Ep 1: Division of Household Labor

EP 1: DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR

Today our anonymous question is about the division of labor in a household, which really is one of the most common things couples bring up in couples therapy. It's also very complicated to really unpack. 

We’ll explore ways to understand what is at the root of unequal division of labor, how it makes people feel, how to talk about it, how to resolve it, and how to repair around it. We'll explore what kind of ruptures have happened because of it and what kind of habits need to be deconstructed and then rebuilt.

So, if you also have a question about this or any other topic you can submit your anonymous relationship questions through our website:  http://www.welcometobeingalive.com

Welcome to Being Alive is a podcast about the messy, beautiful, and occasionally heartbreaking world of relationships. Couples therapist, Inez Cordoba, LICSW, CST has spent thousands of hours helping couples and now  gets to be in conversation with you.

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Sponsored by the Northampton Center for Couples Therapy, where loving well is an art, and getting there is a science. Visit http://www.northamptoncouplestherapy.com to learn more.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Inez Cordoba

Host and Creator of Welcome To Being Alive. Inez Cordoba, LICSW, CST runs a private therapy practice in Western Massachusetts, Cordoba Couples Therapy.

Composer

Adam Braunschweig

Musician based out of Western Massachusetts.

Editor

Joel Martinez Lopez

What is Welcome To Being Alive?

A podcast about the messy, beautiful, and occasionally heartbreaking world of relationships. I'm your host, Inez Cordoba, a couples therapist and certified sex therapist. I've spent thousands of hours helping couples and now I get to be in conversation with you. Here's how it works. You send in your anonymous relationship questions, and I'll give you earnest and compassionate insight that's grounded in psychotherapy. Each episode we'll wander through the stories you send in and together make meaning about what it really means to feel alive in your closest relationships.

Hi there, you're listening to Welcome to Being Alive, a podcast about the messy, beautiful, and occasionally heartbreaking world of relationships. I'm your host, Inez Cordoba, a couples therapist and certified sex therapist. I've spent thousands of hours helping couples, and now I get to be in conversation with you.
Here's how it works. You send in your anonymous relationship questions, and I'll give you earnest and compassionate insight that's grounded in psychotherapy. Each episode we'll wander through the stories you send in and together make meaning about what it really means to feel alive in your closest relationships.
So, if you've ever wondered why love feels so complicated or how to make it a little less so, you're in the right place. Around here, we're making sense of love, one tangent at a time.
So, for today's theme, our anonymous question revolves around the division of labor in a household, which really is one of the most common things couples bring up in couples therapy. I would say most, if not, maybe all of my couples at some point have brought this up as a point of conversation and something to sort through together.
It's very common. However, it's also very complicated to really unpack. There are so many ways to understand what is at the root of unequal division of labor, how things are split, how it makes people feel, how to talk about it, how to resolve it, how to repair around it, what kind of ruptures have happened because of it? How long has it been going on? What kind of habits are there built in that need to be deconstructed and then rebuilt.
So, if you also have a question about this, please write it in because there could be so many ways to address the single theme and the more detail that you write in about how it shows up in your relationship, the more nuance I can try to give as a kind of response.
So, we're starting to talk about it today, but it is an ongoing conversation I'm happy to have with you and those listening and with really any couple. It's also worth noting I will answer this question, all questions, but since we're talking about division of labor, I'll answer this differently depending on which half of the couple is writing in, right?
If the one who's writing in is the one who's feeling resentful, overworked, like they're over-functioning, overly responsible, I’ll have one way to respond, and if it's the half of the couple that gets labeled maybe as passive or forgetful or maybe is getting messages of criticism or like they're not doing something good enough, right? I would respond to this very differently.
So, I hope over time, both sides of this kind of couple will write in so I could speak to both experiences and I have a lot of empathy for both sides. So, I just want you to know I hold a lot of empathy for both sides. I know that depending on which way you look at this, either half of the couple, the one who's either quote unquote over-functioning or quote unquote under-functioning can get a bad rap. And I do my best to really honor how difficult it is to be in either role. Also encourage change on both sides. So just making clear where my stance is as we kind of enter into this conversation.
So, if you are looking for a resource right away, something that as soon as this podcast ends, you wanna be able to pick up and have even more information, maybe a place to begin, a way to start a conversation with your partner.
The first thing I suggest is the book Fair Play by Eve Rodsky. It is a New York Times bestseller. A lot of times couples that I meet have already heard of this book, so maybe you have as well, but in case you haven't, I want to throw it out there. Um, the little tagline, A game changing solution for when you have too much to do and more life to live.
And I think it's a really great book for couples to read together or at the same time. It introduces them to some shared language. There's also a card deck that goes along with the book called The Fair Play Deck, a couple's conversation deck for prioritizing what's important. It's kind of a way to gamify the conversation by using this stack of cards that has some like prewritten ideas of what are some shared tasks that you might wanna be able to talk about and divvy up.
I think it's a really helpful way to have the conversation, almost have like a third party guiding it so it's not one person guiding the conversation and reiterating who's the manager and who's trying to delegate, but having this sort of like third entity, this deck of cards that is guiding the conversation and it takes the pressure off both people.
So, I like that. And that's one place to begin. You could go pick that up or look into it as soon as this podcast ends, in fact. So right off the bat, I wanted you to have a resource that you could go to, but now we can get into the conversation.
What would I say? Say a couple has come to me and they've already read fair play, and they've already done the card deck, and yet they're still struggling.
What are some nuances that can't be addressed in a static book, that needs a dynamic space in which it can be a more ongoing dimensional conversation to really understand what is this about? Like I said, this is one of the most common perpetual issues that a couple has to make sense of, and it's also the most complicated.
So, this anonymous question was written in from a heterosexual couple that's been married for 10 years. It does seem that it was the wife who wrote it in and she's asking how to make it more equitable. It being the division of labor in the household and sharing that. Things that they have tried without the kind of change she's been hoping for Anyways, she's tried being direct, she's made lists, they've had team meetings, chore charts, establishing what are your chores versus my chores. She was also very honest, which I appreciate. She also listed out the things that she's tried that hasn't worked right, that would be yelling, shame, guilt, even no reaction, trying to stay neutral. I really appreciate that.
Honestly, when something is a perpetual issue that's been going on for a decade, it appears, it brings out not really the best in us, and that is very true, and that becomes a whole other layer of this conversation is like what kind of resentment has built up, what kind of ruptures, how much like grating and distance and disconnect has this conversation created? And what kind of repair and reconnection is needed just in general in the relationship? And that's really honest. That becomes oftentimes like the meat and potatoes of couples therapy work: repairing, repairing the moments, the conflict conversation did not go well, that they got flooded, repairing the conflict conversations that had yelling or guilt or shame or criticism and blame.
And so that's something I'm gonna put a pin in and we can circle back to. I think that is really vital to this conversation.
There is a strength that this person mentioned. I don't know that they see it as a strength, but I wanna go ahead and label it as a strength and we can come back to it as well.
Their partner does seem to do the stuff, whatever the stuff is when asked. I take that to mean they're not likely to be defensive or avoidant or push back, which is certainly helpful, but I am not minimizing how it still places the kind of invisible labor and the mental load on the person who is managing and looking ahead and anticipating and thinking about what needs to get done and well, how busy are we next week? So, what do we need to get done this week? And the level of scanning and to some extent hyper vigilance that is then required of that person who is remembering and then delegating.
So that part is still painful, but I also have worked with the kind of couple in which even with the reminders, "Hey, don't forget, Hey, can you do this thing? Hey, by the way" and then having that partner still forget or avoid, or whatever's happening for the other partner. And then that's another layer of pain that even in the attempt to delegate doesn't work. So, I do think that that is a strength, again, not to minimize how difficult the other aspects are, but for what that's worth.
I wanted to underscore that. All right, so let's unpack, like I said, really complicated and when I'm meeting a couple and we're going through this theme together, there is a kind of checklist I'm imagining in my head and this, I have a version of this for whatever the theme is, and I'm first trying to discern if the problem at hand is relational versus like individual.
Like is there something happening for the individual that they need to address outside on their own in order to improve this thing that they're wanting to change versus how much of it is relational? And it's usually a combination of both. But getting clear about that in my mind helps me guide the couple.
By individual, I mean, I'm first curious if the reason the half of the couple that is struggling to show up in mutuality around something like household chores is because of depression or anxiety, chronic illness or chronic pain, maybe ADHD. Is there some alternate way for me to understand what is contributing to the forgetfulness, the kind of blind spots, the passivity or avoidance that's coming up that can already explain quite a bit.
And if that is the case then how do I support that half of the couple, getting the individual resources they need to address their depression or understand how to hack their ADHD, or you know, getting a better sense of what their individual chronic illness or chronic pain looks like and how it impacts them. I am first scanning for that.
And then before I look at it relationally, I'm also curious like what each person is bringing into the conversation almost gender wise, uh, that's actually gender is something that this person who wrote in the question mentioned that it feels like the division of labor in their household is really dependent on the sense that women are often the default person when it comes to invisible labor or household chores or even parenting, and the frustration of that division of labor and the frustration of that gendered roles.
And so, it is helpful for each half of the couple to investigate what are internalized expectations that they have, that they're playing out or enabling and talking about. It gives them a chance to deconstruct any of those gendered roles and then reconstruct them in a way that actually works for them.
But I will also put in a caveat here, it doesn't always fall along gendered roles. I know that there is a norm, and it often falls that way, but queer couple not gonna fall across gendered norms, but they could still encounter the same difficulty with division of labor, and it's happening for different reasons.
Right. And there are plenty of heterosexual couples that I've worked with as well where the rules are reversed, and so just wanting to name that. It is not a hundred percent of the time a gendered thing, but if that is happening for the couple or it's being experienced that way, it's absolutely a worthwhile conversation.
Sometimes they're just personality differences too, like just different expectations about how a household should be run, or what a cozy home looks or feels like, or what it means to be organized, or what their relationship to clutter is. Some people have a higher tolerance; some people have a lower tolerance.
That can do with upbringing or personality or you know, so many reasons. And just getting clear about where each person is beginning and what they're bringing in, in terms of what they imagine their adult life to look like and how it should be run on the day-to-day is just like a really valuable, open-ended question to have.
And I don't think a lot of couples have that conversation when they first move in together. I mean, it's not a very sexy conversation, but it is a worthwhile conversation. So sometimes it's also just about it getting a clear sense of what people's preferences, what they value, what they prioritize, and what they came in to, the relationship wanting or expecting.
Along those same lines, I'm also curious about what is simply shaped by habit. What was sort of circumstance, the status quo as it has become, right? Like sometimes when people move in together one person is working second shift, the other person has a longer commute, they didn't have pets yet, they didn't have kids yet. Whatever those circumstances were, it might've set up a particular way of how they move through their day and organize themselves, and then it just became the norm. And then as jobs changed or they moved, or they got the animal and the pet or had kids, expectations might have changed, or availability, flexibility, preferences, all these things might have changed, but the couple might not have slowed down to check in about the status quo and if it was still working for them.
Sometimes it's easier to just fall back to the habits as they were and not really take the effort it needs to deconstruct a habit and then together follow through with building out brand-new habits around something. So that's another thing I'm looking at is habits.
So, moving forward, I'm starting to look at the relationship more relationally, like what could be happening as a dynamic between the two of them that has established this as the status quo and just sort of solidified it as this is how they live their life. Who is it benefiting? Is it benefiting you in ways you didn't even realize? How does each half of the couple enable the dynamic and are they even aware that they enable it in some particular way? Do they realize how much agency they have to change these things or do they feel like they don't have agency and it's really their partner who's dictating the way this has unfolded? Right?
Like I'm starting to get very curious about what is going on relationally for the couple. So, let me share like an anecdotal example, right? Sometimes what has happened is you have one half of the couple that really has strong opinions about something about how a home should look, what kin keeping should be like, what parenting should look like, and you have another person who's just flexible. It's not that they don't have any opinion, it's that they're just like, whatever works. This is not a hill I wanna die on. You let me know what works for you. Happy to go with what you want. And it sort of plays out first from a place of, this really matters to me. No problem. It matters to you less to me. Whatever works.
And so, it starts off actually just fine. But as the years pass, perhaps what starts to happen is the person with all the opinions starts to feel alone, resentful, burdened by the over responsibility of having to choose, having to feel almost responsible for the outcome of every choice. And it gets quite lonely to be in that role and the person who started off feeling quite flexible, like, you know what? Whatever makes you happy, happy to do it in the way that you want, you just tell me what to do. Starts to become very passive, right? They kinda lose their voice more and more as time goes on, and that's a different kind of resentment that builds too, that is now more about a dynamic that has played out.
Each person enabled it in some way and maybe it worked for them at first and they didn't know what to do when it started to not work for them. And what can be really interesting when I'm working with that kind of couple is say the flexible passive, half of the couple really gets the message. Okay. Like, got it. I hear what you're saying. This isn't working. I need to step up more, show up with more mutuality. I don't have strong opinions about this, but I do have some, like I do have a sense of self, and so I will bring it up and I will engage more in this process with you.
And then what happens for the other half of the couple is now they have to compromise more. On the one hand, it was really lonely and exhausting to be the one making all the choices in that manager role, perhaps it even started to feel parental after a while, which is a really unsexy stance to be in. But now they have to compromise. Now they have to let go and access their own flexibility, accept influence from the other half.
And that's sometimes a kind of a moment where a myth is busted for a couple, where there's this sense that, you know, they come in with this, like, I really want more mutuality, I wanna feel like we're on the same team, like we are partners, I want my partner to show up more, but what they may not realize is that requires more compromise and more negotiation. It doesn't mean that there is more fluidity and more ease and the sense of like, well, we are of one mind and on the same page. Having a sense of mutuality is way more work. And really involves accepting influence from our partner, letting go, being flexible and things will get done, but perhaps not in the way we would have done them.
And sometimes what has come out of those conversations with couples is them going, you know what? Actually, there are some things I would still like to be in charge of. I actually really struggle to compromise around certain aspects of our life, and I liked having all of that agency actually. But what is different is that each half of the couple feels like they stepped into those roles now with a sense of choice versus we just fell into them and I'm stuck by it.
Instead, now there is an increased sense of agency and choice around it. And they know that if at some point it's not working, they can come back to one another, they have the language and they could renegotiate again.
So that's an example of how this can maybe go when a couple starts to look relationally at how did we get here and is it working for us? And maybe it is a little bit, but let's put all our cards on the table and just check in about it.
And there is one more type of couple that I want to talk about before I circle back to the initial question that got written in this type of couple I know exists. But I'll be honest, this type of couple doesn't usually end up in the couple therapy room. So, I don't meet this couple very often, but I do know that they exist in, so it'll name it here. And so, this is where the half of the couple that is showing up essentially under functioning isn't actually interested in any kind of change. They don't want to look at their role, acknowledge the under functioning.
Maybe they like doing less and they wanna keep it that way. Maybe it brings up too much shame for them and they don't want to examine this. There is a version of this where that person is almost engaging in a kind of neglect to their relationship where they're not really participating and they're, they don't want to, there's a feeling of almost using their partner, like, just take care of me. You just do it, I don't want to, I like being taken care of.
To me, that's an outlier to this conversation because that couple doesn't show up in the couples therapy room. If that's the dynamic that's playing out, that half of the couple doesn't want to come to couples therapy, they're not interested in change, and that's what couples therapy is about.
And that's not shared work. That's not couples work. That's the person who is over-functioning needs to do some individual work with themselves to ask, why am I in this partnership? Does this really work for me? I can't change anybody else, so why am I expecting change when it's clear that they're not really interested in a different dynamic between us.
They want to be taken care of and do I want to take care of them? And if not, you know, then that's when you have to ask yourself really hard questions like, are you in the right relationship? And that's a really hard question to ask if there are kids, if you've been married for a long time, if your finances are bound up. And so that is a different conversation, but I just wanted to name that.
I'm really talking about couples in which this dynamic is playing out, but there is at least some interest on both parts to unpack this dynamic and understand it better and look at it, this conversation does not apply where half of that partnership is just not interested in change whatsoever.
Yeah. Yeah. So, there we go. I went through the different dimensions that I am looking for when I'm meeting a couple, and what are the possibilities and the nuances and the different threads in which to understand what is impacting their ability to divide household labor in a more equitable and mutual way. Right.
Alright, so now we can circle back to the original question. I just first wanted to lay out my own internal process as a couple's therapist when I'm sitting with this theme of division of household chores with a couple and the kinds of directions it can take us.
Honestly take weeks, if not months, to really sort through. I really believe that a couple can only come to a good solution to a problem that they're trying to change by understanding it really deeply. And so I begin with what are all the ways we can understand this? I find it helps couples access, empathy, and find really creative solutions. So, I shared with you what goes on in my mind when I am looking at this question, this theme with couples, and now we can circle back to the initial question that was sent in, right?
How to make the work more equitable. Now, I don't have a ton of details, so I can't go through my entire checklist in the way that I laid out I would, right? Like, I don't know if this person's husband is struggling with any kind of depression or ADHD or what their work schedule is like. I don't know what their husband's preferences are, or attitudes towards household chores is so I can't tease apart, what could be impacting this person's husband in terms of why they struggle to show up with greater mutuality.
So, the starting point that I think of based on the limited information I have, is really how important a vulnerable conversation would be between this couple to address the impact of the over-functioning, right? Is it leading to resentment, to withdrawing affection. That's not what this person has said, but I wonder what is the impact?
10 years of feeling like you are the default adult in the home. And the way that they are writing this seems to say that they feel it's unchangeable. Like this is just how it is and how it will be, and that's gotta be a hopeless feeling. Again, I'm putting a lot of conjecture in here, and so it may not be as dire as I'm making it out to be, but I am always curious what is the unspoken emotional impact of these dynamics as they've played out for years and years and years.
And I think naming that and helping a couple have that conversation is really important. That alone can begin to build trust and repair and really set the foundation for what are we going to do about this? If you have one half of the couple saying, this is not sustainable for me, it's impacting how I show up for you. It impacts my ability to be the kind of wife I would like to be. It's I feel resentful, I feel angry, I feel shut down around you then it's really important that they are having this conversation, and so if any of that is true for this person, the emotional impact, the resentment. I hope that they can bring that up and then there might be what the partner has to say.
Right? I mean, this person very honestly mentioned that at times, talking about this has led to yelling, shame, guilting the other person, and that might have impacted the other person. Right. What is it like for the husband to say, I have my own resentment or hurt? It's been difficult to sit with criticism and blame.
Even if some of that criticism was called for because they were not showing up with that kind of mutuality, criticism is incredibly harmful to a relationship. It's true. Something I'm often saying to my couples is, you might be so annoyed that your partner keeps leaving the socks on the floor, and you've said hundreds of times, stop leaving your socks on the floor please.
But ultimately, if those requests come out with contempt and disdain in the tone and in the body language. It is that disdain and contempt and criticism that is harmful to the relationship, not the socks on the floor. And so that's also true here, is there a version of this conversation that also needs to be had between this couple where the husband speaks to their own hurt. That needs to be part of the conversation just as much as the hurt of, I wish you were showing up differently and I don't perhaps fully understand why you're not.
So, if I were working with this couple, that would be the first thing I'd wanna help them do is have that vulnerable conversation. From there it's why, what's going on for this other person? Where do those blind spots come from? Assuming they want to change and they don't want to leave all that extra labor on their partner, is it a matter of that's just not how my brain works, I don't think in that way. And yet, is that person willing to, are they willing to reexamine how they prioritize their day and the rhythm of their day and how they look ahead and it won't look exactly how their partner does it. But they can build their own rituals to be more mentally aware of their shared life and what needs attention.
And through that negotiation, that couple might realize, you know, you're probably never gonna notice when we run out of milk, and that's okay, you never drink the milk, I do. But I bet you could start to remember X, Y, or Z. And that's, that's a part of that negotiation.
I don't think it comes down to just a chore list and a to-do list. I think those are band-aids for a couple. They give a short-term strategy that, especially maybe if you are in early parenthood life, like couples just need like survival skills, like how can we get through the short chapter in our life in which it's high demand, but ultimately for the longevity of a relationship, you need a sustainable solution and it's gonna be more than the to-do list or the chore chart.
Or even the divvying up of labor, it's going to be who are you and what are your strengths, and who am I and what are my strengths? And what roles do we choose in our relationship from a place of choice, and agency, and not just 'cause we fell into them because of gender, because of habit, because of your personality versus mine, but because we are grown adults with full control and mastery over our prefrontal cortexes, ideally, right? And we made that decision together.
And then lastly, it just takes time, right? Creating a new dynamic is built on a series of small changes. There's not one different thing, right? If, if someone wrote in and said, oh, my partner always leaves their shoes in a pile by the front door, and they never put it in the little like, you know, shoe cubby. Okay you're talking about one habit that needs to be different. One blind spot that someone needs to bring online to their brain. That alone will take a long time. Because what? To build a new neuro pathway takes what? Like 10,000 repetitions. Like all of these things take time, but when you're saying, I want an entirely new dynamic for how we manage the rhythm of our life in the every day, you're talking about multiple mini ongoing changes. That takes so much time, and so really a couple has to sort of lock in and go, great we are in it for the long haul. A relationship lasts a long time. Let's be in conversation over time around this. That's your only choice.
If any couple is expecting change based on one conversation, then they're frustrated that that one conversation didn't lead to lasting change. It's unrealistic. It is ongoing conversation that is based in mutuality and respect and kindness again and again, and again and again.
And it could help also to narrow down what are we talking about when we say household chores? Like I said, if you're talking about, you know, the drunk drawer by the desk and you're talking about the shoes, and you're talking about the dishes and also who does the meal prep and who prepares the grocery list. It's too many things, you're asking for an entire overhaul of the person you're living with, and that's not only unrealistic, but kind of unfair, right?
You're essentially going to your partner and saying: I'd like you to change most things about yourself and how you show up every day. That's a really tall order. Even if, again, I'm not trying to discredit or minimize how painful and frustrating it is to feel like you're the only one really holding it together in terms of the glue of your shared life, but that's also a really unrealistic ask.
You need to do this broad thing differently. It is so much more helpful if you can break it down into what are the essentials, what become the first places that feel non-negotiable to you? You know. Okay dinners, right? We have to eat dinner every night. Maybe there's food allergies in the house. It becomes really important. It's something that our day really revolves around. It has to be done well and it should be done together. There's a lot of mental load involved. Great. Just begin there.
I think getting really clear on the specifics too, of where you wanna start knowing you've got plenty of time to go through ongoing changes. Yeah. But break it down into sizable chunks and then also keep the long game in mind, right.
So just to recap, I think starting with that emotionally vulnerable conversation about what the impact of this has been on each person and each person really hearing out the other and offering empathy. Then asking why, like why do you, why does each person understand why this difference exists? Why mutuality hasn't been easier to come by so far? And just being very, very curious with one another. Get to really understand the problem first, and then break the problem down into small, sizable chunks. Understand that it takes time, that the more specific and smaller that you start, the more momentum you'll eventually feel and the less overwhelming it becomes for each half of the party. Right?
Yeah. That's where I'd say you should begin. We covered so much today on this topic. I spoke in broad strokes at times and in generalities at other times, but I hope I was able to capture the complexity of this question and just start the conversation with all of you.
And I hope that if this is a theme that you relate to or resonate with. You'll also write in your questions so we can keep talking about this, there's so much to say about it.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for sending in your questions. Please keep sending them in. I really enjoyed getting to talk about this at length.
I hope you did as well. Thank you. Bye guys.
Thank you for listening to Welcome to Being Alive. I'm your host, Inez Cordoba. I hope today gave you something to think about or maybe even try out in your own love life. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show, leave a review or share it with friends.
Remember, you can submit questions through our website at Welcome to Being alive.com and follow us on all socials at Welcome to Being Alive. The show is brought to you by Cordoba Couples Therapy and the North Hampton Center for Couples Therapy. And a big thank you to from the Woods for our theme song: Apple Bottom Boogaloo.
Until next time.
Remember, being alive means loving learning, and sometimes just surviving together.
Thanks guys.