Why women need to learn to stop stepping in

It occurred to me recently I’ve spent a lot of time being a partner’s emotional EA in relationships. I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of emotional labour; it’s been one of the buzzwords of 2018. It’s been to 2018 what panini was to 2008. Ever since American journalist Gemma Hartley came out with the now-viral essay Women Aren’t Nags – We’re Just Fed Up, women everywhere have been complaining, debating and Facebooking en masse as to why it is that, in 2018, women are still doing all of the emotional labour in relationships.

The debate has focused not only on how women do most of the domestic work (or have to actively manage their partners in the domestic schedule of the house) but crucially are also the people constantly stepping in to manage the everyday emotional ‘‘life admin’’ of a functioning family. Being the person who remembers all the relatives’ birthdays, sorts out what we’re doing for Christmas, packs everyone’s lunch with macrobiotic snacks, calls their partner after the big meeting to see how it went, and creates 19 tutus for all the ‘‘sheep’’ in the ballet recital. Basically stuff that involves a lot of sympathetic noises and glue gunning.

I get off easier because I don’t have kids, so my opportunities to whip up a bovidae-themed tutu ensemble are dispiritingly low. But, when in relationships, I find myself leaping instinctively feet first into the bog of emotional labour and producing endless amounts of schedules, calendars, online shopping, budgets, sympathetic phone calls and voluminous step-by-step worksheets on how to use Google Drive.

I then find myself getting exhausted and moping about glumly at what an unappreciated martyr I am to this unrecognised moral crusade.

So why do I, and why do hundreds of thousands of women around the world, do it? We seem to have this irresistible habit of seeing the murky depths of these never-ending domestic issues, strapping on a swim cap and diving in head first.

Most of the debate on this topic has centred on the role of men. About how men are either unaware these things exist or, if they are, they’re unwilling to do something about them. (Which makes me curious to know whether this is a phenomenon among same-sex relationships too.)

And yes, it’s certainly true there are a lot of men out there still wearing animal skins. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised I’m doing some things that are not helping me escape this labyrinthine labour.

For a start, one of the reasons why I suspect I’m always jumping in with here’s-a-helpful-solutionthat-I-made-earlier is that I like making people feel good. I’ve worked in entertainment a long time and get a kick out of making people feel special. So it’s natural that I try to step in similarly in a relationship. What I forget is that, while it might be fun at the start, constantly living with a sense of emotional responsibility gets overwhelming.

There’s also the fact that I, and other women, probably see emotional labour as ‘‘our thing’’. Women have been raised since being wee nippers to think that they’re good at empathy, selflessness and making others feel good. And so with any situation in which we’re given some power, we’re going to hang on to it because it’s ours.

Even if we actually hate it, it’s still ours. Hence why you get strange behaviour like a couple I knew where, if the dad packs the kids’ lunch, the mum will repack the perfectly adequate arrangement ‘‘correctly’’.

But the real kicker for me was when I realised that the No 1 reason us chicks give for stepping in is, ‘‘If I don’t do it then noone will’’. Which often means, unless you’re dating an aforementioned neanderthal, that if you don’t do it, then it will either take too long to happen or it won’t happen to your standards. And underpinning this is the idea that men will be useless at emotional labour.

Now, I know this is actually rubbish. I’ve known women who’d be unable to emotionally support a teaspoon, and men who’re so good at it that they turn up at my house with a week’s worth of prewashed socks for me.

Really your ability to do emotional labour comes down to your capacity for empathy, conscientiousness and forward planning. But we’re still clinging to this abiding cynicism that men would be bad, which stops us even encouraging them to come forward to do it.

So what I realised out of this thought process is that, while men need to step up, I also need to stop always stepping in. The world will keep spinning – it’ll just take slightly longer for him to figure out how to use Google Drive.

We seem to have this irresistible habit of seeing the murky depths of these neverending domestic issues, strapping on a swim cap and diving in head first.