Some researchers have pointed out that men do much better in carrying the emotional labor of relationships in the courting stage of the relationship. If this is true, it implies that men are capable, just not sufficiently motivated—which is pretty damning.
I've also come across studies that tested men's and women's affective empathy with and without a financial incentive present, and, surprise, surprise, the financial incentive levelled the performance of women and men.
Outstanding synopsis of the emotional and mental labor shouldered by women in heterosexual relationships. As a physician specializing in maternal and child health, I can say from personal experience that all of this is true.
Part of the issue lies in the fact that men are disincentivized from forming intimate, communicative relationships with other men due to the fear of being labeled as “gay”. And they’re accused of emotional infidelity if they form close platonic relationships with women. This calculus leads to an inability to decipher and communicate their feelings.
A lot of the problem rests in very limiting social constructs of masculinity. And fear of being perceived as homosexual or unfaithful.
You are not a man and seem to have no understanding of the experiences of being one. if you really think that men don’t communicate their feelings and relationships that is absurd, and I feel most men would find it that way. Men communicate their feelings, at least in my experience very directly and very blatantly. Women do not communicate this directly in general, and this is what leads to this disconnect.
This is my experience when I became ill with an incurable, complex neurological disease. My partner of 20 years pursued his barista. He stupidly misread her banter skills with attraction and was rejected by her. Then came looking to be comforted by me when he confessed. The vile has been lifted.
I really appreciated this summary, and the part about how this emotional labor is both demanded of women and largely invisible. And, I would say there is an added feature which is that men's emotional lives and well-being are on the whole seen as more important and worthy of attention .Our expectations are adjusted downward, and no one really expects it to be otherwise. This is the part that gets internalized: a status quo where not only is our anger not welcome or allowed, but also the having our desires met is really, mostly, optional. Whose emotions matter and are given uptake is part of this equation.
The telling thing here is that women are allowed every emotion but anger. We can cry, laugh, do all the work to empathize with what men need and can't express, but we can't have anger. They keep that one for themselves.
This is such an important piece. I talked about it with my wife, am sharing it with friends, and most importantly: I'm going to discuss it with both my teen daughter and my teen son. Thank you for writing this. 🙏
Couldn't have been explained more eloquently. It reminds me of this one video I saw regarding a trending topic in China, where a father reached out to others to help with a serious topic he was struggling with.
Get this, the topic was his wife asking him to help out more around the house. What's worse, all the responses and top-liked comment were giving their own advice on what they did, which was to pretend to not know how to do something or do something purposefully wrong so the wife could stop asking.
This just goes to show that, yes men are capable, they just chose not to.
Ugh, all these responses are essentially encouraging him to use weaponised incompetence to get out of doing his fair share around the house. Disgusting.
If the man you are with is causing you to pay the price for caring and understanding him, leave. He’s not worth all the effort. Find a person who doesn’t exhaust you, and spend your emotional energy building a healthy relationship with them. It’s pretty simple really. Don’t date a man, or anyone, who makes you pay a price for caring about them.
Agree 100%. Although I have sadly met women who would rather keep carrying out all this labour year anyway, out of fear of being single or because they are genuinely convinced it's their 'god-given duty' or both.
The problem is that men don’t fear losing that woman…if they did, they would increase care, attention, help, emotional support, etc the sum of which is love…just naturally…just to be there for their wife and have her back…
Yes, and...freedom can be very expensive, especially when there are children in the mix. The social costs are why women are financially worse off after divorce, in general. Not everyone can afford scorched earth freedom.
Come to think of it, I would also like the T-shirt and the membership card for the "decentering men" movement. Maybe also the tote bag...
FYI: I consider myself genderfluid and almost always get along best with cis men out of all other categories of gender and being. However, I think part of this has to do with the fact that so many women see other women either as "competition" or as accessories to their chosen station in life (moms hang out with other moms, couples hang out with other couples, etc).
"We had to adapt to a world that, historically, gave us less power and autonomy and that tied our worth with the success of our romantic relationships." This is something I think about all the time since my first sociology course some years back. It's something I am forced to examine over and over again in the context of my personal life and in my writing. Thank you for this ❤
Good God I was just thinking about writing a post about this. How many minutes and hours of my life I have WASTED OF MY LIFE listening to fragile men. Or replying to their texts/DMs etc. And listening more. It was not reciprocated. And it was my time they took. Because admit is, as I heard on a Glennon Doyle podcast, “women’s time is sand, and men’s time is diamonds.”
Thanks for this! My son showed me Anderson’s paper over 2 years ago when he was 17-before it was even published. We did a show on it. I was so proud to say I learned of it from my son (woot woot!) What a brilliant piece of work! (She’s a young philosophy professor at Pomona College who has an awesome philosophy podcast, “Overthink”, for anyone who doesn’t know…)
Thank you for this. It can be crazy-making to experience the emotional caretaking in a relationship but not have the language to express why it's exhausting. Your article helped give me that language.
The idea of hermeneutical labor is completely new to me and I love it. Tho I’ve been through much worse, this is the cause of emotional exhaustion that’s not worth it. TY.
There is so much truth in what you’ve written. Women have been “socially assigned” to be the emotion handler. In Thai culture, it is ingrained into us that the wives should never “outshine” their husbands in social settings. We are, as the saying goes, “the elephant’s hind legs”. So for the “emotional” stuff, the women must never bother the men with it.
I kid you not - my father in law once praised his own dad, my husband’s grandfather, that he is so good at resolving issues in life. Said that his method is just to “avoid everything”. My father in law basically complimented his dad for being able to compartmentalise so well, we don’t ever need to talk about feelings. I looked straight into his eyes and said “oh, so he doesn’t actually solve anything”.
I feel like I’m living in a dystopian world where not being emotionally matured is actually praised.
This is an excellent piece. As a formerly married woman, it rings very true with personal experience. I’m a single parent now and I often feel like I have less emotional work to do now than I did when married to a man. The incentive to date again is almost nonexistent…
Some researchers have pointed out that men do much better in carrying the emotional labor of relationships in the courting stage of the relationship. If this is true, it implies that men are capable, just not sufficiently motivated—which is pretty damning.
I've also come across studies that tested men's and women's affective empathy with and without a financial incentive present, and, surprise, surprise, the financial incentive levelled the performance of women and men.
Dan gets it
Outstanding synopsis of the emotional and mental labor shouldered by women in heterosexual relationships. As a physician specializing in maternal and child health, I can say from personal experience that all of this is true.
Part of the issue lies in the fact that men are disincentivized from forming intimate, communicative relationships with other men due to the fear of being labeled as “gay”. And they’re accused of emotional infidelity if they form close platonic relationships with women. This calculus leads to an inability to decipher and communicate their feelings.
A lot of the problem rests in very limiting social constructs of masculinity. And fear of being perceived as homosexual or unfaithful.
Thank you! Yes, and that’s precisely why expanding these masculine scripts of behaviour would really benefit men.
Love this comment so much.
It’s absolutely predicated on the concept of patriarchy.
You are not a man and seem to have no understanding of the experiences of being one. if you really think that men don’t communicate their feelings and relationships that is absurd, and I feel most men would find it that way. Men communicate their feelings, at least in my experience very directly and very blatantly. Women do not communicate this directly in general, and this is what leads to this disconnect.
This is my experience when I became ill with an incurable, complex neurological disease. My partner of 20 years pursued his barista. He stupidly misread her banter skills with attraction and was rejected by her. Then came looking to be comforted by me when he confessed. The vile has been lifted.
I really appreciated this summary, and the part about how this emotional labor is both demanded of women and largely invisible. And, I would say there is an added feature which is that men's emotional lives and well-being are on the whole seen as more important and worthy of attention .Our expectations are adjusted downward, and no one really expects it to be otherwise. This is the part that gets internalized: a status quo where not only is our anger not welcome or allowed, but also the having our desires met is really, mostly, optional. Whose emotions matter and are given uptake is part of this equation.
That's a really important point. I've sadly seen this exact dynamic play out in my family.
The telling thing here is that women are allowed every emotion but anger. We can cry, laugh, do all the work to empathize with what men need and can't express, but we can't have anger. They keep that one for themselves.
This is such an important piece. I talked about it with my wife, am sharing it with friends, and most importantly: I'm going to discuss it with both my teen daughter and my teen son. Thank you for writing this. 🙏
Thank you for reading and sharing it with others! So glad it resonated with you.
Couldn't have been explained more eloquently. It reminds me of this one video I saw regarding a trending topic in China, where a father reached out to others to help with a serious topic he was struggling with.
Get this, the topic was his wife asking him to help out more around the house. What's worse, all the responses and top-liked comment were giving their own advice on what they did, which was to pretend to not know how to do something or do something purposefully wrong so the wife could stop asking.
This just goes to show that, yes men are capable, they just chose not to.
Ugh, all these responses are essentially encouraging him to use weaponised incompetence to get out of doing his fair share around the house. Disgusting.
Sodding sheer laziness evidently been accepted by adults in childhood !
Can’t be it if you don’t see it!
I think there’s a name for that. Weaponized incompetence.
If the man you are with is causing you to pay the price for caring and understanding him, leave. He’s not worth all the effort. Find a person who doesn’t exhaust you, and spend your emotional energy building a healthy relationship with them. It’s pretty simple really. Don’t date a man, or anyone, who makes you pay a price for caring about them.
Agree 100%. Although I have sadly met women who would rather keep carrying out all this labour year anyway, out of fear of being single or because they are genuinely convinced it's their 'god-given duty' or both.
The problem is that men don’t fear losing that woman…if they did, they would increase care, attention, help, emotional support, etc the sum of which is love…just naturally…just to be there for their wife and have her back…
Observing the world around us, a lot of men rely on financial control and the high cost - social and financial and energy - of leaving.
Unfortunately…I hope women understand that freedom is priceless…
Yes, and...freedom can be very expensive, especially when there are children in the mix. The social costs are why women are financially worse off after divorce, in general. Not everyone can afford scorched earth freedom.
It’s really sad…
Come to think of it, I would also like the T-shirt and the membership card for the "decentering men" movement. Maybe also the tote bag...
FYI: I consider myself genderfluid and almost always get along best with cis men out of all other categories of gender and being. However, I think part of this has to do with the fact that so many women see other women either as "competition" or as accessories to their chosen station in life (moms hang out with other moms, couples hang out with other couples, etc).
i’ve never heard of “accessories to their chosen station in life” and it’s so so real
"We had to adapt to a world that, historically, gave us less power and autonomy and that tied our worth with the success of our romantic relationships." This is something I think about all the time since my first sociology course some years back. It's something I am forced to examine over and over again in the context of my personal life and in my writing. Thank you for this ❤
Good God I was just thinking about writing a post about this. How many minutes and hours of my life I have WASTED OF MY LIFE listening to fragile men. Or replying to their texts/DMs etc. And listening more. It was not reciprocated. And it was my time they took. Because admit is, as I heard on a Glennon Doyle podcast, “women’s time is sand, and men’s time is diamonds.”
Thanks for this! My son showed me Anderson’s paper over 2 years ago when he was 17-before it was even published. We did a show on it. I was so proud to say I learned of it from my son (woot woot!) What a brilliant piece of work! (She’s a young philosophy professor at Pomona College who has an awesome philosophy podcast, “Overthink”, for anyone who doesn’t know…)
Wow, you raised quite an impressive young man!
Thank you for this. It can be crazy-making to experience the emotional caretaking in a relationship but not have the language to express why it's exhausting. Your article helped give me that language.
Thank you for this. I feel seen and heard. Now I can forward this to “him” as proof that it’s not just me!
I'm sorry you relate to this. Far too many women do.
The idea of hermeneutical labor is completely new to me and I love it. Tho I’ve been through much worse, this is the cause of emotional exhaustion that’s not worth it. TY.
This is great!
What is this "decentering men" movement of which you speak? How do I sign up?
I've come across it a fair deal on TikTok, but as far as I know, there's no official group (yet 😅).
There is so much truth in what you’ve written. Women have been “socially assigned” to be the emotion handler. In Thai culture, it is ingrained into us that the wives should never “outshine” their husbands in social settings. We are, as the saying goes, “the elephant’s hind legs”. So for the “emotional” stuff, the women must never bother the men with it.
I kid you not - my father in law once praised his own dad, my husband’s grandfather, that he is so good at resolving issues in life. Said that his method is just to “avoid everything”. My father in law basically complimented his dad for being able to compartmentalise so well, we don’t ever need to talk about feelings. I looked straight into his eyes and said “oh, so he doesn’t actually solve anything”.
I feel like I’m living in a dystopian world where not being emotionally matured is actually praised.
This is an excellent piece. As a formerly married woman, it rings very true with personal experience. I’m a single parent now and I often feel like I have less emotional work to do now than I did when married to a man. The incentive to date again is almost nonexistent…