Reply to S/O is anyone not bothered by the “mental load”?

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Reply to "S/O is anyone not bothered by the “mental load”?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The conversation around mental labor is so challenging because women take it as axiomatic that men “should” care about all the things (summer camps registration, Christmas cards, Larlo needs a purple shirt on Thursday for school, etc.). They just literally will never care about these things the way women do, and frankly, rarely manage these tasks as well as women.

I liken this to the way men are endlessly frustrated that their wives don’t “want” them as much as they “should” intimately. It just is. No amount of frustration or exasperation or explaining how his wife “should want” to do xyz with him in bed will ever change the fact that women by and large will never want the way men do.

Once I accepted that my DH just won’t care as much as I do (but will take any labor domain I ask), it was so freeing! I don’t expect him to get the kids ready ever. I don’t mind doing it anymore, because it’s not even a question to me that he won’t. BUT I’ve gotten super comfortable leaving certain domains entirely to him (all the laundry, all the cooking, all the car stuff), and I take all the kid stuff. [/quote]

I guess that my husband takes care of the Christmas cards and the purple shirt situation.  
I guess I think of the “mental load” as making sure that there are clean shirts (and pants and socks and underpants and coats and pajamas and shoes and boots and gloves and snow pants) of the appropriate size all of the other days.  
I don’t send the Christmas cards, but I know when Christmas mass is and whether or not the kids are singing, what they have to wear, that they have their religious sacraments done and get to religious Ed (or teach it myself if no one else does) and get to choir practice and regularly volunteer.

It isn’t that I hate doing this stuff.  Most of it I would still do even if we divorced.  It’s that I wish it were appreciated.  And I really can’t handle it when it’s criticized.

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