March 2021 – Thought Food

huge heap of dirty disgusting dishes in the sink waiting to be washed by unreliable flatmate

Has it really come to this?

To the women who document their displeasure about the unequal distribution of their mental load passive aggressively on social media:

The likes and laughing emojis you get from hundreds of strangers might give you a quick sugar hit of instant validation, but will they solve the issue of your unequally distributed mental load, or will it just corrode what sounds like the already leaking vessel of your marriage further?

The writers appear to feel more solidarity with the anonymous commenters than with the person they are in a partnership with. Underneath the jokes sits violently simmering resentment.

Let me back pedal to the source of my lack of admiration for this approach for a moment.

The first was a recent article a woman wrote about the (extensive) difficulty she was having getting her dog to feed her husband. Sorry her husband to feed the dog – although with the tone she used to describe her husband’s ineptitude, she could easily have meant it the other way around.

The second – I think it was on Youtube – an account of a woman who ‘went on strike’ and stopped washing the dishes and then posted updates about the ‘apocalypse’ unfolding in her house as a result of this. Piles of dirty dishes. The husband in question using a baby spoon to stir his coffee rather than doing the dishes.

I am not trivialising or dismissing the message these women are attempting to send their partners, but their delivery is conflicting.

In one breath it’s attempting humour and in the next red-hot anger.

Clearly we are not dealing with one of those minor sources of marital discord that can be shrugged off as a normal part of any relationship here.

The unequal distribution of the mental/domestic load is real and needs to be taken seriously. But is turning it into a farce and publicly infantilising the people whose behaviour you want to change the way to go about it?

Returning to the article about feeding the dog for a moment. The writer explicitly stated that in the four years she had off work outside the home, before returning to her career, she took on 100% of the domestic load. Feeling (rightly) entitled to a break, she then seemed surprised when the hand over of one chore (feeding the dog) didn’t run as smoothly as she wanted it to.

She also displayed another classic trait of the mental load martyr: overcomplicating a simple task, by insisting on her husband’s dog being fed a thermomix cooked diet for the sole reason that she thought ‘It made the dog’s coat shiny’.

Having read her article, I posted the following response:

As a small animal vet: The best diet for your dog is a high quality dry biscuit, something like hills science diet, water, and (if your dog tolerates them well) fresh raw bones for their teeth. You are wasting everyone’s time, energy, and to be honest a lot of words in your article on preparing fresh food for your dog.

As for the distribution of mental load: You mention that in your four years off you shouldered 100% of the domestic load. Why? Did you both consider your husband less of a parent or part of the household in that time? If he worked long hours, he may not have been able to do as much of it as you, but does that mean he should have done nothing in that time? If he had been living in a hypothetical share house instead of your family during the time he worked long hours, would his housemates have been happy to do his laundry, dirty dishes, and feed his dog?

So maybe setting the bar so low during those years is making it harder now? The martyrdom of women shouldering and complaining about the mental load is real. Change your dog’s diet for everyone’s sake – including your dog’s. Tell your husband if he doesn’t feed his dog you will report him to the RSPCA. If you stop treating your husband like a an inept toddler, he might stop acting like one.

To be clear – I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving your partner a wake up call to shoulder their share of the domestic load, by letting things slide. But make a choice – it’s either something funny that you don’t really care about that you post on social media, or it is a serious issue in your relationship, in which case yes, let the dishes pile up until your partner gets the message, but don’t then simultaneously trivialise and weaponise it by posting it on social media. Doing so might get you the hit of anonymous likes, but it’s not going to solve the problem in your relationship.

I have previously written about the equitable division of mental and domestic load in my relationship. Your Mental Load = Your Responsibility We both have careers. We share two children, and a menagerie of pets, and all the mental load. I have been called ‘lucky’ because of this.

I am not lucky.

I made a choice to be with my husband. We work on communicating well and from the very beginning of our relationship I have never given him the illusion that I would carry 100% of the domestic load.

But if either of us ever resorted to shaming the other on social media, if we had a significant issue in our marriage (such as the unequal distribution of the domestic load) I suspect we would each seriously re-examine our choice to stay with each other.

Post script: This post is not in any way aimed at those living with or who have escaped domestic violence or who are living with mental illness or any other disadvantage. It was intended as a prompt to reflect for the women who do not live with domestic violence, but do live with straight, white, cis-gender, non-disabled, privilege and who have choices but prefer martyrdom.

You may also like to check out:

Your Mental Load = Your Responsibility

Don’t Try This At Home: Schooling

Rewards For Reports: Entitled or Deserved?

CN: brief non specific mentions of suicide, trauma, and eating disorders

If you have lived experience of mental illness, who tells your story?

Or even just fills in the blanks?

Silence about lived experience of mental illness from those who live with it is a frustrating paradox. Silence breeds stigma. Stigma breeds silence.

And there is a certain hypocrisy to complaining about the stigma if we choose silence.

I don’t say this lightly or without understanding the complexities of speaking out about our lived experiences.

I don’t live with an unprocessed trauma underlying my mental illness. Nor have I experienced treatment (or lack thereof) in the public mental health system. So, I have no right to speak about the ability or willingness of people to share their lived experience in these circumstances. I live with straight, white, cis-gendered, able bodied privilege. This means my path to diagnosis and high quality mental health care has been smoother than for those who don’t. All these factors make sharing my experiences easier.

One of the things I love about writing this blog is having ultimate control of my narrative. I don’t get paid for my posts. But I also don’t answer to anyone.

But I did recently have my voice stolen for a bit and I loathed the experience.

I’ve done some media interviews over the years Radio And Podcast Interviews and have generally felt empowered by and happy with the outcomes. Until this most recent one.

I agreed to it before I knew it would be written in first person based on a phone interview with me, but not written by me.

I was sent the article to fact check before it was published. The facts were correct. I hadn’t been misquoted, but it sounded nothing like me. It made me feel less than who I am. I was able to suggest some alterations. But even once my changes were incorporated the final article still felt clumsy. I would not have published it as one of my posts.

The journalist who interviewed me didn’t even tell me when the article was published. I found out when another journalist (who’d read the article) contacted me to ask if I’d be willing to interview for another ‘first person’ article written by them, about my experience of psychosis.

I politely declined. This (second) publication’s articles are sensationalist, pumped out to shock the masses and exploit the contributors. It would have been a hatchet job on my values. The opposite of empowering those with lived experience, educating those without.

I have no hesitation broaching my experience of psychosis with individuals, organisations, or the media, but only on my terms. Stories of psychosis are still in a different category to those of anxiety and depression. The media is not as used to them. They have to be handled with care and controlled by the person telling them.

I don’t even like my family or friends speaking for me about my illness. Not because I don’t trust them, but because I have more practice at relaying my experience with context and nuance.

However, disclosure around mental illness without an awareness of how to do it safely can be damaging, even dangerous. Whether you disclose your experience to one person, several, or in the media, yours and your audience’s safety must be your first priority.

If disclosure is likely to compromise your current mental health or retraumatise you, then you are not in the right space for it.

Especially if you are sharing with a wider audience you have to consider that some of that audience may be living through an episode of mental illness at the time of your disclosure and be particularly vulnerable to any information you share.

Content notes at the beginning of any article or interview containing triggering subjects for example suicide or trauma give your consumer the choice about whether they feel well enough to read/watch/listen on.

There are safe ways to relay distressing experiences to your audience. For example sharing an experience of a suicide attempt can help open up vital conversations around suicide and lessen stigma. But sharing explicit details about methods can be harmful to anyone in your audience who may be experiencing suicidal ideations. Similarly specific details about body weight, diet, or exercise should be left out of a safe disclosure around eating disorders.

Sharing your experience of mental illness is a personal decision. You have the absolute right not to.

But think about this – If you live with a mental illness and choose silence, you are leaving a space, for someone else less qualified to speak for you. A hole shaped like you, to be filled with more stigma.

If we give the world a void instead of our voices, it will fill it with its own assumptions. So, if you are well enough and able to do so – set your terms and boundaries, choose your conduit and gift the world your story.

I decided not to publish the link to the external article mentioned in this post. If you are interested in reading it to compare its style to my usual posts feel free to message or email me and I will share it individually.

Share this:

Share this: