(Part II) How wives alienate their husbands w/ "their mental load"

[@RichardLemke-k2j]

Thanks sharing your advice

[@michaeldavis3819]

I'm not a Catholic, but I'm a Christian. Your title intrigued me. AMEN! I've been married for a couple of decades. My wife and I bought a home built in the 50s. I've been rebuilding it here and there over the years; plumbing, electrical, sheetrock, resealing the foundation, putting on a new roof, etc. I also do most of the mechanic work on our cars, which are mostly at least 15 years or older. Luckily I either knew how to do all this stuff already or I did it myself. At first, we bought furniture super cheap from an estate sale or two, or from goodwill stores. She's been a stay-at-home mom to our five kids while I've been a working dad this whole time. I couldn't agree with you more. There have been times I've mopped the floors, done dishes, done laundry, vacuumed, etc. Mostly over the years it was my wife, until my kids got old enough for chores and I put my foot down and made them get on it and learn how to do it. It's good for them and it helps relieve the load off their mom. If anyone thinks my wife is subservient, they can feel free to come help me next time I do an engine rebuild in our driveway during a blizzard (which I've done twice to make sure my wife had a warm car to take the kids to school instead of walking them through freezing winter temperatures). I appreciate that she makes our house into a home, provides delicious and nourishing meals and keeps the home clean. She appreciates that I keep the mortgage paid and have been outside fixing cars when my tools were so cold they were burning my hands. We both pitch in where we can to make life better and more comfortable for the other. It's not 50/50; we're both giving 100 percent. We see a win for either of us as a win for both of us, and a challenge for one is a challenge for both. That's love.

[@RichardLemke-k2j]

I love you too 🙏

[@Beatnik59]

I think I can explain a bit about where this "mental load" comes from. See, as a single professional living in Chicago, hanging out with other single professionals living in Chicago, nobody had much "order" going on in their condos or apartments. But we could all clean up real quick if we needed to do so. We just never needed to do so. I can't tell you how many times I've been over at places that look like disaster areas. There was a lawyer, female, who had banker's boxes all over her condo, takeout boxes everywhere, whole racks of her dry cleaning standing up blocking the TV, and so on. I just about got strangled to death going to the bathroom by all her nylons she hung up there. But when you put in the sort of hours she did, that kind of situation is tolerable, if not inevitable. She wasn't about play dates and having the parish council over for dinner. She was about making partner before thirty. She didn't care. And you know what? We didn't care. My condo was pretty much the same way (without the nylons), because I was about getting my papers, grading, and book reviews done. Our lives were about what was going on outside of our bachelor pads, and not inside of them. And it's an easy thing to take care of a condo if it is just yourself. But I've noticed something happens when you've got a home and family in the suburbs. You get a nice home, you want to show it off. Your home becomes a reflection of you. You think of dinner parties and your children's friends stopping over. You look at Claire's home, and how everything is so immaculate in there, and you are wondering what Claire's thinking about you and your children if there are piles of dirty laundry in the foyer when her son comes over to play with your son. You don't want the parish priest seeing all your nylons hanging out in the bathroom when he's coming over to talk about your son becoming an altar server. Those are the kind of things people think about once they start a family in a neighborhood. And it can be a hard adjustment to make for many people, especially for a person like that lawyer, who might find living in a home with a family is far different than how she is used to living. You've got more to think about at that point, more that weighs upon your mind. So the "mental load" is real; I'm not going to say it's not there. But there is a better and worse way of managing it, which is what I think a lot of women (and men for that matter) lack these days, given how life worked up to that point as a single person defined by singular concerns.

[@OrdinaryCatholic1]

@@Beatnik59 Living in Lowell with a home I can't afford to remodel and used furniture... Relieves me of all of this nonsense.