The Mental Load
It will always be your fault, let’s just get that out of the way right now.
The real answer is that your mom never should have started managing your dad’s family, she should have left it up to him. When people asked, she should have said “Dad’s name didn’t get you a present?” Or “Dad’s name said he would handle it.”
While this isn’t particularly helpful to your mom, as the dynamic has already been built and reinforced for years, a lot of people don’t know that you need to start with the dynamic that you intend to maintain vs hoping someone else will change later.
I would like to give a big, hearty, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH to @ccannon1 on YouTube. This comment was posted on a video a that a young, married man made about the mental load discourse on TikTok and social media. It’s a very thoughtful video where he reflects on his own behavior, conditioning, and how he made changes in his relationship.
In the comments there’s the predictable mix of “I will never accept that” and “My mom is pathetic for accepting that”. I’ve been reading these types of comments since at least 2013, when I started writing about what I call The Motherload. One thing that I can tell you is that it will always, ALWAYS be a mom’s fault.
It will be your mom’s fault for allowing this behavior.
Or her mom’s fault for teaching her that this is what is expected.
Or your paternal grandmother’s fault for raising your dad like that.
On and on back through the generations - nevermind what’s actually true and nevermind who holds real power in patriarchy and nevermind what the dynamics in the particular families actually are and nevermind whatever growth or work these women have done - it will always, ALWAYS be a mom’s fault.
Even in the comments about the mental load - it’s her fault for falling into a pattern that was established long before she started dating, let alone got married. It’s not his fault for falling into that pattern, for benefitting from it without question, or for never thinking twice about changing it.
IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOUR FAULT.
How dare you do the things your were socialized to do until you realize how much they hurt and ask for change? If you wanted it to be different you should have known it would hurt before you experienced it and never experienced it in the first place!
I didn’t type any of that in the comments, honestly I shouldn’t have even gone into the comments. I’m GenX and I should know better. I do fucking know better. But I had some hope that as we’re now well over a decade into this conversation that younger generations would be having more nuanced versions of it.
The creator of the video did. It’s still too much to ask of a comment section.
And so that leaves me with this - if it’s always going to be your fault, no matter what, then you’re free. There is absolutely no way to get it right, so all that’s left is this question — how do you want to live your life?
What do you want out of your relationship with your spouse or partner?
What do you want to teach your children?
What do you want the legacy of your marriage to be?
Let go of getting it right, embrace the freedom that comes with being the villain, being wrong, being the fuckup and just live the way that you want.
A couple of weeks ago my in-laws were here and my MIL and I were sitting on the couch. My son (who had just turned 13) was on another couch playing a video game. He got up to go to the bathroom. On the way he stopped and picked up a bit of plastic wrapper that was on the ground. He threw it away and then went to the bathroom.
My MIL and I stopped talking and just SMILED at each other so big. He noticed. He noticed the very nearly clear thing that wasn’t actually in his way. He noticed it and saw it as his responsibility to fix. I felt like fucking Supermom for the rest of the day.
(Don’t worry, both kids have humbled me a billion times since then.)
It wasn’t always like this. Eight years ago my husband passed a sock on our stairs every day for so long that we had our biggest fight ever over it and changed the entire way that our marriage worked.
I chose to no longer live that way. My husband chose to no longer live that way. We no longer live that way. We could have gotten bogged down in blame and fault — and we did for a bit because we’re human and I was pissed. But our focus shifted to the thing under the thing — not who was doing more or who was planning what but “Whose responsibility is it?”
I cannot answer that question for you. I will not blame you for how you answered it in the past or for wanting to change the answer now.
I am happy to support you in asking the questions, chasing the answers, and changing your life in the ways that work for you and your family.