“There’s a weird smell in the basement. Can you please find it?”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
”You’re not the boss of me!”
”Why do I always have to be the one to (fill in the blank)?”
Twenty years ago, that might have been how this conversation went down in our house.
But today, after years of practicing and failing and finally figuring out how this marriage thing works, Gavin said,
“Sure!”
Ok, I’m lying.
He actually said, “Okaaayyyy” and then gave me that frowny-face look that means, “I don’t want to do this, but I will because I love you.”
We didn’t have to play rock-paper-scissors.
No one tried to bargain.
And best of all, no one got upset.
Even though Gavin “claimed” he smelled nothing, I knew for sure something was either rotten, dead, or hiding in the spare bedroom currently occupied by the teenage boy living in our house. Gavin spends the better part of most days at work while spend mine running up and down the stairs to take the dog out to the backyard. (I think I know what the basement is supposed to smell like.)
He agreed to check it out.
In our home, there’s a very clear balance of power:
One in which he does all the stinky stuff.
“Stinky stuff” includes things like cleaning up vomit and sterilizing the trash bin that’s in the garage.
We don’t keep score. It’s just the way things are.
Keeping score would be exhausting.
And besides, keeping score is what you do when you both play for two different teams.
But Gavin and I are on the same team! We’re not competing against each other. We are always working with and for each other.
And that’s why he agreed to scout out the weird smell in the basement without pushing back.
To be honest, I don’t even have the energy for push-come-to-shove kind of arguments. It’s hard enough to manage the energy for all the other stuff I have to do around here.
“Energy:
The capacity to do work”
Life is work, and anybody who tells you differently is either trying to sell you something or has been retired for entirely too long.
I don’t get up in the morning and go to a regular 9-5, but everyday I do carry something that’s been dubbed “The Mental Load.”
Here’s a funny cartoon that explains it perfectly
The mental load is the total sum of responsibilities that you take on to manage “the remembering of things.” It’s emotional labor, defined by Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, as the process of managing emotions and relationships with others in order to be more successful at your job. Moreover, it’s largely invisible.
Making the dentist appointments
Buying the groceries
Doing the laundry
Scheduling maintenance
Paying the bills
Setting the alarms
Remembering birthdays, anniversaries
Scheduling social outings
Researching vacation spots, educational opportunities, summer camps, etc.
Purchasing gifts
Coordinating family pictures
Mailing the holiday cards
The pace and strain of being in charge of all these time-consuming, menial tasks takes its toll. While the perception may be that this invisible work is insignificant, it is hardly inconsequential.
Is there anyone out there who hasn’t felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and burned out because she was responsible for #allthethings?
“To feel valued and valuable is as compelling a need as food. The more our value feels at risk, the more preoccupied we become with defending and restoring it, and the less value we’re capable of creating in the world.”
There’s a feeling among some women that you shouldn’t have to ask for help, that the people that love you, especially your spouse, should inherently “know” what you need and offer to help before being asked.
Let me tell you a secret: Because the mental load is carried in our minds and because no one has yet figured out how to read minds,
Ima gonna have to ask for help when I need it.
The load I carry—so heavy and overwhelming at times—no one ever asked me to carry it. It is a burden I have placed on myself.
I know what you’re thinking:
“If I don’t do all those things, then nothing will ever get done!”
And you might be right. The smell in the basement was bothersome to me, not to anyone else. If I had kept silent, I’d be sitting here tonight pinching my nose and praying for a drop-shipment of Febreeze.
but Don’t let pride be the barrier that keeps you from asking for exactly what you need.
We want things to be fair.
We want things to be even.
But when one spouse begins keeping score everybody loses.
There are no winners.
So where does that leave us?
There’s a saying in our house that we use whenever we’re talking about someone who needs more experience or doesn’t understand something we think she should; we say, “She just needs a few more birthdays.”
And I guess that goes for married people, too.
“We just need a few more anniversaries.”
After awhile, you realize it’s just not worth it to stay silent and hope he figures out that the bed needs made or the dishwasher unloaded or the toilet paper changed.
Just ask.
It takes two seconds!
And I’ve got news for you, things will never be fair. They will never be even. And honestly, I don’t think I would even want it that way.
In a fair world, I would have been the one looking for the weird smell in the basement.
“She who smelt it dealt it,” Am I right?
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