Emotional labor is often invisible to men because a lot of it happens out of their sight. Emotional labor is when my friends and I carefully coordinate to make sure that nobody whoās invited to the party has drama with anyone else at the party, and then everyone comes and has a great time and has no idea how much thought went into it.
Emotional labor is when I have to cope, again, with the distress I feel at having to clean myself in a dirty bathroom or cook my food in a dirty kitchen because my male roommate didnāt think it was important to clean up his messes.
Emotional labor is having to start the 100th conversation with my male roommate about how I need my living space to be cleaner. Emotional labor is reminding my male roommate the next day that he agreed to clean up his mess but still hasnāt. Emotional labor is reassuring him that itās okay, Iām not mad, I understand that heās had a very busy stressful week. Emotional labor is not telling him that Iāve had a very busy stressful week, too, and his fucking mess made it even worse.
Emotional labor is reassuring my partner over and over that yes, I love him, yes, I find him attractive, yes, I truly want to be with him, because he will not do the work of developing his self-esteem and relies on me to bandage those constantly-reopening wounds. Emotional labor is letting my partner know that I didnāt like what he did sexually last night, because he never asked me first if I wanted to do that. Emotional labor is reassuring him that, no, itās okay, Iām not mad, I just wanted him to know for next time, yes, of course I love him, no, this doesnāt mean Iām not attracted to him, Iām just not interested in that sort of sex. Emotional labor is not being able to rely on him to reassure me that itās not my fault that I didnāt like the sex, because this conversation has turned into my reassuring him, again.
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me once every few weeks with multiple paragraphs about his life, which I listen to and empathize with. Afterwards, he thanks me for being āsuch a good listener.ā He asks how my life has been, and I say, āWell, not bad, but school has been so stressful latelyā¦ā He says, āOh, that sucks! Well, anyway, Iād better get to bed, but thanks again for listening!ā
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me and, with no trigger warning and barely any greeting, launches into a story involving self-harm or suicide or something else of that sort because āyou know about this stuff.ā
Emotional labor was almost all of my male friends in high school IMing me to talk about how the girls all go for the assholes.
Emotional labor is when my partners decide they donāt want to be in a relationship with me anymore, but rather than directly communicating this to me, they start ignoring me or being mean for weeks until I have to ask whatās going on, hear that āI guess Iām just not into you anymore,ā and then have to be the one to suggest breaking up. For extra points, then I have to comfort them about the breakup.
Emotional labor is setting the same boundary over and over, and every time he says, āIām sorry, I know you already told me this, I guess Iād just forgotten.ā
Emotional labor is being asked to completely explain and justify my boundaries. āI mean, thatās totally valid and I will obviously respect that, I just really want to understand, you know?ā
Emotional labor is hiding the symptoms of mental illness, pretending my tears are from allergies, laughing too loudly at his jokes, not because Iām just in principle unwilling to open up about it, but because I know that he canāt deal with my mental illness and that Iāll just end up having to comfort him because my pain is too much for him to bear.
Emotional labor is managing my male partnersā feelings around how often we have sex, and soothing their disappointment when they expected to have sex (even though I never said we would) and then didnāt, and explaining why I didnāt want to have sex this time, and making sure we āat least cuddle a little before bedā even though after all of this, to be quite honest, the last thing I fucking want is to touch him.
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