, not chemical scents. They're hypoallergenic, super easy on your skin. We love good wipes around here and we know that you will love them too when you give them a shot.
If you want to upgrade your restroom ritual, you can grab Good Wipes at Target, Walmart, Kroger, and most local grocery stores. Just head to the toilet paper aisle and look for the bright aqua, rose, and emerald packages. They're also available on Amazon if you're more of an online shop. Okay, let's get into it. So first, let's talk about what the heck mental load is. I think everybody's familiar with chores, hopefully.
But I think there are still a lot of people who haven't heard of the concept of mental load before. Yeah, and how it is different from just chores. That's kind of the opera. That's like the key thing. So mental load is the invisible labor that goes into running a household and family.
So it involves anticipating what needs to be done, organizing everything that needs to be done, making a plan for how it is all going to get done, ensuring the work actually does get done, oftentimes just doing the work yourself. evaluating the work and making adjustments for next time. So there are actual tasks themselves, like we have to go grocery shopping.
But behind each task, there's also an incredible amount of mental labor that goes behind it. Yeah, the management of it. Yeah, so it might be like, okay, we have to go grocery shopping on Friday because we have to bake. cupcakes for the soccer team on Sunday and I have to remember that the kids used to love this cereal but now they don't want to eat it.
This brand of cookies gave everybody a stomachache so we can't get those anymore. I have to remember to bring the coupons because there were some great like some money that we can save. Oh, and because we're going on Friday instead of the usual Sunday shopping, then that's going to impact the Friday schedule. And so, you know, okay, my partner's going to have to pick up the kids from school instead of, you know, it's like,
it's like this domino effect you know when certain things there's there's kind of maybe less management behind it maybe it's just simple like keeping stock of things like okay yeah we buy toilet paper i got to be on the lookout for when the toilet paper is out but then there's
the bigger and kind of like broader the more meta layers of mental load where it's like okay there's managing that task but then it's slotting that in and then what does that impact and like how do you change all this and it's really something that where that load really kind of blossoms, I would say exponentially as you start
adding family members to the house basically like you know it's one thing kind of just managing your household when you're like living alone in a studio or something right like there's a limited number of things that that need being done then you maybe get to a point where it's like two people living together, maybe in a slightly larger house. And it's maybe someone almost more likely than not. It's the woman who takes a little more responsibility.
for the home and wanting to take good care of their partner and give their partner a good experience of like, yeah, we're not running out of toilet paper in the middle of the night on a Sunday night, right? And then it gets even bigger and bigger as you get more kids, you have a larger household. I think it's just important to recognize that it's something that just inherently grows with the size of your family. I just call that out because
We'll talk later about maybe some of the objections that sometimes men will have about mental load. And very often, you know, one of the key of the primary objections is like, oh, well, like this was never really a big deal. Like when I live. And it's very different when you're living alone, you're younger, versus you have a whole family, you're trying to take care of a number of people.
So Xander kind of said this a second ago but research shows that women carry the vast majority of the mental load. And a lot of that is the socialization that we get. We're taught to care more about these things or that like a good woman, a good wife, a good mom is supposed to do all these things. And in many ways, it's like, similar to you know men are socialized to take the lead in certain areas i think sack
is a really great one in male-female relationships. Most men are socialized. Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to initiate sex. I'm supposed to take the lead. with sex like you know it's it's on me to ensure that a good experience happens and we talk a lot about trying to break down you know the ways that we have been socialized into these things that are actually kind of
harmful to us. And so I think, you know, to anybody listening, that's sort of like just hearing about this for the first time, you know, especially if you're a guy, think about that. Think about like sex and the ways in which you kind of just feel you have this feeling inside like oh yeah like that's really supposed to be my responsibility
It's very similar for women when it comes to managing household stuff. That's what they have seen their entire life. That's what they've experienced. They've gotten these implicit messages that they're supposed to be doing that. So how does this affect your relationship? Because I do think a lot of people hear this and they're like, yeah, I mean, what's the big deal? Sure, you've got to remember a few extra things at the grocery store.
So the bottom line is that mental load is exhausting. It's never ending. It's all encompassing. For so many people, it feels like just this. constant ticker tape going in your head of like all these different things that you have to remember. And they all feel important. And so much of the mental load revolves around tasks that happen every day.
So sure, there might be some mental load around, hey, we've got to clean out the garage, you know, and like, yeah, we haven't done it in five years. You clean out the garage, but then it's like you're one and done. Yeah, I don't have to worry about that for a while. Yeah, it's like, okay, we're done with that. But I think the worst mental load is around the daily activities. Food is probably one of the worst ones. You have to think.
every single day multiple times a day for the rest of your life until you are dead you are gonna have to be thinking about what are we eating for breakfast lunch Dinner. And fricking snacks and dessert. Good thing we're not, it's really lucky in our relationship that I do most of the cooking. You would, it would,
you would be appalled at what happens when I am out of town. I actually, I actually just booked. I hate having to feed myself. Oh my God. I actually just booked like, like a pretty, like a long surf trip halfway around the world. Like. a year from now with a friend. Wait, what do you mean pretty long? It's 10 days. ¡Ahhh! So I'll be gone almost two weeks because it takes a long time to get there.
We're gonna have to talk about that later, buddy. You did not tell me it was 10 days. I sure did. No, you didn't. I told you what the dates were. I don't think so. We'll have to table that one. Oh boy, I'm blushing a little bit. Anyway, interesting insight into
into our relationship. Because, see, Vanessa's already worried about what is she going to eat while I'm gone. Pretend is. I'm going to have to do what your dad does, which is make a bunch of food and stick it in the freezer for Vanessa's mom. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's this constant having to think through things. And even with, you know, what are we going to eat? It's like, yeah, there are so many different things that you could choose from. But then you're also having to think of.
Have we been getting enough protein? Are we getting enough vegetables? Are we getting enough fiber? I think we ate that last week. So-and-so doesn't like to eat this meal. This person wants to eat this meal multiple times. I just took Timmy to the doctor and what did the doctor say about Timmy's nutrition? Oh, he really needs more of this and less of that. Exactly. So there's, there's so much mental load and it's just.
exhausting and of course as human beings we only have like a limited amount of time and energy in a given day so so much of our energy that's being taken up by this mental load that can obviously have a huge impact on our relationships. And unlike a job that is outside of the house or even a remote job where you work inside the house,
The difference is there's not a generally accepted time when you are on the clock and a generally accepted time when you are off the clock. Even if you were to want to say, hey, once six o'clock rolls around, I'm done doing household stuff. You are literally, it's like you live in your workplace and it's like, you can't turn your eyes off to be like, oh,
Nope, not looking at the fact that I'm just pulling out the last roll of toilet paper. Nope, not opening the fridge to see that we're running low on this thing. And I think like that is one that I think people that take on much less of the mental load often underestimate or undervalue. Is that it's like,
I know it can feel like, oh, it's not really that big of a deal. Just forget about it for a couple of hours so that we can be together. And it's like, you literally can't stop your eyes from seeing all the things that need to be done. It would be like, imagine... This is a crazy example, but say you work a corporate or office job or something like that where you get a lot of email communication.
Imagine if your email inbox were like displayed on like all the walls of your house 24 hours a day or like your slack or something like that and it was like ding ding you know random times like imagine imagine what that would be like and Maybe this isn't quite as extreme. It's not projected on all the walls of your house at all times, but it's kind of that vibe. You can't help but be reminded of what you need to do tomorrow or the next day or next week at all hours throughout the day.
Another big problem that comes up with mental load is it's so easy to feel unseen. I mean, the problem with mental load in and of itself is that this is largely invisible labor. thoughts that are constantly going through your head. And actually, if you're doing like a quote unquote, good job of carrying the mental load, your partner is probably not seeing all that you do. And in male female relationships, I think that there's just
a lack of understanding about mental load. Like mental load, it really hasn't been talked about. until just the last few years and the content that I'm seeing at least is much more geared towards women so we very often hear from women in male-female relationships saying you know I know all about this now and I was so relieved to hear oh my god there's a word for this. I understand now what I'm going through and why this is so hard.
And they're telling us my male partner just does not get it. Or doesn't believe that it's a thing. Or you're making a big deal out of nothing. So it's leading to a lot of tension and conflict between partners. And even if you're not. having conflict about it it's it's still just this feeling of being unseen we actually posted a question on instagram we asked do you ever feel unseen and unappreciated by your partner and 64 of people said yeah
They feel like their partner does not fully see and appreciate everything they do for their relationship, home, or family, which is wild. I mean, that's a huge number. And I think this idea of feeling unseen in a relationship, I think this is one of the biggest problems in relationships that doesn't get talked about nearly enough like
When you choose to spend your life with somebody to share your life with them, and then you wind up feeling unseen by them, I mean, it's heartbreaking. It's so dehumanizing. It's a really horrible experience. So it's really contributing to that. It can also make you feel like you're not on the same team at all. It can even feel like you and your partner are kind of pitted against each other. You're dealing with like nagging, frustration, arguments.
And then all those arguments can start boiling over and turning into resentment. And once you start getting into the resentful phase, that's a real tough place to get out of in a relationship. We asked our Instagram community how chores and mental load affect their relationship, and we got some incredible quotes that we're going to read to you. Yeah, so one person said, it makes me shut down. I get snippy and critical.
Another person said, causing me to keep score, looking for ways that he could help but doesn't. Sometimes I try to test him and he always fails. testing is such a bad dynamic to get into I know how It's so common. I know how tempting it is to be like, hey, let's throw this thing in front of them and see if they do it.
But it's just, it's not, it's really not fair to have this like one-sided evaluation, right? Like the other partner has no idea that they're being evaluated on something. It's kind of like you're doomed to fail. So yeah, that never really works out the way people think it will, unfortunately. Also, it makes me feel like a nag.
My husband assumes these things are my responsibilities simply because I'm a woman. I feel extremely bitter about his outdated gender roles. And finally, it keeps me from being vulnerable. Okay, here's some more. A lot of resentment and lack of connection when I feel like my load outweighs his. It feels like he gets to be carefree and do what he pleases while I am breaking under the weight of everything I'm carrying.
he gets to be the happy one and I'm miserable. That's such a common theme that comes up for people feeling like, yeah, it's unfair. Like my partner gets to be the happy, carefree, happy-go-lucky one. And I'm like the nag, the grump, the cranky one. another person simply wrote I feel alone someone else said I'm afraid to ask him to do things because I see it as my problem not his if I ask for help it feels like I'm admitting I'm not doing a good job
My husband will never, ever understand how exhausted I am, how much I think about and handle silently. I feel unseen and unappreciated. And when we posted this question,
So many people DM'd us and said that mental load imbalances is what ended their relationship or even led to divorce. So this is a serious issue. This is not a... yeah like a couple extra things to think about oh you're just making it so much harder on yourself like this is leading to divorces and breakups this is a big deal Yeah, I mean, I think hopefully now that this is more of just a transparent topic that people are talking about,
My hope is that going into relationships, there will be much more communication about this. But I think that this ends up being... One of those things in, you know, for many people that are in long-term relationships now, and they've been in that relationship for a while, there was no discussion about that. five years ago, 10 years ago. That was sort of a, you know, we got into a relationship, we got married and we just kind of like did the stuff.
You know, we did it the way we thought we were supposed to do it. And then, you know, I kind of woke up one day and was like, oh, shit, like, I'm doing way more. This doesn't feel fair. And, you know, I think... It's very similar to how... you know, issues with sex and a lot of relationships where it's like,
We don't, you don't talk about it. You don't talk about it. You don't talk about it until it, and it simmers and simmers and simmers and becomes a bigger and bigger problem. And the problem when you wait on those things and, you know, you don't talk about it when it's just simmering is that. You only talk about when it's boiling over and it's so hard to come back. from that like it's it's possible but it's really really hard and it's it's
And especially with this, it's really hard to change ingrained behavior. You've developed this habit over years and years and years of being together where one partner just expects the other partner to do all of these things. So anyway, I really encourage people. We'll talk a little bit more about this, I think, towards the end.
I really encourage people to address this head on now, like sooner rather than later, because this is something that never gets better on its own. I promise you it won't get better on its own. It will only get worse. And it will get to a point where it will end your marriage. It will end your relationship. So it's better to just come clean about how this is feeling to you now and what you want it to actually look like.
And yeah, that might cause some temporary, some disagreement, some feelings in the immediate term. But I promise it's better to find out if there are irreconcilable differences between you two and your perspectives now than it is five years.
from now and it's better to risk all of that because then you have the chance of of making this so much better so that five years from now you're in a place you never thought was possible rather than like sitting on it for five more years and then being like yeah i kind of always knew that this was going to end things and it finally has
so let's talk about how it affects your sex life in particular because after everything we said like at this point because how could it not how could it not but you need a little more convincing here's how it can affect your sex life When your brain is so full of all that mental load, it just feels impossible to make space for anything else.
it just doesn't feel like there's space to feel desire to think about sex to get excited about it this is very much i think like akin to akin to something like being touched out where it's like once you are at that at that place like it's just not gonna happen it doesn't matter how much you want to how hard you try like
you know it's like you're with being touched out it's like your body really is overloaded and kind of shuts down and with mental load it's this kind of the same in your head like your brain is just like uh-uh nope nope i'm done not not thinking about this If you've gotten to the point where you're feeling resentful of each other, of course that's going to lead to decreased desire. I mean, even if you're just nagging, having arguments about it, that very easily leads to decreased desire.
When was the last time you were super resentful and super horny? I'll wait. I'll wait while you think about it. Yeah, okay, never.
um it also just makes it hard to enjoy sex even if you manage to overcome those hurdles and agree to have sex with your partner like you're gonna have such a hard time being in the moment like enjoying that experience letting in pleasure when your brain's like all the laundry and the dishes and unloading this and the trash and all that it's just not going to be enjoyable sex
But I think the most damaging aspect of mental load is that your partner stops feeling like your partner and starts feeling like your child. And that is not. yep so many women reached out to us and said like i just feel a complete lack of attraction to my partner it feels like My partner's just yet another person that I need to take care of. I feel more like his mother than his partner.
just not good news yeah and i mean yeah if you don't know why that is not going to make your partner want to have sex with you then maybe I'm not, I'm not even going to spell that one out because, because, i'm not i'm not gonna spell that one out but if you're if you hear that you're like wait but why like um you got bigger fish to fry just put it that way
So we polled our Instagram community. We asked women, has mental load had a significant impact on your desire? 81% of women said yes. Damn. That's wild. We hear so many complaints about low desire. And so many of us women, it's really easy to feel like something's wrong with us. We're broken in some way. But like. it's the 81 it's the mental load so again if you're still not convinced
I mean, you should just turn off the podcast now if you're still not convinced. We're not going to be able to convince you at this point. But yeah, I mean, that's huge. 81% of women saying it's significantly decreasing their desire. That's wild.
Yeah, so the answer is not forgetting about mental load. It's not like... it's not like being blissfully unaware of it the answer is is you can't get to the answer yeah we're gonna we're gonna talk about it in a minute oh great okay well hey now you know a couple of things that aren't the answer Okay, I wanted to read this quote, though, because one woman sent this in, and it just felt like such a good summary of a lot of the stuff we've talked about.
I feel like I do so much and then have no energy or desire to be intimate with him. Then he gets cranky at me. I always feel like I'm failing no matter what I do. Yeah. And then he gets cranky with you, which further reinforces. I don't want to have sex with you. No, no. I was going to say further reinforces. oh, like this is a to-do list item. Like, oh, this is a chore. Like, oh God, I know he wants it. Another thing I gotta do for him.
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you have to have a plan. I so rarely make really definitive suggestions like that. I'm very like, life is not black and white. There's lots of gray area. No one tip is going to work for everybody. that I feel pretty passionately that every couple needs to have some sort of plan for how they're navigating this. And the key word here is equitable.
equitable does not mean equal. And I think a lot of people hear that and have some confusion about what that means. Equitable just means in a way that feels fair. to you guys. because i think that very often we jump to this place of like oh okay well we gotta split it up so like let's do let's do 50 50 and well one i don't think that this is something where you can ever quantify it to be so specific that you could split things up.
50-50 like Even if even if you were to go like totally crazy and like time every single thing and like split it up so that it's really close it's like You know, the amount of time something takes this week is going to be different from the amount of time it takes next week or next month when things, you know, the schedule changes and all that stuff. So, like, you're never going to get to an actual 50-50 split. And also, like... depending on your personal situation, your relationship.
You know, does one partner work outside of the house? Do both partners work outside of the house? How far are the commutes? Where do the kids go to school, et cetera? Like there's all these factors that are going to shift things and there's for sure going to be situations where it does make, it just makes a lot more practical sense for one partner to take on like more of that mental load than the other partner.
The key though is just that it is out in the open. Who is doing what? I think that that conceptually just really changes the way that this feels. At least we just want both partners to see what the other is doing and understand. And being able to see then puts us in a situation where we can actually recognize our partner. for what they're doing and be grateful.
for what they're doing rather than be expectant about it or just assume that it is going to happen. And having it out in the open and having a plan for a breakdown of it allows us to continue talking about it and continuing to revisit it.
rather than it just being this assumed okay i guess i just have to do all these things because he's never stepped up to do them so we have a great resource if you are looking to balance the mental load in your relationship and come up with a clear specific plan it's called our mental load workbook and there's kind of a funny little backstory behind it we created it because we started talking about mental load a few years ago and we shared our own story.
of early in our relationship like when we first moved in together Xander was working in the corporate world I was going back to grad school And I just, so I was like in the home more often. We fell into the trap. The classic trap. Where I. The gender stereotype trap. Even though neither of us wanted to. Yeah. We both were really upfront about like, hey, you know, like fuck traditional gender roles.
You know, like, sure, sometimes I'll do the more masculine thing. Sometimes you do the more feminine thing. But the more masculine thing. I don't know. Traditionally masculine? Yeah, traditionally. Like, stereotypically? Yeah, sorry, stereotypically. But, like, you know. Yeah, I just mean, to be clear, when I said fuck gender roles, I meant like, it's not like, okay, like we're going to do everything equally or we're going to do everything opposite. It's just like, look, like neither of us.
have the desire to be like i have to do the traditionally masculine things and you have to do the traditionally feminine things and yet this was one this is one thing you know we talked about gender roles specifically we didn't talk about household responsibilities
specifically and then we just fell into the trap of like hey when you don't talk about something you fall back on your on your conditioning or socialization and that absolutely kind of that just uh that was the trap that got sprung for us So we created this workbook for ourselves where we laid out all of the mental load, all of the chores, and came up with this plan for how we were going to manage it. And when we started talking about it, people instantly were like,
I need that workbook. What is a workbook? Let me have it. And so we decided to like, we turned it into a product that we ended up selling. So it has these like detailed organized task lists to go through together. It talks about what the mental load is. It helps you figure out how to balance it in a way that's going to feel.
fair for your unique relationship and family and we'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute too but We wanted to answer some questions specifically from the community first. Alright, our first question is, I've tried explaining mental load to my husband, but he just does not get it. He says I'm just making life more complicated than it needs to be. Any tips for getting a man to understand?
Well this is why I think it's so important to make mental load visible. So taking some time to like just pick one specific task that feels like there's a lot of mental load behind. and detail for your partner all the different pieces of mental load that go into it. So like making it visible, making like these pieces of it, bringing them out into light, I think can be really helpful. But I also like comparing it to work.
So tell your partner, like, imagine that you go to work and you have a new coworker that starts. You guys are on the same level. It's not like you're their boss or anything like that. Like if this is your coworker and your coworker comes up to you and is like, Hey, so, um, what should I do today?
Maybe you're like immediately have some, you know, okay, can you work on this project or, you know, yeah, you're supposed to be doing this thing. And then you're, they go off and then they come back and they're like, okay, what do you want me to do now? And like, you're going to get to a point very quickly where you're like, dude this is your job like you're the one who needs to be thinking of what you're supposed to be doing you got hired to do this job like yeah
Dude, I'm not your manager. Yeah, I'm not your manager. Don't come to me to tell you what to do. And even if you were, say you wanted to be a really nice person and help your coworker at their job, so much work that it puts on your shoulders to figure out okay what what does my co-worker need to do when do they need to do it who else needs to know what they're working on who are they needing to collaborate with who do i need to put them in touch with like
That's a whole, that's being somebody's manager, their boss, not their coworker. So that can be an interesting way to try to explain it too. Do you have any other thoughts for how to get men to understand mental load? Resonant man. resident man. Ultimately, I would really encourage you if your male partner or any partner is struggling to understand what it is or just thinking you're making it more complicated, then it needs to be like...
I would say, great. If it is so uncomplicated, I would love you to spend, you know.
half an hour 45 minutes just listening to this episode right up until this point and like i i would love i think that we laid out a pretty clear case for what this is and how it is not like okay just making things more complicated yeah i mean that's why we designed this podcast episode like we wanted we wanted to take on the load of having to explain it for your partner so like i mean we design all of our episodes to be great to listen to with your partner but this is a
prime one like tell your partner i want you to listen to this episode with me yeah yeah so i mean i would love you know after they've listened up to this point like is it really not seeming like a big deal now i mean honestly like bro if you have any questions like like dm me on on our instagram i'd love to chat with you about wow you're offering yeah okay yeah but like it's gotta be no i'm not talking about like dms from like
her when she's like, oh, here's what my husband is saying. Like, yeah, like you, the guy. Who thinks this isn't a big deal? Like, DM me and let's talk about it. Wow, Xander offering to take on the mental load and the chore of helping your man understand. I'm up for it. I will say though, if you've gotten to that point and they're still sort of like belittling you about it, or downplaying it.
I think that, unfortunately, you are starting to reveal some potential serious differences conceptually between you or values-wise between the two of you. Um, you know, another another thing, though, that I was I'm not just saying like, oh, it's time to break up with them. But I think it is it's worth, you know, raising that like, hey, this is starting to feel like a real serious difference in values.
for us because often you know that that might trigger for him like it's unfortunate that requires that serious of a conversation but that might kind of trigger a change in his thinking of
Oh, this isn't my part. This isn't really just this thing that I can convince her. It's not a big deal of like she's, she's, raising some flags here that this could actually like take our relationship down the wrong path and so that might give him an opportunity to sort of re-evaluate his thinking I mean, another thing if you want to get a little sassy with it and flip it around is is, you know, we've already talked about, hey, it is really important to
to balance or, you know, split the mental load in some way. Balance, I worry balance implies like 50-50. So like that, you know, it's important to, it's not, I almost said delegate, not to delegate, it's to actually split up the mental load. So what you could do is say, okay. That's great. It feels to you like this is not so complicated. So if it's so not complicated, I would love for you to take on these five responsibilities.
show me please show me it's this isn't a challenge like you know but like If you're saying this is not complicated, that's awesome. Why don't you do these? These are yours now. And yeah, go ahead and show me. And, you know, you can keep talking about, like, you know, okay, how is it going? Like, what does actual, like, what does done look like for these tasks?
You know, it's not, you know, it's not okay if it's just like, you know, okay, they're responsible for it, but then they're not doing it. So I think, you know, you got to be able to like kind of have some follow up. But I do like the idea of just challenging them a bit. Great. That's awesome that it doesn't sound complicated. Here, I've got a bunch of things that I'd like to put on your plate instead of mine, though. All right.
Okay, here's our next question. My partner helps when I ask, but I don't understand why he never takes the initiative to notice what needs to be done in the first place. I think that this is just a classic symptom of you guys not having a transparent plan laid out.
for the mental load i think this is a classic symptom of like we haven't talked about it clearly we haven't actually properly like uh given responsibilities for things to one person or like accountability of things to one person or the other that mashed up with just typical gender stereotypes and socialization. So this sounds like he...
is just probably operating from the assumption that, yeah, you know, like probably she will do it or probably she has higher standards than I do about something or like she'll notice when something needs to get done. Mashed up with, He's not actually... ultimately responsible or accountable for any specific task because the key word here is my partner helps when I ask.
So it's like you are actually unknowingly putting your partner into a employee manager relationship where you are the manager and they are the employee because it's like oh great when I ask you you do something so your partner is literally just waiting there oh yeah great okay when they when they want me to do something they ask and then I do it
But like, it's not, they have no incentive to actually notice this stuff. Now they will have an incentive to notice this stuff when you have actually laid out all the tasks and been like, all right, so you are responsible. for these ones now. Like, I'm not checking up on you.
I'm not whatever. If it doesn't get done, and it impacts us adversely, like, then we'll have a conversation about it because, you know, like, it's a miss on either of our parts if, like, we get into a bad situation because, like, we don't have the toilet paper or like our kids aren't able to have lunch because the food wasn't bought or the lunches weren't prepared.
or whatever but like you know this is on you now and so i think that this that's this is just a symptom of like you know you've you've accidentally put him in the role that he is now playing And he's expecting that you will do it. And you've showed him that, yeah, you are, you are noticing the things because you're asking him to help. So yeah, stop asking him to help you. And, Say we're splitting this stuff up and this is on you now.
Alright, next question. My husband works long hours at a stressful job and I'm a stay-at-home mom. Logically, I think it makes more sense for me to do the majority of the chores. But the reality is that I'm often exhausted and overwhelmed. When I ask for help, he'll complain that he's had a long day and that a man needs his rest. Oh, I don't like that. Am I wrong for thinking he should help from time to time?
Wait, so just to clarify, so a woman does not need her rest? No, only a man needs his rest. Oh, my God. Okay, I'm sorry. I do think, I mean, people need rest for sure. Okay, let me get into my soapbox about this one. I hate that we have this idea that stay-at-home mom is like an easy job. Like, oh, you're staying at home. You're just relaxing and hanging out.
Being a stay-at-home mom is a full-time job. More than a full-time job. Double job. Yeah, you are working way more hours than a standard nine to five. There's actually great research showing that if stay-at-home mom... moms were paid a salary it should be between like $160,000 and $190,000 a year. That's how valuable it is. When you quantify the task and think about what would it cost to actually outsource those, get somebody else.
to do them also it's a really fucking important job like being a mother to children raising the next generation you can't quantify that part like like showing up in you know showing up in that family dynamic. But yeah, you're not just sitting around at home like watching TV, eating bonbons, like having fun. You're doing a tremendous amount of tasks. So I hate this idea that like,
Like it's implicit here that he thinks he's working a real job and she's working the fun job. And so he gets to come home and have his rest. Like that's absolute bullshit. Yeah. And also not only that, but it's also like it's monotonous tasks. It's the same ones. over and over. Some jobs out of the house are very much like that. Same thing over and over. But even if it's like
Even if it's the same thing, like, I don't know, I'm thinking of a random example, like you work at a coffee shop and you make coffee for people. It's the same thing over and over, but like, what happens every day is different. Different people come in. You're also around adults. Different things happen. You're around other people. Being a stay-at-home mom is really isolating and lonely. Yeah. It's just like, I don't think stay-at-home moms get nearly enough respect. I hate this idea.
And yeah, just because you're a stay at home mom, that does not mean that you should take on all of the tasks, all of the mental load. Like your partner is still an adult and they need to participate in an adult life and do their tasks and responsibilities. So again, it might not be 50-50. Everybody's going to be unique and different.
But just being a stay at home mom does not mean that you should automatically have to take on all of the mental load. Yeah, absolutely. So here's here's what I would do. I think like. This is just another kind of slightly sassy or cheeky thing that you could do. But I think this would actually be really educational for your partner.
is you can say, okay, look, yeah, I hear you. I hear you that you've been at work all day. You come home, you feel like you've had a long day and you feel like you want some rest. I feel that same way. You know, like I'm doing, I'm busting my ass all day. I'm really tired and I'm really overwhelmed. And, you know, I think a woman needs her ass too.
So, you know, it would be fair maybe that like when you got home, I'm just going to say randomly, it's like six o'clock or something. So let's just say, okay, at six o'clock, at six o'clock today, I'm going to clock out too. And let's see what happens. I'm just going to like point out to you.
like what the difference is between me clocking out at 6 p.m. and me you know doing what I typically do which is everything so 6 p.m. rolls around you're like okay awesome work is done we're both done with work hell yeah let's Let's hang out. Then I'm like, huh? Oh shoot. Um, nobody made dinner.
So, um... uh okay well i guess we can't like i can't make dinner because i'm done working um okay so what we're gonna have to order presumably right like okay so that's gonna cost some money right okay so we're gonna order okay oh we're done with dinner that was really good but we have a bunch of dishes now huh okay so those are just gonna have to sit in the sink
Right. And then I'm going to have to do those tomorrow. But the problem is tomorrow I have all these other things that, you know, the same things that kept me busy all day until six o'clock when I finished. So like then that's probably going to mean I'm not going to be able to do X, Y, and Z.
tomorrow those are going to get pushed to the next day and so you can just kind of point out all the things that typically you would be doing to clear your slate for the next day right i would only recommend doing that for one day because otherwise you're going to get yourself into a lot of trouble the next couple days with stuff piling up but I think that is just
You know, just a way to literally show like, hey, I've been working all day. I want to stop just as much as you. But if I do, if we don't split this stuff, like then it just all falls on me. All right, I feel like we could do an entire podcast episode just about that topic, but we will come to a close on that one for now. All right. So just a quick little heads up that this is the last week to grab our mental load workbook before it moves exclusively inside our all access membership deeper.
We launched Deeper recently, and that is where we are going to be devoting all of our time and attention. So if you want to check out the Mental Load Workbook, May 25th is the last day to purchase it. individually. We have the link for that in the show notes if you want to check that out. But also wanted to share with you a different option. If you want to check out deeper, you will have access to that mental load workbook. And we actually did something really awesome recently.
We have these monthly double dates where we cover a different topic. So we did a mental load double date and we created a special five day challenge. where we walk you through the mental load workbook. You come out on the other end of that challenge with a specific, clear game plan for your mental load.
we get into it in like a lot more detail and nuance than we were able to cover in this episode yeah the actual how to's yeah the challenge is really awesome because it gives you that like accountability and structure of creating that plan yeah imagine how good it will feel it would feel five days from now if you're like you know you came in and you were like you were like you know you feel in all kinds of ways about mental load and it just feels overwhelming and then five days from now
Imagine that it was sorted. It was assigned and sorted. And that load was lightened. So yeah, this is just such a great option because not only do you get the mental load workbook and that double date, but also tons of other resources within Deeper. So if you want to check that out, head to vmtherapy.com slash Deeper for all the details. All right, well, that is all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and join us again next week. We release new episodes every Thursday.