[Video paraphrased below]
I am 58 years old and I have a 13 year old son, and this is something that I’ve been thinking about as a widow for four and a half years.
When my husband first died, I really thought that I would get remarried. I would mourn for a year and then I would meet somebody and get remarried and just get back to my what I like to say is my “regularly scheduled life”.
That hasn’t been my experience, and now I don’t think I want that anymore.
I loved being married. I loved being part of a family unit with two parents. I also had a very good husband. He did the food shopping, meal planning and cooking. I think we were as equal as two people can be within a system that benefits men.
During the pandemic, it became evident that within most households, women carry “the mental load”, like making doctor’s appointments, baking cupcakes for school bake sales, and knowing the names of their children’s teachers and friends.
It turned out, a lot of men who thought that they were equal partners, really didn’t know this whole other side that women were doing.
On top of carrying the mental load, women also do “the emotional labor” within families, managing everyone’s emotions and solving conflicts as they arise.
It’s not necessarily that men don’t want to do emotional labor, but most don’t know how. They haven’t been socialized to be in touch with their own emotions, let alone what is going on with the rest of the family.
If women are lucky, their partner will contribute half of the physical labor, but then they are carrying the mental load and the emotional labor.
That’s a lot of work assigned to women within heterosexual marriages.
I’m not saying that two people can’t work out an equal distribution of labor within their marriage, but within a system that does not have universal child care, universal health care, and parental leave, women are at a higher disadvantage.
This is just something that’s been on my mind and I’ve wanted to talk about it because nobody talked about it with me before I got married.
The bar for what qualifies as a “good husband” is pretty low if he isn’t expected to take on any of the emotional labor and mental load.
All this to say, I don’t want to remarry because I don’t want to be responsible for the emotional labor within my family again.
