"emotional work"

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon recently wrote about "Doofus men and their saintly, ever-responsible but never fun wives." The post mostly focuses on gendered division of work in the household, and brings up the idea of emotional work as an example of a traditional type of "women's work," which is often undervalued and unrecognized.

The comments contain a hot debate of the existence of "emotional work," with points of view ranging from "I do that, but I don't think of it as 'work,'" to "my relationship is perfect and does not require any type of emotional maintenance," to "I do that, and it's definitely work." The latter point of view has been slammed by some commentors who pass judgment on the relationships in which "emotional work" is seen as "work," which must by definition mean "unpleasant," and suggest that the "workers" are in the wrong relationship if it feels so unpleasant.

Clearly, different people have different associations with the word "work," and just because some are hesitant to use that word in the context of a romantic relationship does not mean that the relationship figures out its own wrinkles; clearly the people in the relationship must engage in some sort of negotiation process when their desires and needs come into conflict with each others' or with the realities of what is possible in this world. Compromise and/or discussion and negotiation is necessary in any relationship that is not a dictatorship, and reaching this compromise, and the process of discussion and negotiation, is called "emotional work," whether a person believes it actually involves labor or unpleasantness or not.

Now that we're clear about what emotional work is, let me just say that I'm tired of shouldering this burden in my relationship. I'm unclear as to whether I was assigned the duty or just grabbed it myself because it wouldn't get done if I didn't do it and it needed doing, but either way, I don't want the primary responsibility for it. I want to share the duty with my partner, whom I love and respect and who should want to be a part of this process. If we have a fight, he should approach me first to make things better sometimes, instead of my feeling that "oh my god, if we're ever going to speak again, I've got to make things right." If he feels that we have conflicting desires, he should ask me how we can resolve them instead of capitulating to what I want and sulking or taking his way and feeling guilty. If we are resolving differences after a fight, he should imagine ways in which we can avoid the situation that caused the fight instead of expecting me to come up with these types of solutions all the time.

And yet, as I type this, I realize that I've been trying to teach him these skills for the past four years that we've been together, and that he's learning. This post would have made much more sense had I made it three years ago, two years ago, even a year ago, than it does now. I do have a partner who is trying to have a relationship of equals with me. He wants to try to fix things when we need fixing, he cares about us and our future and is invested in making things right. He's not perfect, and neither am I, but we're both working towards making a good relationship. The shared balance is not 50/50, but it's a lot closer to that than it is to being highly skewed towards me doing all the work. I'm lucky.