The Invisible Chores in a Relationship · 4:48am Mar 16th, 2016
So! This blog is coincidentally one that’s relevant to me today, even though I started it yesterday, because it’s been a rough evening. Nothing bad, just staying at my mom’s house while she’s out of town to take care of her dog and cats and chickens. But that meant trying to get Trixie to sleep in a strange house, getting her crib and stuff moved, and of course said taking care of various animals. And on top of that I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning, so I needed to get ready to leave (and leave Trixie with my dad) first thing. Tensions were running high over here.
And that happens sometimes in relationships. And when it does, the stressors get compounded by the things I’m going to talk about today: the mental and emotional maintenance that’s a part of any relationship. The invisible chores.
Obviously I was going to talk about this in the context of shipping and romance writing, but to be honest this is a useful thing to be aware of in any relationship, so you can consider this doubling as relationship advice (especially for you young folks out there who might not have hit this yet.)
When you’re in a relationship, there’s stuff that needs to be done to keep it healthy, and, when it gets serious, to keep life functioning smoothly. Early on there’s stuff like paying for for dates, or straightening up and cooking when you’re staying in. If you eventually move in together there’s even more of that, there’s all the regular chores like taking out the trash, cleaning the bathroom, laundry, grocery shopping. Most couples figure out how to divide this stuff up in a way that works for them, because you can see it; if one person is doing all the cleaning, they’ll know, and they’ll probably let the other person know.
But the stuff I’m talking about is stuff you don’t see, and it’s still work. It’s the remembering and keeping track of; it’s the staying calm and knowing what to do with the other person is losing their shit; it’s the noticing signals and changes in tone over a conversation or over weeks or months, and making adjustments or initiating the conversation that needs to happen. It’s really the stuff that makes a relationship a relationship, rather than just two people living and sleeping together.
And not everyone is good at it. And, like physical chores, a lot of the time it gets divided up unevenly. Except when it is being handled mostly by one person, the other person might not even realize they’re not pulling their weight, which in some cases can turn into a problem.
I’m going to divide up what I’m talking about into three areas and explain them in more depth:
Life management
Everyone is responsible for life management. I’m using this for everything from evaluation of your situation (Are you feeling well? When was the last time you saw a doctor? Do you like your job? Should you paint that wall? Do you want to take a vacation?) and making decisions about how to address those things, to maintaining non-romantic relationships in your life (whose birthday is coming up? Did you remember to respond to that friend who emailed you last week? How long has it been since you called your mom?). Keeping track of finances often falls under this as well.
The reason this is still a part of a relationship is that it’s fairly common among couples who have combined households and lives for them to share or divide up these tasks as well. It’s not uncommon for a partner to be the one to remind someone that they have to RSVP to a wedding invitation, or tell them they should go to the doctor, or point out a job opportunity they might want to look into.
Relationship management
Relationship management is keeping an eye on the relationship as a whole, and making decisions on how to proceed. Early in the relationship it’s things like keeping track of how often you go out, who decides where you go, how long do you wait before checking in if you haven’t heard from them. Later it’s things like paying attention to how much time you spend together, how satisfied you both seem, and how often you fight, have sex, or want to be alone.
When you’re paying attention to this, it can lead to a lot of different tasks, from emotional labor in making sure your interactions are overall positive, to initiating communication about issues, to scheduling and/or initiating activities (sometimes without your partner even knowing you’re making an effort, especially if they’re the romantic type who likes spontaneity.)
Emotional labor
Emotional labor is basically being in charge of managing the emotional tone in an interaction with someone else. The term comes from the concept of actual jobs where this is important: A doctor has to be able to perform emotional labor when she’s trying to calm down a panicking patient during an emergency, or a retail worker who has to try to keep things calm and positive with an angry customer. These things can be exhausting, especially when they require suppressing your own emotions to manage someone else’s.
Any relationship is going to require someone to be doing some amount of emotional labor. It’s part of being there for a partner; you calm them down when they’re upset, you bite your tongue when you’re angry to keep from escalating an already tense situation, you try to make them feel special and loved even when you’ve had a rough day and would rather zone out for the rest of the evening.
Now, like any set of chores, there are a million ways to divide these up, and there’s no right or wrong set-up for a couple. It’s going to depend on who’s better at what, who hates doing what, and it’ll probably vary over time as each person has other emotional loads or stresses coming into play.
But. There are a couple of ways this can be really dangerous to a relationship, when things get out of control. The three most common in bad relationships are:
No one is doing anything.
This one often starts with both partners being bad life managers from the beginning, which is very, very common in young people. A lot of time, in this position, one or both people will step up and get it together, but if neither manages that then things will start spinning out of control. Especially because when your life is on shaky ground, it puts a lot more pressure on the relationship, and requires even more relationship management and emotional labor. And people who already aren’t good at managing one thing are often not going to be the best at managing something else with even more pressure on it.
This is how a lot of high school and college relationships end, along with couples who fall apart not long after they get serious. It’s rare for a relationship like this to last more than a few years, and if it does it's usually because the couple has either resigned themselves to their lives being a mess, or they have enough money that they don't even have to worry about managing their life because they have people for that.
“I’m not your parent”
In this case, usually one person is substantially better than the other at a lot or all of these things, and ends up taking them on. They might even not mind it at first, it just makes sense. But the important thing to remember is that these things can and will wear a person out, especially if circumstances change and these chores aren’t renegotiated. And if the other person gets too comfortable and either can’t or won’t take some of that weight off, it’s not uncommon for the person doing all the invisible chores to either issue an ultimatum and carry it out, or to simply fall out of love. After all, it’s hard to love someone when that means being under constant stress on their behalf.
This one gets more common the longer people are together. It tends to wear on a person, and from what I’ve seen it’s especially common as an aspect of a midlife crisis and/or when kids get old enough that they’re not a consideration in the relationship. However, if one partner has a lot of emotional difficulties, like mental illness or an unhealthy situation they can't get away from, the emotional labor involved can bring things down a lot faster.
“You’re not my parent”
Almost the flip side of the above; one person thinks they’re much better at the managing aspects and tries to run everything, leaving the other person feeling like they either can’t do anything, or they can’t do anything right (as defined by the person who wants to be controlling it.) This usually ends up putting a lot of emotional labor on the person without control, because even if the controlling person is managing things just fine, their partner isn’t happy, but has to act appreciative when it comes up.
This one can go either way in terms of when it appears. It can come up at the beginning of a relationship where sometimes the couple can work through it, depending on how good they are at communication; it can come up when the controlled partner can’t handle the emotional labor of being “grateful” anymore; or it can destruct later if a partner who was previously happy to leave it to the other person does some growing or self-reflection and realizes they want more control over their own life that their partner doesn’t want to give up.
Once again, any set up can actually work if it’s what both partners are happy with, and depending on the situations they find themselves in. But being aware of this stuff can cut off problems before they start, or help put your finger on what’s wrong when the cracks start to show. And just understanding the concepts and having words to explain them can help a couple communicate what's wrong and let them work on it.
...I was going to go into an analysis of the Mane Six in terms of where I think they’d fall on these things, but it’s late and this is long already, so I’ll save that for another time (maybe later this week.) But obviously they’re all across the board, and keeping in mind how they’d address these things can show new dimensions for a ship, and show cracks you can exploit for stories. So, I’ll probably be linking back here later.
Since this is a Monday Blog Post, (a day late,) a big thank you to: bats, diremane, First_Down, sopchoppy, Bradel, stormgnome, jlm123hi, Ultiville, Singularity Dream, JetstreamGW, Noble Thought, horizon, Sharp Spark, Applejinx, Mermerus, Super Trampoline, Quill Scratch, Peregrine Caged, blagdaross, Scramblers and Shadows, BlazzingInferno, Merc the Jerk, and LegionPothIX.
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(Obligatory Contrarian Post)
Jeez, books, you're so wrong. None of this stuff matters. I mean, c'mon, if B.F. Skinner wouldn't study it, it can hardly be important to a relationship. This is just hormonal women talk, is all.
Everybody knows that relationships are all about girls wanting boys with great skills. Like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills, etc. Nothing matters except for that.
Jeez.
3810568
Well that explains a lot. Your PhD is really just to try to snare a hottie who's looking for those mad statistics skills, isn't it?
"Hey, baby. Wanna see me analyze some data?"
3810571
You know it, honey. The chickadees go crazy when they see my spreadsheets. Or should that be spread sheets?
Statistical romance is only for the kinky, though. My deviations are anything but standard. I mean it. After all, you can't spell 'analysis' without the—
<offstage noises>
What? This is supposed to be a family-friendly blog? Well why didn't you say so earlier?
<exit, muttering>
3810571 No dating advice ever started out, "First, you need to accumulate six or seven PhDs in various fields..."
(Well, other than advice that Bradel has given.)
As somebody who has survived being married for over a quarter-century (without the wife killing me, as she has many times been fully justified in doing so), I feel the ability to offer positive input here. It's probably a delusion, so I'm going to type fast.
1. If the wife remarks about the grass in the yard, she is not praising your ability to grow such fine green specimens. She wants it cut.
2. If you are passing through the kitchen and there are dishes to be done, do them. The same thing goes for cleaning up what you spilled, putting gas in the car when you're almost home and she's going to need it next, and anything else which she's going to need to do and doesn't like doing.
3. A hand-written note left in the seat of her car or on her pillow is worth ten times anything from Hallmark.
4. Chocolate. And the occasional balloon.
3810583
I'll add to the chocolates-and-a-ballon remark: One floristry class in your youth will pay back dividends over the course of your lifetime.
You know what the difference between a twenty five dollar bouquet and an eighty five dollar professional arrangement is? A good eye and a block of florist's foam.
Massage classes too. MsNumbers especially is a barista, which involves a lot of back pain -- among other things -- so knowing exactly how to work the tension out of a back has resulted in garbled groans and "Erughhh marry meeeee"s more than once.
I also try to cook whenever I can, and I try to be damn good at it when I do, though she takes great delight in making me tea and coffee, so that works out nicely.
Why, yes, I am keenly aware that my partner is both healthier and earns more than me, why do you ask?
This is an important thing to keep in mind when it comes to relationships, and I think almost no one ever actually really explains this to people - or at least, I don't think I ever had anyone sit down and explain it to me, all of what I know about it is stuff I've learned from observation and reading studies about it.
It really is dangerous, too, because to some extent, some of this applies to almost all relationships, including friendships. I don't think MLP has really addressed the social grooming aspect of friendship all that much, but it is a pretty important one, and it is an easy way to let a friendship slip away.
My parents are very, very bad at relationship management and the attendant emotional labor. They keep me on as a full time consultant, now. Whenever they start talking past each other, I yell at them and tell each one what the other one actually means, and then they shut up and stay out of my hair for a while. Sometimes I'm not there to cut it off early, and I have to gently suggest ways to approach an issue to each of them that will be palatable to the other. Basically, they've somehow managed to live together for 35 years without learning anything about how they each tick, and where they have managed to learn something about their partner, they use it as a lesson about when to go behind the other's back. Also they're both half-deaf and sometimes they're yelling at each other just because one of them can't hear the other and the other interprets "WHAT?" as "HOW DARE YOU?"
I'm not sure they'd know what to do with themselves without someone to bicker with. For some reason everybody keeps asking me if I know what 'dysfunctional' means, though.
So it can be boiled down to 'don't be an ass and make an effort,' is what I'm getting from it.
3810583
Well, you know, there is an inverse relationship between education level and divorce rates. Clearly people with six or seven PhDs never get divorced.
That may or may not because they never get married (save, perhaps, to the local educational institution), but you know. Details.
God, this is so true, I could cry.
3810611
Woo hoo!
...shut up, TD. I hate you.
<goes and gets a pint of vanilla oat swirl out of the freezer>
3810625
You know, the pre-Valentine's Day ice cream sale really IS a thing in some places.
I mean, you've missed your chance this year, but you know, next year, who knows? There might be love waiting for you in the dairy aisle of your local grocery store!
In terms of relationship advice, this is fantastic knowledge and very eloquently said. Thank you very much for sharing it, since it gives myself and many others a lot to ponder.
But, it sounded like this post was originally going to be about horsewords, and maybe that'll get pushed into a Part II, and... too real. Too real.
I'm not a stranger to writing about "difficult" relationship moments, but they're "difficult" in the Hollywood sense. They make you gasp, and bring a hand to your heart, and make you whisper words of encouragement under your breath. But at the end of that all, the heroes overcome all odds and love pervails (or in the rare cases, it fails, but it fails in a carefully-structured way to get that feeling of catharsis).
But, a fic about Applejack stifling Rainbow and making her feel like an invalid? A fic about Fluttershy thinking she knows how to soothe Rarity in her more anxious, high-strung moments, only to learn that Rarity was just putting on a smile for her sake, and has in fact been suffering in ways that Fluttershy has no idea how to grapple? A fic where a teary-eyed Sunset screams at Twilight that Twilight only makes time for her when she sets up a date and she drags Twilight out of the house, and that right in this very moment, Sunset cannot honestly believe that Twilight loves her more than her studies?
I mean. That's powerful. That's raw. That's real.
Maybe a little too real. I can't speak for every reader of course, but plenty of people read fiction to escape their lives, not to watch cute cartoon horses suffer the same torments of the real world. I guess CiG's mantra of "Stories about ponies are stories about people" applies here, but still...
3810571
3810611
3810625
Obligatory tangent, if only to cheer myself up.
3810640
Look, Bad Horse's doomsday engine runs off of brony tears. We've got to get them somehow.
More seriously, I think writing stories about this sort of thing is powerful and important. The Incredibles is in part a great movie because it plays with a lot of tools that generally get left out of the writer's toolbox because we don't really write about people maintaining their relationships. I've always thought that the Alan Rickman subplot in Love Actually was really powerful.
Of course, maybe I'm just a terrible person who thrives on the suffering of others.
3810645
Touche.
I guess my knee-jerk reaction was more then about seeing these particular characters placed in those kind of raw situations. But this site wouldn't be running strong for years if the show's characters weren't incredibly resilient.
Considering I haven't bothered starting the whole relationship thing, this looks like the kind of advice I would need to not look like a complete and utter knob when I get around to it.
3810571
3810579
Speaking of love and bragging about advanced degrees:
Anyway, good post!
Ahh, three more reasons to never get into another relationship. Or, y'know, talk to a living person ever again.
3810640
The thing with those situations you suggested is that they're not the end of the story (or, at least, they don't have to be.) I know a running theme in most of my fics involving Rainbow Dash is that she doesn't get relationship management, but she's also eternally willing to try when it's pointed out.
Seeing characters confront these things and deal with them with all of the qualities of harmony we know they're capable of, and become stronger or more caring partners in their relationships, can make for some of the best fics by being both emotionally raw and real, but as optimistic as we expect from our favorite characters.
3810792
I don't think it's quite as frightening to be in a rel as bookplayer's entry might scare you into believing. If you truly love each other, nearly all of the things you do in a relationship come naturally: you'll want to communicate, you'll naturally sense when your partner is in distress, etc.
The ruts above are things we can all fall into from time to time, and it's useful to note them so you'll see them more easily when they happen. But being in a good relationship doesn't require a degree in psychology.
Excellent stuff, this. It feels like the astute observations of a well-studied lifetime.
How long have you been analyzing all this relationship stuff,
Celestiabookplayer?People are difficult to deal with. They have triggers that don't even register with your "considerate individual conduct" radar. You'll do something that makes subconscious sense - as in holding a door open for someone directly behind you, or flagging a car through at a four way stop, and sometimes the reaction is... shocking.
Like, I was at a four way stop by my house, and I let a guy turn before me despite my coming to a full stop first - to be fair, we were neck and neck, and I'm markedly patient when it comes to maneuvering chunks of metal around. I wave him along, letting him proceed before me. His response? A middle finger.
... uh, what? Why!? I was being considerate! I was letting you get on with your day, unencumbered by the bothersome rituals of basic traffic law, the likes of which you OBVIOUSLY DON'T understand since you kept EDGING INTO THE FUCKING INTERSECTION! You SONUVABITCH!
I waved at him, flashed a smile, all the while thinking, "what a fucking selfish asshole".
Strong relationships are tougher. Like, you know all the requirements your partner needs to function at the most basic level, and you react accordingly every time such a need arises, yet there will always be bits and pieces that complicate the harmony you figured had finally existed - as in it's never cut and dry. There's always something else to absolve and discern; learn, remember, then place accordingly in your mental filing cabinet for the ease of future reference. YAY.
I'm with 3810792 on this one. Seriously, people are hard to deal with. Best just to avoid them altogether. Conforming to the needs of another? Pft. I'll do that when someone makes an effort to reciprocate.
Bitter? Moi? Je ne l'ai jamais haï personne, mais je l'ai souvent souhaité que je pouvais.
3810770 More likely you need to do some Life Management now to find a relationship.
Great post, BP. Did you know "emotional labor" is already a thing? You seem to be using the phrase a little differently. I think it originally referred to when workers were required by their jobs to manipulate or fake their emotions.
3818243
I did, I actually mentioned that. It is a similar thing in relationships. The number one most common example is probably when someone has warned their partner about something and is feeling annoyed that they're now dealing with a partner who is upset that exactly what they were warned about came to pass. Being annoyed and saying "I told you" so might be an honest reaction, but it's not likely to be the best for the relationship, so faking sympathy is often the most practical way to go. Also common is not seeming upset or angry when it's not something a partner is prepared to deal with that that moment, because they're dealing with issues or important things of their own.
Obviously it's not good if the whole relationship is based on these things, and ideally the partner doing the emotional labor can address their feelings later when the need for it has passed. But it's something most long terms couples have to do fairly regularly just because they're two different people with different things going on in their lives who are trying to be there for each other when they need it.
3818343 I added this post to my blog post index.
3810594 many people are baristas, but MsNumbers especially is a barista.
3810583
I read this as:
I think I'll let it stand.
3864305 What can I say? No matter how old you are, sometimes it's good to let your inner monkey loose. (preferably at home, and not at Denny's)