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Comment by didgeoridoo | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I buy this. In my experience at least, it all comes down to standards — it sounds like this woman has higher standards for what constitutes a "running household", and gets frustrated when her husband doesn't share those standards. It sounds like he would be content with boxes on the floor, dirty bathrooms, etc. When she asks him to raise the house to her standard, she is asking him to adopt her perspective of what is acceptable and what is not, which is not trivial. He needs to be asked to tidy up because he genuinely does not see a problem with things being messy.

Why isn't the solution for the woman to compromise on her expectations, finding a middle ground for cleanliness and organization? Why must the man fully adopt her perspective?

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I was a homemaker for a couple of decades. So, I spent a great deal more time physically at home than my husband and the house was where most of my work occurred. When my husband left his dirty clothes on the floor, I could either live with the clutter and step over it or pick up after him. Either choice was still an imposition on me that lowered my quality of life.

Furthermore, since doing laundry was one of my responsibilities, him not putting his clothes in the hamper just made my job harder. And, no, it wasn't really acceptable to just not wash his clothes because they weren't in the hamper. We were financially dependent on his job. He had to be presentable. Plus, leaving dirty clothes laying around is a hygiene issue and I have health problems.

It would be a little bit like if I went to his office and dumped my laundry on his desk and he would either have to deal with that or work around it -- all day, every single day. We were married about 16 years before he grasped that and stopped leaving his dirty clothes on the floor.

When you are in a partnership, the actions of your partner are going to impact you. If they aren't considerate, they will impact you negatively. That is simply reality. Acting like it is not is crazy talk.

I think it comes down to communication. If my wife said "put your clothes in the hamper because I want you to, and that's where they belong", I might fail to put them there. If she said "put your clothes in the hamper because leaving them on the floor makes my life a lot harder, and also I might get sick", I would never fail to put them there.

By framing the issue as something I care about (my wife's health and happiness) and not something I don't care about (whether or not clothes are on the floor), effective communication saves the day.

I think the issue with the article is that it demonizes this very communication as a form of unfair, sexist "emotional labor", and therefore (at least to my mind) makes it less likely to occur.

EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that your personal situation went one way or the other, or that it was a failing on your part to communicate effectively. I'm just citing my own personal anecdote, because that's all I have.

And the author of the article states that communication is not happening effectively in her marriage in part due to gender norms influencing mental models and expectations. And I am telling you that effective communication in my marriage on that one detail took 16 years to finally achieve.

Most of the comments here are pretty dismissive and attacking of the article and its author, while acting like she is just an unreasonable bitch. Most participants here are male. The author is female.

Women tend to just not get listened to. Getting heard is a huge uphill battle. The effort involved in trying to find some means to get there gets us accused of being nags, etc.

That is, in fact, the entire point of the article.

If that was the point of the article, I think it was spectacularly ineffective at communicating it. Your points here (and above) are a far better and more succinct presentation of the argument than the article itself was.

Thank you.

But, from the article:

“That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.”

The word considerate means to consider how your actions or inactions will impact other people. The vast majority of the ongoing internet discussion of so called emotional labor hinges on the detail that the societal expectation is that women are required to do this. Men are not. And when a man's failure to think before he acts negatively impacts a woman and she complains about it, she gets told she just is failing to communicate, etc.

No matter how much effort a woman puts into effectively communicating what she wants, it will never put a stop to the fact that someone else's consistently inconsiderate behavior will consistently negatively impact you. That is the crux of the issue: Women as a group are asking men as a group to think before they act and are being told by men as a group "How dare you! That is an unreasonable expectation!" (In essence.)

MZ- woman to woman, thank you for representing.

I find altering environment to be much (like, much) more effective than altering behavior. Clothes chronically on the floor somewhere[1]? That spot needs a hamper. Toddlers' toys all over the place and spouse vetoes throwing out like 80% of that junk? Bins, in child-locked cabinets. Time spent cleaning massive toy messes immediately down by well over half, for a one-time cost of a few dollars, time spent policing how much crap the kids are spreading around the room (a hopeless task anyway) dropped to nearly zero. Notice you're (both) not managing to get the kids' clothes sorted and to their dressers/closets? Kid- and clothing-type-labeled pull-out bins (god I love bins) on shelves in the laundry room, basically eliminating any actual need to cart the clothes from room to room (it just makes for more work later) and putting the output location closer to the input. Problem reduced from "OMG this is really becoming a problem" to "it's not perfect, but WOW is this better". Etc., etc.

Altering behavior's rarely worked for me. My own, sometimes, my spouse's... well, pretty much never. So if it's the effect you want gone, it's often possible to make it go away really fast and with little fuss (often praise!) through a change in your environment. I'm sure lots of people of both sexes put this into practice, but I can say with certainty that it just never, ever occurs to some, and they'll put up with and complain about the issue indefinitely if someone else doesn't spend a few bucks and a few minutes making it permanently disappear.

[1] just taking your example, not implying that the solution was appropriate in your case or that it wasn't attempted and failed—to be clear, this approach definitely can't solve every problem.

I'm a big fan of that approach. I recommend it often. But, at the end of the day, if your spouse is simply monstrously inconsiderate, you going out of your way to find environmental solutions is just more work on you to minimize problems that will never really go away without taking the bull by the horns and confronting your spouse about their bad habits. (Or, you know, divorce. That is the other way to stop getting crapped on by a consistently inconsiderate spouse.)

Taking a specific example to the next step... If wife places a hamper where dirty clothes have been placed previously, now she is tripping over the hamper instead of the dirty clothes.

In concept, your environmental adjustment makes a lot of sense, and probably works well for many (not all) use cases.

But again, here we are, where the WIFE takes the 'burden' of solving that problem. She has to put a plan together of how to change the environment, that requires time/effort.

Other comments elsewhere on this thread mention that the wife/woman should relax her standards. Not related to the above, but I'd like to just call out, why are we not asking the man/husband to raise his standards!?

In that one scenario yes, that communication could save the day. I think the article is more about what happens if you multiply that by 100, and one person is disproportionately making that communication happen.

This whole topic mostly boils down to partner choice. If a person is messy, that person is messy. If you are tidy, and not willing to compromise, a messy person is not a good partner for you. It's going to be a pain point, he won't change, you won't change, people don't change. A relationship is a game of compromises. I don't know where are you from, but where I'm from there's a prevalent culture where people think that when they find a possible partner that fits some of their criteria, they can change him/her in the future, when they're married, to make a perfect significant-other; and I feel many commenters here have similar mindsets. This is insidious and toxic, and produces perennially unhappy relationships. If you won't love and accept a person as they are, better don't mess your life up, nor theirs.

My ex was not messy. He did things like meticulously organize his book collection and kept his own possessions in pristine condition. He was just a sexist pig.

He did not think he was a sexist pig. He was very idealistic and talked about the importance of women's rights. It wasn't apparent I was marrying a troglodyte until well after we married and our first child was on the way. On some level, he wanted a modern two career couple lifestyle. But, when push came to shove, he expected me to pick up after him, cook for him, etc. Trying to get him to see where his words and his actions parted ways was very challenging.

A lot of people are like that about various things. This is part of why psychology distinguishes the conscious from the subconscious.

People never have perfect information about their partner. There is a lot dating does not reveal.

(My ex was not a bad guy. I don't hate him and these issues are wholly unrelated to why we divorced.)

I'm really uncomfortable reading these insults, even if they're deserved. More so because they're in response to a comment of mine (even though I'm not the destination). I'd be so pleased if you removed them. That said, I do understand where you're coming from (both through empathy and some cases I personally know). But you should see that we agree: he probably was a bad choice for you. People always hide their bad parts when it comes to dating, and some are outright dishonest and manipulative, but that does not change the fact that someone was a bad choice. What I wanted to say was that I think that, we can not blame people for being what they are; and thus that we should pick who we would love for who they are, not for what we can sculpt out of them. I was not trying to advice or criticise you or anybody else on relationships and dating, I'm sorry if it came off that way.

You have that backwards. You replied to a comment of mine in a manner that implies a great many negative things about me and my marriage. Those implications are entirely inaccurate, but given that this is an overwhelmingly male forum, it is a no win situation for me. Not rebutting them implies that you are correct. Rebutting them has resulted in my comment getting downvoted and now you acting like your feelings of offense vastly outweigh the importance of my feelings of offense.

And we do not agree: He was not a bad choice for me.

If I couldn't get my point across, that's probably my bad; I wasn't implying your person with the pronoun you in that comment, I'm sorry. I was trying to talk about relationships in general. And I may have misunderstood you, I'm sorry about that too. But this is a discussion, not a contest of who's offended whom more, or of correctness.

So, when you tell me to delete something because it offends you, that's fine. When I tell you that your remark was just as offensive to me, you add yet another criticism of me to your track record and act like I am behaving badly for mentioning that I am offended.

This is exactly why emotional labor is a popular catch phrase: Because women are expected to care deeply about how men feel and to twist themselves out of shape to cater to the feelings of men. But, how women feel is not supposed to matter.

> "Those implications are entirely inaccurate, but given that this is an overwhelmingly male forum, it is a no win situation for me."

How does the fact that HN is an overwhelmingly male forum make this a no win situation for you? Are you suggesting that only a few HN members could ever see things from your point of view?

For what it's worth, I thought that this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15359215 was a little too callous, but not in an intentional way. Talking about relationship problems in broad strokes after someone gave specific details about an old relationship is almost never going to end well, as it sounds like they're summarising a relationship they have no knowledge of. However, I get the sense that gkya was talking in broader strokes to talk about patterns rather than single cases, so whilst it sounded like it was about a specific relationship considering the context, in practice it was just a badly directed comment, in my opinion.

And yet you are crabbing at me instead of them. Why is that?

Because they're not the one that conflated gender with understanding, and that's what I found interesting about your exchange. The rest of the discussion was just a common form of miscommunication that happens when someone wants to talk about specifics and the other wants to talk in generics, and the two collide.

I am not conflating anything and I have no idea why you would claim that I am.

What did you intend to suggest with "given that this is an overwhelmingly male forum"?

I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view.

Once a man says or does something moderately problematic that is a stereotypically gendered issue, the odds are long against a woman getting a fair shake. Your choice to reply to me and accuse me of making this a gendered issue instead of siding with me and letting them know that their remark is a sort that does not work well is completely consistent with that pattern.

> "I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view."

With all due respect, on HN I don't care whether I'm replying to a man or a woman, someone young or old, someone who lives close or lives far away. I barely even look at usernames, and will often only do so if I'm replying to someone, or someone makes an interesting comment (good or bad). If you say you're the top ranked openly female member here, good for you, but it honestly makes no difference to me. If you've found yourself getting flak for being a woman, I'm sorry about that, there's no justification for that, but I suspect that many people are of a similar mindset to me and judge based on written content rather than background.

> "Your choice to reply to me and accuse me of making this a gendered issue instead of siding with me and letting them know that their remark is a sort that does not work well is completely consistent with that pattern."

I commented on your gender remark AND sided with you in the general discussion in the exact same comment. I did not take one side over another. How you could come to any other conclusion is beyond me. Here it is again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360339

EDIT: To the people downvoting Mz in this comment thread, can you not please, it's not warranted.

Well, you are basically fighting with me (but not them) and your criticism of their remark was vastly more sympathetic than your criticisms of me. That is part and parcel of the pattern and it is incredibly insidious.

I didn't expect you to know who I am. Nonetheless, it remains true that men will notice remarks they feel are disrespectful of men and pounce on them, oblivious to the fact that it is a woman being ganged up on and only trying to defend herself from unfair criticism. And the ganging up on her is very much a gendered, problematic thing.

It puts a woman in a position of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I only mentioned my position as the top ranked woman here to advise you of my long standing firsthand experience. That's it. And yet it has become yet another reason for you to act like I am somehow doing something wrong.

This whole thing is off topic and a ridiculous, unfair derail. The odds are very high that others will join this debacle and it really won't matter how I handle it, I will still be framed as being in the wrong and also framed as making it a gendered issue rather than as having a right to rebut the original remark that started this nonsense.

Anyway, I am running a fever, so replying at all is probably rooted at least in part in poor judgment. So, for the record, I plan to bow out. Hacker News can have a brouhaha if it so desires. But there is probably zero good to be gained by me participating further in this utter and complete nonsense.

> "Well, you are basically fighting with me and your criticism of their remark was vastly more sympathetic than your criticisms of me. That is part and parcel of the pattern and it is incredibly insidious."

If I found gkya's comments more interesting than yours, then I'd be responding to them directly, and more openly discussing their comments. You could see this as argumentative if you want, but my main line of questioning was asking you to clarify a statement you made. If you can point to a single sentence I've said in our exchange that you found offensive I'd be interested to hear it.

> "I only mentioned my position as the top ranked woman here to advise you of my long standing firsthand experience. That's it. And yet it has become yet another reason for you to act like I am somehow doing something wrong."

I'm not suggesting it's wrong, I'm suggesting it's mostly irrelevant. I could say something like "I'm the most vocal proponent for Brexit on HN", and whilst that has a small element of truth to it, I don't think people hold it against me beyond a comment thread. I'll probably forget we had this chat in a week, and we may find ourselves agreeing on a different topic before too long. That's the impermanent, impersonal nature of HN, most of it isn't tied to identity, it's just people playing around with debating ideas and sharing experiences. What I'm saying is, I doubt people hold a grudge on HN, and if you choose to be openly female on HN and people like or dislike what you say, perhaps they're just liking or disliking what you say regardless of your gender.

English is not my mother tongue, so maybe I've done a silly language transfer using "you" to mean "one, people". I've definitely heard native speakers use second person in similar ways though, but mostly British.

Americans do that a lot too. I have done it and had it go sideways in public discussions. That really was the only explanation needed to straighten things out with me.

The problem is that isn't what you said to me. Instead, you informed me of your discomfort and asked me to delete my remarks out of deference to your comfort.

You called your ex husband a pig, in responding to me. That was what I said I wanted you to remove, because I feel strong discomfort having caused someone I don't know at all getting insulted at in public. I'm still very uncomfortable with it and still, I'd be happy if you edited your comment to remove that particular word. Wrt the other issue, well, I've said I'm sorry enough times and all I've gotten was bias and aggression. You've said that I'm acting to create a certain impression on other readers, and you've implied that I'm sexist. I won't add any more comments to this thread because this is becoming really annoying and actually offending.

So, you are uncomfortable that my ex husband was insulted in public, though he was not named. But me being insulted in public is not a problem.

Every single remark here by you errs on the side of some man's feelings mattering a helluva lot more than mine. I am not implying you are a sexist, but your actions continue to err in a particular direction. If you don't like the impression that makes, you can just stop doing it and genuinely apologize to me instead of adding yet more faux apologies wherein you repeatedly act like I am somehow in the wrong.

If you speak English as a second language, it is totally fine to say "Whoops, I didn't mean to offend. English is my second language." It is not totally fine to tell someone else they are being offensive, they need to change their behavior and then excuse the misunderstanding based on your poor English. That isn't cool at all.

    I could either live with the clutter and step over it or pick up after him

But those aren't your only choices.

If you decided to park your car in the middle of the street, the choices of those around you aren't limited to either put up with it or to clean up after you. Instead, you car gets towed.

The key difference between these situations is that one has agreed upon expectations and consequences. People only resort to nagging when they find themselves in a situation where there are no agreed upon expectations and consequences. Further, consequences are extremely effective. You only need to be towed once before you learn to be more careful about where you park.

If you agreed upon an expectation/consequence of "clothes left on the floor for more than 2 days will be thrown away", you wouldn't be putting up with clutter for very long.

This also helps with directing negative emotions. When someone is nagged, the negative emotion is usually directed at the nagger. But if he broke the rules and had his clothes thrown away, he'd be angry with himself.

If you agreed upon an expectation/consequence of "clothes left on the floor for more than 2 days will be thrown away", you wouldn't be putting up with clutter for very long.

When you are married, that approach fails on a number of fronts.

First, unless you are ultra wealthy, throwing out his clothes will painfully come out of the family budget to replace, especially work clothes, especially if you are a household living on one income -- his -- as we were. Second, replacing them takes time and effort. I was a traditional homemaker, so I handled a lot of his errands. So, I do what? Pick them and put them in the trash can, then go shopping for more, instead of picking them up and putting them in the hamper? Third, it is just bitchy and hostile. This man was my lover. Just being a bitch to him every step of the way was not one of my goals.

You don't create a more loving, caring environment by seeing just how much you can piss on your lover before they decide to file for divorce. He did eventually get what I was saying. It just took an unfortunately long time.

I think I understand your perspective, but I disagree, and this might highlight why emotional labor disparity is such a big problem for so many relationships -- because each side sees things from a different perspective.

You're right, adding just one expectation/consequence would be a real problem, because a lot of the fallout would eventually end up in your lap. To make this work, it would have to be part of a larger system. The consequences have to be set up to make things more fair, not less fair.

    throwing out his clothes will come out of the family budget to replace

Alternatively, if the family had a "fun" budget set aside for his and hers, the consequence would be much more effective and fair if it came out of his fun budget -- he was saving up for an Xbox and now he has to wait two more months to afford it because he just blew $100 replacing dress shirts which were thrown away.

    So, I do what? Pick them and put them in the trash can, then go shopping for more

This would definitely be unfair to you -- he needs to be the one to shop for the replacement clothes. This also highlights a similar issue from the article -- many of the burdens were essentially volunteered for, because one party preemptively took it upon themselves to take on the burden, without discussing it or setting up a system ahead of time. For example, the burden of constantly keeping track of which groceries were running low was mentioned. If the chore of shopping for groceries rotated between both partners, this wouldn't be a problem. If its his turn to deal with groceries, OP doesn't need to worry about it that week.

    Third, it is just bitchy and hostile

I strongly disagree here, and I think this is the root of how our perspectives differ. I deal very well with rules and consequences. I don't see that as bitchy and hostile -- that's good communication and honoring an agreement. If I agreed to the rules and the consequences, I have only myself to blame. From my perspective, nagging is the thing which is bitchy.

Also, this can cause an unhealthy blame shift for me too -- instead of blaming myself for breaking the rules, I'm tempted to shift blame onto her for perceiving the clutter (leading to the "why is this such a big deal?" argument, which is the worst possible button I could push at that time).

    You don't create a more loving, caring environment by seeing just how much you can piss on your lover before they decide to file for divorce.

Here, I agree, but just from a different perspective. I cannot imagine being in a relationship with the author of the article. Navigating a minefield of poorly defined expectations and responsibilities, with a healthy dose of nagging, and its just a matter of time before I'd reach for the divorce lever.

I should also say that the key thing about this approach is the conversations which it forces both parties to have. Once you enter the game of consequences, the negotiation of the rules becomes a high priority for both parties. These conversations will churn up all sorts of faulty assumptions and bring to light hidden expectations and burdens which the other partner had long been unaware of.

With luck, this system will sharpen the subject of arguments to being solely about re-negotiating the rules, rather than the anger, resentment, guilt and blame which come from a system of unstated expectations and silent burdens.

You are making a lot of assumptions that do not apply to my former marriage. For example, there was no money for each of us to have a fun budget. We just were not that well off.

I don't disagree with the general principle that, in theory, you can find other alternatives. In practice, that is not always true. Furthermore, you are taking an example from my actual life and telling me I am wrong about my own life, in essence. And you are doing so very much after the fact. I am not even married to him anymore.

Plus, your solution sounds a bit like "Well, there are always alternatives. Like you could just burn the house down rather than clean it!" Sure, you could. It is also utterly ridiculous and impractical for the vast majority of people.

The reality is that if you are married and cannot get their cooperation, some things will negatively impact you. Period. There is no clever hack that lets you stay with an inconsiderate, uncooperative person and somehow not get crapped on by that fact.

That is true regardless of gender. But, certain social norms mean women tend to be subjected to certain problems of that ilk more consistently than men. If a woman actually wants a relationship and doesn't want to just suck it up and feel victimized, asking him to change some is unavoidable.

It is a question I wrestle with: Do I ever want to get involved with a man again? Because women get horribly vilified for even trying to talk about the problem space. I am very much a conflict avoider. If just asking nicely for someone to be considerate makes me some mega bitch in not only his eyes, but the entire world's eyes, I dunno. Maybe sex isn't that important to me.

Because that is what it boils down to: Women can put up with this kind of crap, they can try to sort it out with their man while he and the entire world act like that is just bitchy of her, or she can sleep alone. The first two both feel like being a professional victim.

Such questions actually make me suicidal because sleeping alone is not my cup of tea. So, in my book, those all look like terrible options. But, hey, I am menopausal, so sleeping alone is beginning to look less like a reason to go jump off a bridge.

Anyway, I think it would be wise of me to bow out of discussing this further. It would be super nice if your future hypothetical examples do not implicitly suggest I was just an idiot and if you had been there to advise me, all of my marital problems could have been readily solved with some little hack or other. Thanks.

"It would be super nice if your future hypothetical examples do not implicitly suggest I was just an idiot and if you had been there to advise me, all of my marital problems could have been readily solved with some little hack or other"

Thank you for pointing that out -- I hadn't realized I had done that. Brainstorming solutions is useless if my communication makes someone feel like an idiot.

My father has a higher standard of cleanliness than my mother. When my father leaves for work trips I've noticed that my mother will do the dishes once every couple of days, whereas when my father is around he does the dishes daily. My father tends to do all of house cleaning because he likes things to be clean. They do not quarrel about it, they do not even talk about it, my father simply does the cleaning (I think he enjoys the act of cleaning to be honest).

Sounds to me like the partners in the article have a dysfunctional relationship and this isn't really a gendered issue but a "people issue". My experience probably isn't the norm though (both of my parents are engineers with careers) so I understand that this probably colors my perception of this not being a gendered issue, just wanted to offer a contrary perspective to the one posed in the article.

I think you are missing the forest for the trees a bit here by focusing just on cleaning standards. As the author said, part of the emotional labor is the management of the household but also the management of relationships within the house.

This isn't about forcing a man "to fully adopt her perspective." This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the ones which have to point out these rifts in the relationship. More generally, to do the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy.

To flip around what you just said a bit: Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it? Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem, to articulate it and to come up with a solution, as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

I think you didn't understand parent's point. It's not women that are expected to put effort, it's the party that's not satisfied with current state that is expected to put effort.

> Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it?

Blind spots of attention. When she does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, I'd be fine either way". When he does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, so I wouldn't do it, but I did anyway".

> Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem,

It's not that woman must notice a problem, it's that woman did notice it.

> [...] to [do all the work with problem], as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

Again, it's the attention and its blind spots. The problem didn't get noticed and acknowledged as such in the mind of man.

If you want me to do something, it's you who normally should put effort, not me, because I don't care if you will have it done or not. This is how interaction between two people works. It's silly to expect me to look around for the ways to please you out of the blue. Why would you suddenly expect this mechanics to work differetnly in a relationship?

[Clarification]: The description above is about how things work between people, not a praise of man's passiveness. If a couple wants to change how this mechanics, they need to put continuous effort in working against it, and this means they need to notice it and decide to do so.

I mean - I'm always looking for ways to please my partner, and to a lesser degree, my friends, family and co-workers. Little trinkets I think she might like, a surprise dinner, doing some dishes that we've been letting slide, making tea, refilling water, whatever. And she does the same for me. And my friends, family, and co-workers tend to do the same as well.

It's not silly. It's called kindness, and it's part of emotional labour.

Which seems to bring us back around to the first point again.

> It's not silly. It's called kindness [...]

Yes, but it needs conscious effort, which means that you need to realize you need or want to do it. It's very difficult to do something if you never even thought you could think of doing.

Is she having to do a disproportionate amount of pleasing her partner though? We don't get that perspective, only that she's putting more effort than him into the parts she cares about - which might go both ways.

Yes, but that’s not because she’s a woman (as she appears to claim), it’s because she hasn’t come to some sort of agreement about how to run the house. She’s talking past her husband to millions of people.

Had the gender roles been swapped, it would have been a very hard to stomach article for a lot of people.

Which is why it's sexist. The implication is that if her husband were a better feminist he would be perfectly able to anticipate and provide everything she wanted in a friction-free and effortless way.

The fact that he doesn't proves he's still mired in patriarchy, which of course he needs to be educated out of.

Assuming your partner is sort of okay, I guess, but essentially ideologically defective is not a particularly healthy basis for a relationship.

Aside from chores, it's not as it men - feminist or not - never provide emotional support to women. I would be astonished if the husband never listened to problems, provided cuddles and backrubs, and all the other emotional maintenance that men give their partners.

I sometimes think this culture has a very poor record of educating people how adult relationships are supposed to work. Unfortunately this article seems to be an example of that.

That's right. Whenever I start to feel this way (and it does happen from time to time), before I complain I remind myself that I don't ever even think about routine car maintenance or yard work, the taxes and their due dates and payments. I never have to get rid of (or cause!) dead rodents or unplug the toilets or remember to dig out the hairball accumulating in the drain. Everyone's got an emotional or practical mental load; it's just easier to recognize your own.

You can look all you want for ways to please people, but there's no guarantee that you'll magically come across the very thing that will do the trick.

Why must she? Because she's the one who has issues with it. A relationship needs communication, since mind-reading doesn't work yet. I'll try to avoid using he/she since the article itself is very sexist, as is your post. Partner's have different expectations, and one partner may not see an issue until it's brought to their attention. It has nothing to do with gender, or emotional labor or any other drivel. It has to do with accepting that a relationship requires communication, and from the communication, understanding and compassion.

And a relationship where one person feels such an emotional burden is not healthy.

I have to point out this as well:

"This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the ones which have to point out these rifts in the relationship. More generally, to do the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy."

This is outrageously sexist. In my relationship, I'm continually suggesting compromises, and "doing the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy." The idea that women are the caretakers of relationships is silly. In a healthy relationship, both partners have responsibility and the ability to keep things operating on an even keel.

You caught me off-guard a bit saying my post is sexist. To be clear I am NOT saying that this is how things are in all relationships, or how things should be. I'm very much in the camp of partners needing to be full partners, and for open and health communication.

I'm also not blind to the fact that there are still some deeply ingrained stereotypes, however subtle, about gender roles in our society, and I'm trying, perhaps poorly, to rephrase some points from the article (and others like it), in which the author very clearly names this: "the mental load bore almost exclusively by women."

This isn't a personal attack on you or your relationship. On the contrary, it sounds like you have a pretty healthy relationship, and I'm happy for you!

But the fact that this concept resonates with many people though, men and women, probably means there is something here that warrants more conversation for a lot of people, even if it isn't something that is a problem in your particular relationship.

I can definitely confirm that despite my many readings of articles and studyings of psychology, this article describes some of the most common issues I've run into in romantic relationships with women on a day to day level, but in some cases relationship-ending. I don't think the point of the article is, or the point of our discussions should be whether this is the way things just are, or should be. Rather, it's about acknowledging that this is very often the case, whether by nature or nurture or whatever. Just that 'common ground' might be essential to developing ways to improve things.

"This is outrageously sexist. In my relationship..."

Did you miss the words "more often expected" in your quote? I don't see how it's sexist at all, let alone 'outrageously'.

You're treating a description of the status quo as prescriptive, which is how you're mistakenly viewing the article and the poster to whom you're responding as "outrageously sexist". Women are still, by existing social norms, expected to be relationship caretakers, and this is being identified as a sexist problem to be addressed, not as a goal.

I still think like this stinks of "i'm a grown up and they're not" when the parent comment here is more correct, its more different standards. There are equivalent reasons various members of the household get pissed about stuff which always boil down to:

> why isn't anyone paying attention to what I do?

Q. Why does my flatmate leave his freaking tools every bloody where? A. 'cause he is the house handyman and when stuff is broken he fixes it.

Q. Why am I constantly tidying up my flatmate's mess? A. Because he's a bit careless but ultimately its flatmate B that's requiring the clear table so its in deference to them.

Q. Why does flatmate B always leave the damn hoover plugged in like a freaking tripwire around the house? A. 'cause when they've done the hoovering they can't be bothered to tidy up that part of the tidy up.

Everyone has their foibles and everyone can do better but to expect everyone else to magically assume your perspective and notice you all the freaking time is a selfish position. To be exasperated that you have to communicate your discomfort is a laziness of its own. If you fail to communicate then that's on you. Sure you shouldn't "have to" but part of accepting other people into your life is accepting their imperfections.

Anyway, pushing this into some genderised codshit is bollocks.

As a male, I can offer something of a counter-point: clutter makes me uncomfortable and I find it hard to ignore it or "let it go". If there's a full trash bin, I feel that I need to empty that bin before I can throw anything else away. This feeling is not shared by my partner who will happily wedge an item in around the edge or pile on top with the intention of emptying the bin at a later time, when it's more convenient.

It's not clear to me where the compromise in this situation might lie. First and foremost, I think it's important to admit that this isn't a big deal either way. But the fact that I am uncomfortable, or that the knowledge of the full bin itches at the back of my mind, makes it an issue I find difficult to dismiss. In my own life I try to remind myself that this is my own issue and that leaving the bin until later is not an unreasonable attitude to take.

In practice, I believe I often just deal with the bin (or whatever issue is at hand) and move on. Sometimes, I am ashamed to say, I get cranky and maybe even huff and puff as I do so. By the same token, on many occasions my partner will empty the bin even though they may prefer to leave it for later. I think that this is compromise, but it's not anything systemic and there's no "rule" that dictates who does what.

A compromise could also be to divide the tasks differently: instead of the tidy and less tidy partners being 50/50 on taking the garbage out, perhaps it should be 99/1 on garbage (the less tidy person only handles it in unusual circumstances) but the less tidy person takes on different responsibilities like running the finances or taking on car maintenance or cooking dinner.

I'm not in love with the phrase "emotional labor" but I would suspect if you reflect more deeply you will see the scenarios in this article playing out in your own and others' relationships.

It's not really about standards, more the fact that it's not fair to women when the default assumption is they are in mental charge of household and child-rearing duties - certainly when both partners are working.

I'll share a comic others in the thread have I had enjoyed before: https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

That's an interesting comic and I enjoyed reading it, but wow those comments are hard to take..

That comic is really funny, in a bad sense. She should've asked. For one, as someone who enjoys cooking, I really want to be alone in the kitchen. Also, if a person is not considerate enough to help, that won't change. If that guy is not already helping her out in the kitchen, probably he's that type of guy. As I said in another comment, if you want to live with someone who'll automatically help you with the kitchen, marry such a person. Because you won't be able to make the guy in that comic into what you want.

I think about some things I said in did in relationships in my 20s and cringe.

I hope I have gotten massively more in-tune with others' emotions and desires, having read more, witnessed modeling aside from my parents, and gone through a more varied and extensive set of personal and interpersonal experiences to compare with.

While I have observed most people's personalities being fairly static, I do think it's possible to morph into an empath. Quickly, even, if tragedy or mental health issues strike.

I don't disagree you, it's possible to morph oneself into an empath, and maybe re-shape one's character and/or habits. But it's lots of effort in vain to try and morph someone else, that's what I am trying to say. Re-reading my comment I see that I could have made it more clear.

> https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

This comic calls it the mental load, the posted article calls it emotional labor. Based on some additional googling, I think mental load is the more established term.

Why isn't the solution for the man to compromise on his expectations?

The question goes both ways. If their mutual goal is living together, that is.

Compromise does indeed go both ways. I'm not seeing that here though. At no point does the woman say "well, I guess we just don't do that thing in our house." (Obviously when children come into the equation, the man's not knowing the pediatrician's phone number is true learned helplessness and laziness, rather than a difference in standards, because presumably both parties enjoy having a healthy child).

I agree that the role of woman-as-manager is encouraged by societal expectations, but when it's this distressing, she needs to let go of some standards rather than piling them on to her emotional plate. You can't marry someone with different standards of cleanliness and expect yours to prevail — the only fair expectation is to land somewhere in the middle.

Its not like she's talking about polishing silver or some martha-stewart level domesticity. The standards of living the author describes are pretty basic.

Dirty clothes on the floor? What is this, your college dorm!? It is an unlikely option that the man/husband could also raise his standards.

I'm a woman and I frequently leave clothes on the floor of our bedroom, usually in a little pile, but sometimes socks here and there. Eventually I gather and wash them. Truly, in all these years, no harm has ever once come of it.

The article specifically says that he's willing to do more of the chores or whatever is asked of him around the house. That is compromise. I don't care about clutter whatsoever, and while I'd be happy to clean to make my partner feel better, it's not going to make me care any more. This article just reads like a woman who is mad that her husband doesn't share her perspective -- she notes that he has no problem doing the work.

The problem isn't messiness. The problem is the additional mental load it creates for half of a household to keep increasingly more information in active memory while staying functional. If you continue this computing analogy, you can easily see how the added search cost, not to mention memory/storage load, dramatically affects system performance (but with the benefit of things being done with full contextual awareness). Compare this to a system with extremely limited working memory, which flies in comparison but only puts the very most recent or most critical actions in context.

In a household with more than two people, especially, the resulting mental load can get unreasonable very quickly.

These are the kinds of issues you're supposed to discuss before you marry someone. She has higher standards, and she ends up doing all kinds of (unnecessary in her husband's mind) work to keep those standards, which are hers alone.

Discussion is one thing, but I think the real test is cohabitation. There are lots of things you think you can deal with in theory, but when faced with it every day, you are forced to either 1) come to a compromise, 2) let it go, or 3) quietly seethe about it for the rest of your life.

Fortunately, my wife is a clinical psychologist, so #3 was off the table in our house.

However it's done, it's my opinion that a couple should come to an understanding about practical and mundane details of their life situation before making serious commitments.

It sounds like you've got a good thing going...1 and 2 I can deal with, the quiet seething is a no-go.

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