This is how a row about the laundry repaired my marriage

All around the world, mums are carrying the mental load: the organising, planning and anticipating that keeps family life running. My wife attempted to convey her dissatisfaction with this arrangement through the medium of loud sighing, rage-tidying, stomping around the house and occasionally hissing, “why do I have to do everything?” while I stood there loading the washing machine, feeling pretty baffled. Eventually, I went off and read some books about parenting and motherhood, and worked out what all the sighing and stomping was about. For some men, this passive-aggressive (sometimes just flat-out aggressive) technique eventually breaks through, but it can be a long and painful road for both of you. As a couples coach who works exclusively with parents, the question I get asked more than any other is: “How do I tell my partner that I’m carrying more than him without him getting defensive and shutting down?” Shorts It’s a great question, because defensiveness kills these conversations. She tries to explain how overwhelmed she feels. He hears an accusation that he’s lazy or a bad father. He immediately starts listing all the things he does. This minimises the invisible work that she is doing. She feels even more unseen and unheard than she did before, and the only option available to her is to say it again, but louder. And round and round and round we go. There is, of course, an uncomfortable issue here. Why, when mums are already carrying the bulk of this work, should they have to do the emotional labour to make the conversation comfortable for men? The only answer I have is functional, not moral. You shouldn’t have to persuade your partner that an unfair situation is unfair. But if what you want is for that situation to change, I’ve learnt from my own marriage and from working with couples that there are ways of having this conversation that make it much more likely you’ll get somewhere. 1. Timing is everything These conversations almost always happen at the worst possible moment. Morning rush. The forms for the school trip haven’t been signed. One child has just remembered it’s Geography Week and he has to go to school dressed as his favourite mountain. Nobody has told the school that the other one has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Mum finally explodes: “Why do I have to think of EVERYTHING?” Dad, who is desperately trying to force a child into shoes, just thinks: “What the hell are you talking about?” When we’re at capacity, all the things we know about good communication go out the window. You cannot have this conversation in the moment. Book it in. For some couples I work with, introducing a weekly meeting where they look at what’s happening over the next week or month, what needs doing and who is going to be responsible for what is one of the most relationship-changing things they do. My wife and I now do a weekly forward planning meeting every week. If your partner is resistant to this, promise that this will result in some of the conversations you have in the week not being about admin. For me, there was a period where it felt like my wife didn’t even say hello to me anymore. She’d walk into the room and say: “Have you booked that thing?” “Can you remember to call them?” “We need to sort out Saturday.” I hated it. She hated having to do it. When you give admin somewhere specific to live, it doesn’t have to permeate every interaction. You can get some levity and love back into your chat. This is a very appealing carrot to men. 2. Tell him what you’re NOT saying Imagine your partner sat you down tonight and said: “I want to talk about the way we’re running the home.” Even if he chose his words carefully, would a tiny part of you hear: He’s saying I’m a bad mum?For dads, the equivalent is: She’s saying I’m lazy. She thinks I’m a bad father. She thinks I don’t care about my family. The easiest way around this is to explicitly address this fear. Start by saying things like: “I think you’re a great dad” or “I can see how much you’re doing.” Then, tell him what the conversation actually is about. “But the way we’re running our home at the moment isn’t working for me. I feel like we’re always on the back foot and I can’t switch my brain off. I want us to work out what we could do differently. Can you help me find some solutions?” You’re not massaging his ego; you’re removing an accusation you weren’t trying to make in the first place. ‘We’re all very good at feeling an injustice, and much less good at working out exactly what we want to change,’ writes Alex (Photo: Teri Pengilley) 3. Be specific about what you want The second reason we get defensive is that we feel at capacity too. So, when you come at us with “I’m doing everything, this isn’t fair,” what we hear is that now you want us to do everything, and that won’t be fair either. That usually isn’t what you mean at all. Lots of the mums I speak to say their real problem is that the work they do is invisible, and they want it noticed and appreciated. If that’s true for you, say so. If what you want is for your partner to be in charge of more, don’t just ask for “more”. Start with one specific thing. Could he be in charge of the kids’ bedtimes? Could he own breakfast on the days he doesn’t have to be at work early? I get it: this is more work for mums. We’re all very good at feeling an injustice, and much less good at working out exactly what we want to change. But doing that bit of extra thinking will make this conversation go so much better. 4. Make the system the problem, not your partner You’ve both walked into a dynamic that neither one of you chose. You haven’t consciously made any decisions about this stuff. You’ve just ended up in the same place as every other heterosexual couple after they have kids: Mum becomes the default manager of the home. Once you understand that, it’s much harder to see it as a character flaw in your partner. The more you can internalise that, the less blame will come through in your words and your tone. You’re there to solve a problem together, not to punish someone for their wrongdoing. 5. Life on the other side Here’s the irony. Life on the other side of our male defensiveness about this issue is so much better, and not just because our relationships improve. Men hate being told what to do all the time. It sucks. But this is the nag paradox: we put mums in the management position and then complain when they manage us. Of course they tell us what to do. We’ve made them the boss. The truth is, we’d much rather be a co-pilot than a passenger. Sharing the responsibility, not just the tasks, is great for our mental health because we feel happier and more in control. It’s great for our relationships with our kids, because we are less stressed. And it means we get to stop being the guy who’s constantly waiting for instructions. So, whichever side of this conversation you’re on, it’s worth spending some energy working out how to have it well.