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Hello good people of r/AskWomenOver30
I (30m) come to you today for support. Recently, I moved in with my partner (30f) and we've been having some difficulties in our relationship ever since. Though our relationship has been very positive up until now, recently my partner has been grappling with the stress of having to take on so much mental load in her life and is fearful that I am not able to take it on myself or help out. This is compounding with talking to her older sister who has been in a 10 year-long marriage without much improvement/support from her husband in taking on more mental load after getting married and having kids.
My partner is a very high-performing person. She tracks a LOT. She kicks a lot of ass professionally, personally and is usually as exhausted as she is successful. Recently we had a hard conversation about how she tracks many things regarding our date nights, things around the house, animal care etc. and is feeling afraid or cynical that nobody, myself included, will ever be able to match her in her ability to track these things. I don't think I'm a slob, but admittedly, I can be very in attentive. I struggle to track things like when certain tasks need to be done, how to prepare for certain events when to plan dates etc. I think the extent of how bad this can really be is dawning on both of us as we started living together.
This is the woman that I love -- I want to marry her and have kids with her. I don't want her to be someone who goes through her whole romantic/parental life having to be the person who bears the load of tracking everything for everyone with nobody willing or capable of taking it on with her. My mom did this my whole life and I see the stress she took on and I'm having a lot of backlogged guilt of not doing more as a kid/teenager. I don't want this life for my partner. I want to show her not only that I can help her, but that I'm committed to bearing this load for the rest of our time together. However, when I asked her to help me understand the ways that I can help, she seems annoyed, and exasperated and tells me to simply look it up or google articles on the topic. I've read a few, but I've found they're a little too general and focus on the history of mental load and how women have been traditionally disproportionately expected to hold far too much.
That brings me to this subreddit. I'm hoping to receive some suggestions on how to help in tracking things related to mental load. Unfortunately, because my mother did everything for me my whole life and I've never been expected to do these things myself, I feel absolutely clueless about what to be looking at or start tracking in order to help out. If you can, please share with me your experience in handling this yourself, your specific desires for ways other people can step in, or categories/lists of things that you know you have to track. Anything you can think of that might give me some direction or support in figuring this out.
Please give me any advice you feel you can offer on the subject. I want to show my partner that I'm willing to take this on with her but don't know where to start!
Thanks for your time and interest!
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