They wanted the woman they met: Understanding Emotional Labor & The responsibility gap
I recently had a very profound realization about the toll of unbalanced emotional labor in relationships that happened quite ‘accidentally’ as I was meditating as I usually do in the mornings. I say accidentally in quotes because I don’t believe in them. Everything happens for a reason and this occurrence was no different.
I typically go to YouTube, pick out a video with music and subliminals and set it to where a video won’t autoplay afterwards so that I can choose to either sit in silence or journal. Well this particular morning was different and it was obviously destined for me to hear this video that started playing next. It was titled “Why Men Don’t Understand Emotional Labor”. And in this video, Lisa Sonni talks about the research behind the unbalanced mental and emotional load that women carry in relationships. How we stay and adjust ourselves to try to fix what’s wrong. It also introduced me to a term I hadn’t heard before called the responsibility gap—where men externalize blame and women internalize it.
Let me tell you, 3 minutes into this video, I was thinking–been there, done that, got several t-shirts 2 sizes too small.
The Moment I Saw It
It reminded me of a video I made a few years ago where I spoke about the relationship gap without knowing there existed terminology for it after listening to a song by Tanerélle called “Smear Campaign”. In her hauntingly beautiful voice, she sings to a man about making peace with the fact that she has changed, saying since you can’t talk to me about the issue, you are free to call me whatever you like to make you feel better. Call me boring. Call me crazy. Call me insecure. But while you’re telling them that, make sure you also tell them I am exactly how you made me. Those lines hit me like a freight train the first time I heard them, and honestly, many times after. It is one of those truth bombs that make you yell out FUCK when you finally see it because you will never, ever be able to unsee it.
"You Changed": How Women Adapt to Protect Themselves
I remember after one particularly frustrating conversation with my ex where once again he was making it seem like my ‘nagging’ was unwarranted, that me being calloused and cold came out of nowhere, I wrote in my journal the part that I wish I would have been brave enough to say out loud at the time: “You’re right because you kept breaking the woman I was. You wanted the woman you met without taking accountability for the woman you created.”
It was like in that moment, EVERY woman who’s been told “you changed” was inside of me screaming:
“You’re damn right I changed. YOU changed me. By dismissing me. Neglecting me. Making me carry it all. I adapted to YOUR lack. And now you’re mad I’m not soft anymore? For protecting myself? YOU helped to create this.”
Some men love to throw it in your face that you’ve changed but won’t take accountability for the fact that you changed because of them. Like you haven’t had to adjust to his moods, to his weaponized incompetence, to whatever version of them is going to show up that day or to the ‘ol faithful version that just isn’t willing to step up, because he knows you’re going to take care of it.
The Responsibility Gap: Men Externalize, Women Internalize
In the video, Sonni explains how women have been conditioned to adapt, to internalize, to think “His behavior must be MY fault. I need to FIX it.” while men have been conditioned to externalize the blame for their behavior on the reactions of their partner to their behavior.
Men who don’t do the work to be an emotionally equitable partner will expect us to adapt, to overfunction and then apologize for the way it changes us. To accomodate, to lower our expectations, to accept that that’s just the way men and marriage is, and the most excruciating part–to explain the ever-loving shit out of WHY it matters that they contribute to lighten the mental and emotional load on your shoulders. All while still desiring them.
“I provide so she should be grateful and compromise” is their reasoning. But it IS NOT a compromise when we are doing the invisible labor of two. It’s not a compromise when we are the only one constantly folding on our boundaries, abandoning ourselves, dismissing our needs and driving ourselves insane trying to get the relationship to a destination that they have no willingness to go. They are more likely to think “I don’t have to look at MY behavior because HER reaction is the problem.” This is the responsibility gap—where men externalize blame and women internalize it.
Men will say:
- “She changed.”
- “She’s cold now.”
- “She doesn’t love me anymore.”
While women will wonder:
- “What did I do wrong?”
- “Maybe I’m too much.”
- “If I just loved him better…”
But here’s what most people don’t understand: emotional labor is invisible to those who have been conditioned that it’s not theirs to carry.
The Invisible Work: Why Emotional Labor Feels Like Three Jobs
Many men think that the load is actually equitable if you lay out every single thing they need to do and then they do it, not taking into consideration that you don’t get that same grace. There is no one behind you asking “can you do x, y, and z?”. There is no one else around keeping track of what needs to be done and assigning you tasks because that’s been deemed your sole responsibility.
So while they are doing one job (the one you told them needed to be done), you are doing three:
- What you notice needs to be done (because you live in the house and are present in the relationship)
- What you have to tell them to do, and then
- Follow up to make sure it got done.
According to this article in Psychology Today, emotioal labor is an undervalued job that women and other disadvantaged groups are just expected to carry. And that is why you are exhausted without even really knowing why.
Unfortunately, most men are not going to notice what they have never been made to deal with. And I know in my marriage, I allowed it to perpetuate because I either got tired of nagging about it or I knew he would purposely screw it up so I wouldn’t ask again and I just did it myself. I allowed his underfunctioning to trigger my overfunctioning and people pleasing. #IYKYK
But if they never carry the weight or responsibility of emotional labor, they will actually feel like you are trying to gaslight them into believing in something that’s ‘not real’.
Why Men Don't Notice Emotional Labor (And Why That Matters)
A lot of time men don’t handle emotional labor because they don’t have a sense of connection or emotional attachment to the outcome. Like my ex couldn’t understand why I would get so upset over him not seeing the need for the house to be clean when company came over. To him, it wasn’t a big deal. “Who cares if the house is messy?”, he would say sometimes. But what he could not see was the invisible mental and emotional load I had to carry as the woman of the house. As such, we are the ones who are judged and criticized for the house not being in order when company came over. Not them. He would be looked upon with pity as they thought that poor man has to deal with that while they silently call us lazy, an uncaring wife, a bad mom.
It wasn’t until I started forcing him to carry the responsibility of things I was no longer willing to, did he start to notice how his inactions affected our relationship. I had to let things that mattered to me go and allow them to fail. And that included our marriage. It didn’t hit him until he started witnessing one thing after another deteriorate. And till this day, he may still think it was my reaction to his inaction, not the inaction itself, that is to blame. But that is not my job to worry about.
The Added Burden Of Guilt For Our Change
On top of the weight of unbalanced emotional labor and internalized blame, we feel immense guilt for changing. We have witnessed ourselves going from loving to nagging, from nurturing the relationship to resenting it. Trust me, no woman wants to be in that energy. Yet we’ve had to adjust over and over and over again because we no longer feel safe enough to be loving, soft, and easy going. We’ve learned the hard way that only gets more thrown onto our plate. We didn’t lose love for them. We lost respect. We lost trust that their word meant anything. And once that’s gone, it’s almost impossible to restore.
And when we finally go silent and/or walk away, our partners want to believe we are the source or where the problem began, when actually our reaction is a natural consequence of us running out of energy to sustain something that takes 2 people. Men want to call it coldness, that we don’t care or love them, or say that the divorce came out of nowhere, but really we have gone into protective mode from the dismissive, avoidant, neglectful, disrespectful behaviors they have shown us on a consistent basis.
Then the blame is shifted to make us feel like we are the reason they are engaging in these behaviors that most often existed in them long before we came along. We just held up a mirror to reflect what they were avoiding, what they hid just long enough for us to get comfortable. So when we say hey you’re hurting me in this way, it’s because of something we did when it’s the same pattern they’ve had in every relationship. Then we shut down and become distant and that’s what they focus on instead of realizing my actions eroded the trust she had in me. It’s labeled as betrayal, disloyalty, not being 10 toes down because they honestly believe they are owed our softness, submission, trust and respect just because they are men.
My Silence Wasn't Coldness—It Was Clarity
For me, my “distance”, “change”, and “silence” ushered in clarity in my relationships whereas trying to explain my position till I was blue in the face only bred bitterness. It was finally acknowledging what I was too afraid to admit because it would require change that I knew would completely alter my life. It was the Universe showing me all the things I dismissed myself, that I let slide, that I let myself be gaslighted into believing it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, that I took as a sign to try harder, love deeper, give more as I received less. It was raw honesty with myself that sometimes hurt deeper than the original wound. It was me finally loving me in the ways that I wanted them to love me. And I stopped waiting for them to love me right and started doing it myself.
My silence wasn’t coldness, betrayal, or punishment. My silence was necessary detachment. It was the thinning of the veil of ‘good wife’ conditioning that prevented me from seeing the truth that as women, we are expected to do the emotional heavy lifting while men get a pass. From the recognition that the angry, burned out, resentful woman I had become, wasn’t someone who morphed out of thin air. She was created. By them and me.
Forgiving the Woman I Had to Become
So now when I look back on the times I ever allowed myself to feel guilt over not being the same woman they met, I shake my head and often laugh. I have not only forgiven but apologized to those versions of me and thanked them for standing strong through the weaponized incompetence, for changing in relationships that she needed to let go, and all the bullshit she internalized as her responsibility. And I think back to the closing lines I wrote in my journal: You’re right (that I changed) because you kept breaking the woman I was. You wanted the woman you met without taking accountability for the woman you created.
Invitation
So Woman on the Rise,
If you’ve been told ‘you changed’ without him taking accountability for creating that change—you’re not alone. If you’ve felt guilt for becoming an angry, distant, resentful shell of the woman you used to be, I get it and again, you’re not alone. This is the Unbecoming phase: recognizing how you adapted, how you protected yourself, how you became someone you didn’t recognize. And the good news? You don’t have to stay there. You can become HER—the sovereign woman you were always meant to be.
I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter as I have something in the works that is going to take this from a conversation to a full blown practice that will help you navigate the responsibility gap so you can reclaim your sovereignty.
