How can I shift some of the mental load of family life on to my husband?
My husband and I have three young children. He works full time and I work part time in a demanding, stressful job. He is a hands-on dad, sharing practical childcare duties when not at work. The problem is that I take the lion’s share of the mental load when it comes to family life: all the planning, organising and ultimate responsibility. If something slips through my net, he won’t catch it.
I have tried to redress this. We tried to divide tasks evenly, into practical ones and “thinking ones”, such as remembering when the kids are due a dentist appointment. My husband keeps up with his tasks to a variable extent, but it’s 50/50 whether he’ll notice that something is needed/due.
I’ve tried several times to discuss this imbalance, but it just ends in an argument. My husband thinks he does an equal share and that I’m being unreasonable. I can’t seem to illustrate to him how much mental load I carry. I know one approach would be to simply stop doing some of what I do and let him catch up. I have tried to do this a little, but there are things I find harder to let go.
The past few years have been tough for both of us; between that and my job, I need a bit of headspace, which is why I’d like to be able to share the family responsibility more evenly. How can I do that?
You asked me not to divulge your job, but I do need to acknowledge how incredibly stressful it is. You may work part time, but the responsibility must be with you full time.
In a response to a letter last year, I described the weight of responsibility as being like shopping bags: if we carry too many that aren’t ours, it can become unbearable. Given how much you already carry for work, it’s not surprising you feel overburdened at home.
Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist (bpc.org.uk), wondered if you are hyper-vigilant and have extremely high standards (a necessity in your line of work). If your husband did nothing, or very little, this would be a different story, but it sounds as if he does quite a lot. So, without discounting the way you feel, we wondered if the issue was less your husband not doing specific tasks, and more his not doing them in the way you’d prefer?
If that’s the case, no amount of chats and charts would help – not until you allow yourself the luxury of letting go of certain things.
“The terrific struggle here is that your husband isn’t like you,” Abse said. “He won’t notice things as quickly as you and that leaves a gap that is painful for you. If you expect your partner to be exactly the same as you, then you’re in a constant state of disappointment.”
Abse wondered if there was a way you could “work through some of the disappointment and accept the limitations”. We thought you might need to decide to take sole responsibility for some things: those that you decide are critical, which you feel have to be done to a certain standard (if you’re anything like me, these are things that directly affect the children). And then leave the other tasks for your husband to do when (and how) he likes. There’s no point giving your husband a job that he won’t do to your liking, because that just sets up failure. (To be super analytical for a moment, maybe you have been setting him up in this way because, unlike failures in your professional life, your husband’s are tolerable and predictable.)
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Abse and I also discussed a tendency in some relationships for one half of the couple to carry the anxiety, which allows the other to be more relaxed. It might be interesting to consider your other close relationships (with parents/siblings etc). Is there one in which you can be more relaxed, perhaps because the other person carries more responsibility, holds more anxiety and the stakes aren’t as high as you perceive them to be in the family home? I have noticed, for example, that when I’m with one family member who is highly anxious, I become a different person: far more relaxed.
Your cry for headspace is so important. And you need that, away from the family home and work. Can you make it happen, even for a few hours a week? With three young children constantly demanding your attention, you have a right to be “selfish” occasionally.
• Send your problem to annalisa.barbieri@mac.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence
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