I hope life is harder without your spouse
Happy Labor Day! I hope you are enjoying the long weekend and you're getting to spend this time with your service member. I am separated from mine at the moment because I went to Charleston to celebrate the bachelorette weekend of my future sister-in-law. My husband is still in a deployment window, so taking leave is difficult, and even if it wasn't, we don't have enough leave to spare with our upcoming trips. But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.
In celebration of Labor Day, which recognizes American workers' contributions to the labor force, I wanted to discuss the domestic front. And I want to start by saying I hope it is harder when your spouse is gone. Of course, we would never wish for our lives and the lives of those we love to be more difficult, but if their spouse is away, I hope it is hard.
There are two ways to look at this. Our life can get harder because we miss our spouse. Generally speaking, we marry people that we like. And if we like someone, we want to spend time with them. The cycle of military separations often gets in the way of spending time with the ones we love. It sucks that life is hard when they are gone, but it is infinitely better than life being easier without them. My husband has always said that he would rather I have a hard time with him leaving than for me to not really care. We miss them because we love them, and pain is essential to a great military marriage.
There is a second way that our life can and should get harder, which is what I primarily want to focus on today. Our life can get harder because of the workload. Having our spouses home should mean that we have fewer responsibilities in our daily lives. If it doesn't, then we have a problem.
The workload of running our lives and our houses should feel different if both partners are home than it does with just one of them. Mental load has become a much more common conversation, and it is certainly one that needs to be addressed in each relationship. Those who balance the mental load well keep an eye on it so it doesn't get out of hand. Those who don't need to discuss it to ensure it becomes balanced.
Studies have found that women do more housework after marriage while men do less. This study even found that married mothers do more housework than single moms (access the complete research here, although many news outlets have also covered the details of the article). The conversation is changing, and the balance is becoming better. I hope that you have that balance in your life.
If your family needs help in this area, I highly recommend reading Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (you can get it here). From what I have heard, the Fair Play method works best when both parties want to help manage the mental load better and just don't know where to begin. When one spouse is disinterested in the whole process, the book won't help much. It requires two willing parties, which is why it helped in my situation (although we had primarily worked out these issues before reading the book but had done so in a very similar way).
I'll give a quick rundown of what the Fair Play method involves. The goal is to split the daily, weekly, monthly and random tasks within a relationship so that neither party carries all the invisible labor. This does not mean that the duties are split 50/50. In fact, Rodsy shares that most marriages function great with a 70/30 split. Within each individual marriage, we get to decide what works best for ourselves. But there are very few circumstances when one person takes on all responsibility. Even during a deployment, the spouse who is away can still manage some things, and we can outsource others. We should never be holding all the cards, as Rodsy calls them.
When it comes to any given task in our lives, there are three steps: we have to conceive, plan and execute. In Rodsky's ideal method, each partner handles all three for whatever task they take on. For example, I usually cook dinner in our house, but the job isn't just cooking dinner. I have to plan the meals for the week while factoring in what everyone will and won't eat, make the grocery list, go shopping, decide on replacements or head to a second store for things that weren't in stock, and then cook dinner. That is a lot of labor associated with the one task of cooking dinner.
In another example, my husband does the laundry, which doesn't just mean starting the washer and switching a load. He has to pay attention to when our laundry, my son's laundry, and my son's diapers need to be washed. He has to switch the laundry, which means pulling out and hanging up everything that can't go in the dryer. He takes care of folding and putting away all the clothes. He makes sure that we have laundry detergent and that the dryer balls are still working correctly.
That is how every task on the domestic front is. Each one requires a lot of thinking. Each one requires physical and invisible labor. Each one is never-ending. That's why we need to split the tasks up. Carrying 100% of the mental load is too much for any one person. These tasks can constantly be switched out between people to ensure that no one gets burnt out or that the family functions best. My husband often cooks dinner on Thursday nights (if the house isn't overflowing with leftovers) because I have conference calls all through dinnertime. The same goes for laundry. If my husband is unavailable and my son pees through all his sleep sacks, I take care of the laundry.
Labor Day may be a celebration of work outside the home, but use today to check in inside your home. Make sure that the mental load is split well between you and your spouse. If it's not, maybe try out the Fair Play method. Or if one partner is unwilling to step up, look into talking to someone. I firmly believe that we do not have to wait until we are in a worst-case scenario to speak to a licensed counselor because life should be harder when our spouse is gone.
Yes, it sucks that life gets harder. Yes, it sucks that we have to do so much more when they are gone. But we should be so grateful that life is easier when they are home. And having an equal partner means they understand the mental load we carry when they are gone. We can work together to find better solutions and have someone who genuinely appreciates everything we do to make it possible for them to go serve. Life should be better with our spouses by our side, and I hope you have or find that in your marriage.
-sarah hartley
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