MOMENT | Do you resent your partner over the mental load? Try this expert advice, with Dr. Morgan Cutlip

0:07Morgan, I'm so excited that you are joining me today. I remember when I first discovered you and I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, yes, to almost everything that you were sharing, because I think that that resentment that we feel as mothers is almost universal. In fact, I don't know if I've ever met a mother who hasn't experienced that resentment, either to her partner or her co-parent or, you know, other people in her lives who are part of her mothering experience. Why do you think that is? Well, thank you for having me. I just want to say it's such a likewise, which is a shared feeling that I adore your work and everything you put out.

0:49So thank you for having me. I think the universal experience of resentment in motherhood, I think it's like this experience of almost like this slow chipping away of feeling like we matter in our relationships. I think we feel so often in motherhood, like our needs, and they do for the most part, get moved to the back burner. We do it ourselves. Our partners tend to shift their priorities. We become less important. It's not about courting each other and taking care of each other. It's about the kids and providing and the grind of day-to-day life that we start to become so small in our relationships, but we have these moments of remembering how it used to feel.

1:33And I think that this experience of sort of fading away can start to lead to resentment. I think too, there's just these multiple things that factor in. So the mental load or the amount of responsibilities that women take on almost immediately after kids enter the picture is one of the biggest sources of resentment in our relationships. And even sometimes, even though we don't like to admit it, it starts to get directed a little bit toward our kids. I don't think it's almost like a direct feeling of resentment toward them, but we can experience that at time to time. But the mental load and the amount of responsibilities that weigh us down are a major source because it feels like I think the best way to capture it is my life has so dramatically changed, yet my partner's really has not.

2:23So this loss of freedom, this increase of responsibilities, this feeling of we are making all the concessions where our partner's experience is very kind of optional where we're obligated to do all these things becomes a major, major breeding ground for resentment in our relationships. Yeah, I think you're so right. You know, there's no other time that I think that is more pointed and clear is illness. Like I have talked to my husband about this so many times. He's ill and he just goes to bed for a few days, almost without even checking. He just knows that I'm going to pick up everything. And in fact, everything will just keep running seamlessly.

3:01Whereas if I'm ill, I can go to bed for a few days, but I'm saying, don't forget this, the pickup that, you know, that mental load has to get handed over. And I think if ever there was a demonstration of inequality of it, it is that, and I have quite a good equal relationship for the most part. Same. Still, that is fascinating to me. Yeah, I wrote a post about this and I've posted it a couple times where it's like, I know you're not mad at your partner when they're sick, but and it like outlines some of these key differences. And, you know, I have a really good relationship. I have a partner who does so much.

3:36He takes initiative. He's like tuned in. But I swear when I'm sick, like I could be dead back in that bedroom. And it's like no one would know because no one's checking on me. whereas when he's sick or the kids are sick, I'm bringing tea, I'm doing the things, I'm keeping up with laundry. And so, yeah, that's such a good example of when it just goes to show how different sort of our roles are and what we take on and how we care for each other and how we carry these loads. You know, come out of being sick and the house is behind and everything still needs to get done.

4:16Where does this get set up? Because this is something that I think about a lot. If I think about mine and Guy's relationship before kids, it was pretty even. He would do just as much laundry as me. We were both working full time. We were both ambitious in these big jobs. we would split cooking. He'd cook one night or I'd cook the other. I never remember feeling resentment about mental or domestic or emotional load. He would buy the presents for his family. I would buy the presents for mine. It was, I never remember feeling it. And it was on maternity leave that I remember really starting to feel that inequality and that resentment.

4:58Is that where this kind of this inequality gets set up after kids? I think it depends on your relationship. So I think there are a lot of couples who actually get set up before kids, but they're not actually feeling the pain of it until after kids. And then there's couples like you who you like, we were great before we were splitting everything. And then after kids, things change. So one way that I think this happens is something I called piling on of precedence, which is basically that we do things early on in our relationship, even before kids, just out of love and care for our partner where we're like, oh, you know what?

5:35I sent your mom a birthday gift. You're welcome. And it just feels good to do something thoughtful and do something nice. It's well-intentioned. But when we do these things, I believe that our partners are like, sweet, got it. That's taken care of. So they sort of remove it from their awareness. So if you start adding up things before kids, I picked up your deodorant. I saw you were running low on underwear, like all of the things that we do out of love and care. And just because, you know, we want to do kind things for our partner, start to add up. They remove it out of their awareness. Then we move into motherhood and literally overnight, the amount of responsibilities grow exponentially.

6:17And so we're entering into it with sort of a full plate that we didn't realize we were carrying. And then after we have kids, it's like it tends to all fall on us. I think moms with our just all of the changes right after kids that you talk about matrescence, that that period of adjustment, the hormonal things going on. We are pulled to really sort of protect. And so a lot of times we engage in maternal gatekeeping and doing these things where we're sort of pushing our partners out. We're taking the things on so they are not learning what to do. They're probably not jumping in as much as they should.

6:55And if you have piled on precedents for years before you had kids or however long before you had kids, your plate becomes unmanageably full immediately after kids. And we oftentimes just are so much in the fog of motherhood that we don't quite realize it until we have that moment where we're like, why am I the only one? Why am I the only one packing the diaper bag? Like, why am I the only one restocking diapers? Why am I the only one getting up in the middle of the night? And so then it hits like a ton of bricks, that feeling of resentment, that feeling of inequality. And so I think that's one of the biggest things.

7:34So for your relationship where you went into it, feeling like into motherhood, feeling like things were pretty fair and pretty well divided, I'd say it's that early stages of motherhood that I think just pulls us in to wanting to do it all ourselves when really we need to resist that a little bit and kind of throw our partners in. I remember a conversation with my husband once and he's like, oh, I just love the kids now that they're a bit older. So much easier for me. I never knew what I was doing when they were younger. And I was like, hold up. Do you think I knew what I was doing? I didn't know what I was doing either.

8:10I had to figure it out. In my first book, I tell my story of this, but I didn't do a good job of requiring him to figure it out. And he didn't do a good enough job of jumping in and learning how to figure it out either. And so I think that those early moments of motherhood are really important in terms of letting our partners step in, requiring them to step in and them taking initiative to step in, to participate in all of the things involved in taking care of the mom and the baby in those early, early months and years. Yeah, it's so true. And this is why I, You know, and I always get some backlash to some degree when I talk about this, but I think it's so important because I think this is where the idea of mother's instinct really does not do us a favor.

8:55I mean, the fact is that it's actually not real. It's caregiver's instinct and it's not instinct. It's hours on the job. It's attunement after hour, after hour, after hour. I know you know that. So, but I think that is where that idea of, oh, the mother just knows. I'm super passionate about breaking that down because like you said, I didn't just know and I didn't just know. And actually we had this baby as a team. So we need to be caring for this baby as a team. It is not all on me. And I think I've really noticed amongst my community and clients that is often where that inequality starts to get set up, particularly if there's breastfeeding, when it can feel like, well, what can I do?

9:35Yeah, I love that you brought that up. And I think, you know, as we if we start talking about the mental load and getting into some of that, but a big part of these things is partners stepping into increasing their knowledge of the home and family life and how things work. because we, this myth of the mother's instinct, I love that you said that, but we step in, we take it on and we end up day to day, almost like collecting data on how our family functions, what our kids' preferences are, what they like, and all of these things that we are storing and we're using this information to anticipate needs, to, I mean, eventually anticipate meltdowns, how do we navigate these?

10:17You know, all of the things that we use to inform how we act in motherhood, that if our partners aren't stepping into this role of also being collectors of data and really taking this stuff in, they aren't going to know as much. And then it falls into like, well, you just do it better than I do. Right. All of these sort of terms we've weaponized incompetence and all these things. But really, it's just increasing your knowledge and stepping in and getting some practice.

10:48Thank you.