Labour Of Love

Women Tend To Carry The Emotional Weight In Relationships – So What We Can Do About It?

- Katherine Laidlaw

It took Kristine* about a year to realise that something in her seemingly idyllic relationship wasn’t quite right. She and her boyfriend had fallen for each other over long days spent on a coastal road trip. But, 10 months in, she started to notice some red flags in how he approached the necessary tasks that come with keeping a relationship on track. For one, he couldn’t plan ahead. “I rely on you to be my calendar,” he’d tell her when she would comment on his lack of initiative. And when it came to making dinners together, all the details were on her — from coming up with meals they both liked to grocery shopping to remembering to take the chicken out of the freezer in the morning. Her boyfriend also relied on her to spend hours dissecting his emotional state, insisting he wanted to deal with his increasingly serious depression on his own instead of going to a therapist. He would turn every conversation about their relationship, like whether or not they should move in together, into one about how discouraged he felt in his job or how he needed her help to get motivated. “I’d walk away and think, ‘He hijacked that a little bit,’” says Kristine. “I was eager to help, but I hadn’t noticed how much our dynamic had changed. It was way more draining on me than I realised.”