Married men often offload emotional labor onto their wives—who then offload onto friends. Support is often a chain of exhaustion. The emotional gaps in heterosexual relationships often extend beyond the couple.
Rob come on! You are the man this is fixable right? If you can’t fix it you ensure you support the wife and her friends/community. But it’s deeply fixable no need to remain single unless it makes YOU personally happy to be. That’s not what I am saying 😭💔
Rob, I really don’t want you to feel like simply being yourself makes you a burden or that happiness is impossible in connection with you. That’s not what I believe at all.
The point isn’t to self-sacrifice or disappear for someone else’s comfort. It’s to find relationships romantic or otherwise where your presence isn’t seen as too much, but as meaningful, valued, and reciprocal. You’re not doing the world a favor by staying isolated. We heal in relationship too. Being single should be a choice rooted in joy, not a punishment for existing.
You’re worthy of love as you are not as a “fixed” version.
I hope you read my matriachy threads about what actual west African matrichy means and how it allows men in my culture to embrace their full humanity outside gender. I think the west limits men’s humanity so much and harms men too in community and lays burdens on them with no place to actually be able to show up and support or be supported if you get me?
I have friends in partnership with men who really show up and I show up for them (maybe I need to write about how that happens? My Mac keyboard broke and I am waiting until I can replace to be able to sit and write more. On my phone takes ages for longform… sorry for short rant. But I had to respond cos NOWAAAAY am I letting you think I am implying men or you who seems to genuinely want to connect should self isolate. Nope nope nope not having that bro 👊🩷🫵🏾
I'm not sure why this is the lesson you're taking from this article. With all due respect, however, this response seems to be one of attempting to avoid doing your own labor of building emotional intelligence and communicating with a potential partner/holding space for that partner. The burden doesn't lie in having a partner that needs support and help, the burden lies in that same partner not offering the same support and help. Being a provider, or protector, or any of the other things a man is "supposed to be" extends beyond merely having money, or a house (in large part because women are just as capable of earning money and providing shelter). It also means providing space for your partner's emotional needs, being willing to listen when they hold you accountable for how something you're doing impacts them, being able to communicate your own needs/hold them accountable in a healthy and loving way, etc.
Every human needs support from those they love, and while it is true that we all love/feel loved differently, it is also important to understand how your partner loves/receives love, and ensure that effort is made to provide that love. That, to me, seems to be the main point being made by Lovette. It is okay to need support, but support in a partnership is a 2 way street. If one person is shouldering the majority of the emotional labor, then the partnership will be inevitably damaged and has effects which reach further than that partnership. If you are not giving your partner the space they need emotionally, then they will need to take that space elsewhere, which often becomes friends (or one friend) who subsequently must take on the emotional labor that you are not providing to your partner which can (and often does) do harm to that friendship. Instead of reading something like this and saying, "welp, men shouldn't have emotions and I'm just a burden to a potential future partner," I encourage you to read something like this, be honest with yourself about your own emotional intelligence and ask how you can be better at giving your partner the same space you demand from them. "Space" doesn't always mean distancing and going to different rooms, more often than not, it means allowing someone to express themselves to the fullest and as they are/need to.
This was really good. I have had to let some friends go that were emotional vampires. If I feel drained and tired every time I hang out with you--bye! However, I do want to be there for the friends that lift me up. I have a saying, "You can be a shit show for one year." Meaning, if you get a divorce, lose your job, or any catastrophe--you have one year where it is appropriate to be a shit show and lean on others for support. After that, stand up, put on the big girl pants, and live your glorious life.
Well said, I have been eliminating these types of relationships with my women friends since Jan - I didn’t have a name for what it was that was irking me so… thank you
Oooof, I’ve felt this. My guy best friend once acknowledged how I helped him become a better husband,but in return, I ended up feeling like an emotional paywall. Like I was being siphoned for growth I’d never get to benefit from.
This like okay you benefitted but what did you give back? This is why boundaries protect you. This life is more than raising men. Or helping people raise them. ✨🫶🏾
Love! I have a curiosity. We should absolutely push against the cultural conditioning that says it’s only women’s job to feel deeply, empathize, or carry the emotional weight of relationships, families, and communities. Framing it as a “gift” that’s exclusively handed to women is both limiting and dismissive of the toll it takes. While it’s good to challenge the idea that emotional labor is solely women’s work, should we also acknowledge the innate strengths some carry? Not as an excuse but as an invitation for the rest of us to catch up, not opt out.
Is what we learn about the brain chemistry and biology (Women tend to have stronger interconnections between emotional and verbal processing centers, and the limbic system is generally more activewhich governs emotion, bonding, and memory) a lie and an attempt to use science to further place that burden on women??
Damn, now the cookie banner killed the comment I had alread written. So ... it's not a lie - because that would mean people were aware they were lying - but it's a misconception or myth. Doc Impossible explains this well in her article about "trans brains" where she explains a trans woman can't have a "female brain" because there are no "female brains". https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains
That being said, the human brain is very plastic and a lot of environmental factors (including passive--as in the people you are inclined to look to as role models--and active--how you are pressured to behave--socialisation. Which can but are not necessarily gender aligned) can influence it.
And in my book of course social and emotional skills are a strength. We should cultivate them in everybody and hold those in high regard who have a talent for it. I see the problem more in the taken-for-grantedness and the little value we assign to the emotional labour of women in our society.
“The first thing you need to understand is that scientific progress isn’t made in leaps and bounds. It’s made by thousands of researchers writing hundreds of articles on very, very specific, very, very small things. Each article builds on the findings of the ones that came before it until, eventually, the whole body of research passes a threshold and we’re finally able to say Something Big.”
This speaks so much to the harmful narratives that exist for every marginalized group black women being the most :(
From these articles I’ve gathered that the “science” that shaped these narratives was built on skewed lenses, biased samples, and cultural assumptions. When studies about brains, behavior, and gender were conducted over the past few centuries, they not only were the sample sizes small—they were working with samples taken from oppressed, overburdened, and silenced populations. Oppression always will distort data!
Oh yes! For example Kleinfelter (XXY) Syndrome was in the beginning mostly surveyed in prison populations, so the characterisation of that condition was very biased for a long time. And myths take a long time to be corrected in medical text books - even if science has newer data.
Totally agree Black women always have this additional axis of oppression which interacts in countless ways. For example Black women and women of Colour are often painted as hypersexual while at the same time their womanhood is questioned more often. (See just recent example during the Olympic games)
A lot of medical research was done on Black women against their will, there is a prejudice of Black women feeling less pain ... And that's just what I can recount from the top of my hat as a white woman listening in.
Biases will always leak into science if the researchers are not a diverse group themselves. So much can be influenced by how a question is posed, by how a study is set up, etc. (Takes me back to Anne Fausto-Sterling who really let me see science in a new light)
!!! Bingo! We can go back and forth forever on this. This was insanely eye opening. I’ve been reading Killing Black Bodies to become more educated and everything you touched on here is in that book. This is all so disgusting. Thanks for engaging!
Something to add to my reading list. Thank you ❤️ Love the rare cases where we learn from each other and not just preach to the choir or argue with someone...
Thank you so much for sharing these resources and taking the time to reply. Thank you for sharing this is a misunderstanding and what a powerful concluding statement that this myth “undermines the emotional labor of women”. Wow! WOW wow!
(I will read this and if you have and more personal resources that connected I’d be happy to check them out. While I know there is google and chat gpt I interact with post like these in hopes to find more authentic and true resources vs more myths and misconceptions regurgitating itself!)
What are you looking for specifically? If you are looking generally at the construction of the sex binary (not the gender binary, which is different but related) "Sexing the body" by @annefaustosterling is definitely worth a look. I also draw in Interviews with Heinz-Jürgen Voß who has a few texts available in English: https://heinzjuergenvoss.de/english-information/
Trans author @juliaserano (who is also a biologist) has a lot on the topic as well. As trans women we are always at this intersection of innateness, biology, socialisation, etc. A lot of "truths" people hold collide with our existence which leads to either doubling down and trying to erase us in order to uphold "the truth" or putting said "truths" to critical examination.
I have grown up with a lot of those assumptions myself and your own life experience colliding with all those taken-for-granted ideas sometimes gives a serious headache. 😉
Thanks I will check these out. Without realizing it I have been a perpetuant of some of these assumptions and unraveling them and over communicating to ensure they don’t continue in my being and home definitely gives me a headache but it’s worthy work!
OOF. I really feel this so much. Both from the perspective of a (former) wife to a man who refused to do any emotional work and expected me to mother him (while being abused by him) and as the “good friend” who was always the listening ear. I also found myself being unpaid childcare for married women who saw my SAHM status as being constantly available to watch their kids (“play dates”) while they snatched some time for themselves and their husbands were off doing whatever (but not caring for their own kids). Patriarchy just has no boundaries whatsoever, it’s a social and emotional cancer that consumes everything it touches. I’m with you…freshly divorced with a YA child now I am making sure that the care flows both ways in my friendships now.
Yes this. Proximity creates intimacy, but it also creates obligation if we’re not careful. And too often, community becomes the cushion that allows harmful dynamics to continue unchecked. I deeply value the way you named both roles: the overburdened wife and the always-available friend. Because when we center shared care in community especially among women it has to be reciprocal. Especially when those friendships often last longer than the marriages themselves.
It’s not about withholding support. It’s about being aware of how easily we can place invisible labor onto each other under the guise of closeness. Thank you for naming that with clarity.
This is timely for me. I just lost a friend after I expressed to her that the dynamics of our relationship had pegion-holed me into the role of an emotional caretaker on matters to do with her marriage. I expected loss of the friendship to disable me emotionally for a while as has happened before when I lost another friend, but I am surprised how much better I feel emotionally.
Your self-awareness is so powerful here. It’s not easy to recognize when a dynamic isn’t serving you and then take the step to address it. Losing a friendship can be deeply painful, especially when you’ve been put in the role of emotional caretaker, but it sounds like you reclaimed a part of yourself by setting that boundary. It’s a bittersweet realization, but the emotional relief you’re feeling speaks volumes about how much that dynamic was draining you. You’ve chosen yourself, and that’s a win. Your body knows ❤️
Thank you for validating my choice to remain a single man!
Rob come on! You are the man this is fixable right? If you can’t fix it you ensure you support the wife and her friends/community. But it’s deeply fixable no need to remain single unless it makes YOU personally happy to be. That’s not what I am saying 😭💔
Not trying to be fasciitis, it just feels like it’s impossible to make a woman happy by being myself.
Rob, I really don’t want you to feel like simply being yourself makes you a burden or that happiness is impossible in connection with you. That’s not what I believe at all.
The point isn’t to self-sacrifice or disappear for someone else’s comfort. It’s to find relationships romantic or otherwise where your presence isn’t seen as too much, but as meaningful, valued, and reciprocal. You’re not doing the world a favor by staying isolated. We heal in relationship too. Being single should be a choice rooted in joy, not a punishment for existing.
You’re worthy of love as you are not as a “fixed” version.
I hope you read my matriachy threads about what actual west African matrichy means and how it allows men in my culture to embrace their full humanity outside gender. I think the west limits men’s humanity so much and harms men too in community and lays burdens on them with no place to actually be able to show up and support or be supported if you get me?
I have friends in partnership with men who really show up and I show up for them (maybe I need to write about how that happens? My Mac keyboard broke and I am waiting until I can replace to be able to sit and write more. On my phone takes ages for longform… sorry for short rant. But I had to respond cos NOWAAAAY am I letting you think I am implying men or you who seems to genuinely want to connect should self isolate. Nope nope nope not having that bro 👊🩷🫵🏾
Idk it sounds like by being single, I’m saving women the labor of having to care for me. Why add to their burdens even more?
I'm not sure why this is the lesson you're taking from this article. With all due respect, however, this response seems to be one of attempting to avoid doing your own labor of building emotional intelligence and communicating with a potential partner/holding space for that partner. The burden doesn't lie in having a partner that needs support and help, the burden lies in that same partner not offering the same support and help. Being a provider, or protector, or any of the other things a man is "supposed to be" extends beyond merely having money, or a house (in large part because women are just as capable of earning money and providing shelter). It also means providing space for your partner's emotional needs, being willing to listen when they hold you accountable for how something you're doing impacts them, being able to communicate your own needs/hold them accountable in a healthy and loving way, etc.
Every human needs support from those they love, and while it is true that we all love/feel loved differently, it is also important to understand how your partner loves/receives love, and ensure that effort is made to provide that love. That, to me, seems to be the main point being made by Lovette. It is okay to need support, but support in a partnership is a 2 way street. If one person is shouldering the majority of the emotional labor, then the partnership will be inevitably damaged and has effects which reach further than that partnership. If you are not giving your partner the space they need emotionally, then they will need to take that space elsewhere, which often becomes friends (or one friend) who subsequently must take on the emotional labor that you are not providing to your partner which can (and often does) do harm to that friendship. Instead of reading something like this and saying, "welp, men shouldn't have emotions and I'm just a burden to a potential future partner," I encourage you to read something like this, be honest with yourself about your own emotional intelligence and ask how you can be better at giving your partner the same space you demand from them. "Space" doesn't always mean distancing and going to different rooms, more often than not, it means allowing someone to express themselves to the fullest and as they are/need to.
Thank you for this! I shared with my family and friends.
While I completely agree with everything you’ve said I’m just too caught up in the amazing art to respond to the writing!!
Isnt the artwork magnificent? I intend to use more of them in my future writing as themes. I want to own these in my studio. 🫶🏾
Yes! I but in person they are breathtaking. They really demand your attention even through a small cellphone screen!
“Emotional labor” aka “remembering things”
This was really good. I have had to let some friends go that were emotional vampires. If I feel drained and tired every time I hang out with you--bye! However, I do want to be there for the friends that lift me up. I have a saying, "You can be a shit show for one year." Meaning, if you get a divorce, lose your job, or any catastrophe--you have one year where it is appropriate to be a shit show and lean on others for support. After that, stand up, put on the big girl pants, and live your glorious life.
Powerful
So many quotes I wanted to restack so just restacked the whole goddamn article, so well written and unfortunately resonated very deeply
Insanely well articulated wow
Well said, I have been eliminating these types of relationships with my women friends since Jan - I didn’t have a name for what it was that was irking me so… thank you
Oooof, I’ve felt this. My guy best friend once acknowledged how I helped him become a better husband,but in return, I ended up feeling like an emotional paywall. Like I was being siphoned for growth I’d never get to benefit from.
This like okay you benefitted but what did you give back? This is why boundaries protect you. This life is more than raising men. Or helping people raise them. ✨🫶🏾
Love! I have a curiosity. We should absolutely push against the cultural conditioning that says it’s only women’s job to feel deeply, empathize, or carry the emotional weight of relationships, families, and communities. Framing it as a “gift” that’s exclusively handed to women is both limiting and dismissive of the toll it takes. While it’s good to challenge the idea that emotional labor is solely women’s work, should we also acknowledge the innate strengths some carry? Not as an excuse but as an invitation for the rest of us to catch up, not opt out.
Is what we learn about the brain chemistry and biology (Women tend to have stronger interconnections between emotional and verbal processing centers, and the limbic system is generally more activewhich governs emotion, bonding, and memory) a lie and an attempt to use science to further place that burden on women??
Damn, now the cookie banner killed the comment I had alread written. So ... it's not a lie - because that would mean people were aware they were lying - but it's a misconception or myth. Doc Impossible explains this well in her article about "trans brains" where she explains a trans woman can't have a "female brain" because there are no "female brains". https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-we-know-about-trans-brains
The most important study refernced is a big meta analysis which shows that the prior studies were misinterpreting the data: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804
That being said, the human brain is very plastic and a lot of environmental factors (including passive--as in the people you are inclined to look to as role models--and active--how you are pressured to behave--socialisation. Which can but are not necessarily gender aligned) can influence it.
And in my book of course social and emotional skills are a strength. We should cultivate them in everybody and hold those in high regard who have a talent for it. I see the problem more in the taken-for-grantedness and the little value we assign to the emotional labour of women in our society.
This excerpt speaks volumes!!!
“The first thing you need to understand is that scientific progress isn’t made in leaps and bounds. It’s made by thousands of researchers writing hundreds of articles on very, very specific, very, very small things. Each article builds on the findings of the ones that came before it until, eventually, the whole body of research passes a threshold and we’re finally able to say Something Big.”
This speaks so much to the harmful narratives that exist for every marginalized group black women being the most :(
From these articles I’ve gathered that the “science” that shaped these narratives was built on skewed lenses, biased samples, and cultural assumptions. When studies about brains, behavior, and gender were conducted over the past few centuries, they not only were the sample sizes small—they were working with samples taken from oppressed, overburdened, and silenced populations. Oppression always will distort data!
Oh yes! For example Kleinfelter (XXY) Syndrome was in the beginning mostly surveyed in prison populations, so the characterisation of that condition was very biased for a long time. And myths take a long time to be corrected in medical text books - even if science has newer data.
Totally agree Black women always have this additional axis of oppression which interacts in countless ways. For example Black women and women of Colour are often painted as hypersexual while at the same time their womanhood is questioned more often. (See just recent example during the Olympic games)
A lot of medical research was done on Black women against their will, there is a prejudice of Black women feeling less pain ... And that's just what I can recount from the top of my hat as a white woman listening in.
Biases will always leak into science if the researchers are not a diverse group themselves. So much can be influenced by how a question is posed, by how a study is set up, etc. (Takes me back to Anne Fausto-Sterling who really let me see science in a new light)
!!! Bingo! We can go back and forth forever on this. This was insanely eye opening. I’ve been reading Killing Black Bodies to become more educated and everything you touched on here is in that book. This is all so disgusting. Thanks for engaging!
Something to add to my reading list. Thank you ❤️ Love the rare cases where we learn from each other and not just preach to the choir or argue with someone...
Thank you so much for sharing these resources and taking the time to reply. Thank you for sharing this is a misunderstanding and what a powerful concluding statement that this myth “undermines the emotional labor of women”. Wow! WOW wow!
(I will read this and if you have and more personal resources that connected I’d be happy to check them out. While I know there is google and chat gpt I interact with post like these in hopes to find more authentic and true resources vs more myths and misconceptions regurgitating itself!)
What are you looking for specifically? If you are looking generally at the construction of the sex binary (not the gender binary, which is different but related) "Sexing the body" by @annefaustosterling is definitely worth a look. I also draw in Interviews with Heinz-Jürgen Voß who has a few texts available in English: https://heinzjuergenvoss.de/english-information/
Trans author @juliaserano (who is also a biologist) has a lot on the topic as well. As trans women we are always at this intersection of innateness, biology, socialisation, etc. A lot of "truths" people hold collide with our existence which leads to either doubling down and trying to erase us in order to uphold "the truth" or putting said "truths" to critical examination.
I have grown up with a lot of those assumptions myself and your own life experience colliding with all those taken-for-granted ideas sometimes gives a serious headache. 😉
Thanks I will check these out. Without realizing it I have been a perpetuant of some of these assumptions and unraveling them and over communicating to ensure they don’t continue in my being and home definitely gives me a headache but it’s worthy work!
OOF. I really feel this so much. Both from the perspective of a (former) wife to a man who refused to do any emotional work and expected me to mother him (while being abused by him) and as the “good friend” who was always the listening ear. I also found myself being unpaid childcare for married women who saw my SAHM status as being constantly available to watch their kids (“play dates”) while they snatched some time for themselves and their husbands were off doing whatever (but not caring for their own kids). Patriarchy just has no boundaries whatsoever, it’s a social and emotional cancer that consumes everything it touches. I’m with you…freshly divorced with a YA child now I am making sure that the care flows both ways in my friendships now.
Yes this. Proximity creates intimacy, but it also creates obligation if we’re not careful. And too often, community becomes the cushion that allows harmful dynamics to continue unchecked. I deeply value the way you named both roles: the overburdened wife and the always-available friend. Because when we center shared care in community especially among women it has to be reciprocal. Especially when those friendships often last longer than the marriages themselves.
It’s not about withholding support. It’s about being aware of how easily we can place invisible labor onto each other under the guise of closeness. Thank you for naming that with clarity.
✨thank you✨
Thank you for reading! 📖
This is timely for me. I just lost a friend after I expressed to her that the dynamics of our relationship had pegion-holed me into the role of an emotional caretaker on matters to do with her marriage. I expected loss of the friendship to disable me emotionally for a while as has happened before when I lost another friend, but I am surprised how much better I feel emotionally.
Your self-awareness is so powerful here. It’s not easy to recognize when a dynamic isn’t serving you and then take the step to address it. Losing a friendship can be deeply painful, especially when you’ve been put in the role of emotional caretaker, but it sounds like you reclaimed a part of yourself by setting that boundary. It’s a bittersweet realization, but the emotional relief you’re feeling speaks volumes about how much that dynamic was draining you. You’ve chosen yourself, and that’s a win. Your body knows ❤️