But when we get these partnerships, all these “best friends” we married don’t text us back like our female best friends do. They can’t wipe a counter… - Lyz Lenz

will hear this advice over and over again. Repeated ad nauseam from the pulpit and prestige publications, like The Atlantic, where Arthur Brooks chides couples to see marriage not as a “me” but a “we” and not to get all caught up on who is doing more of the work, because sometimes marriage is like that. You just have to work. But whose work? Who is responsible for the repair and maintenance of a marriage? Who buys the self-help books? Who goes to the conferences and pushes their partner into therapy? In a 2019 study, sociologist Allison Daminger found that women carry the majority of the cognitive load in their relationships. Meaning women are the ones noticing, analyzing, and monitoring the issues in a marriage. Daminger broke down the concept of mental load into four parts: anticipating, identifying, deciding, and monitoring. The aspects of cognitive load where Daminger noticed that women do most of the work was in anticipation and monitoring. Women are thinking of the problems, working to solve them, and monitoring them for success.

Capitalism can be just as extractive as marriage. And if you are going to have your labor exploited, it might be easier to do it in a nice home. But I think the problem is that both narratives are failures. Women dedicating their lives to being cogs in the wheel of capitalism isn’t fulfillment. But neither are home and children. Jobs can be lost. So can homes. Children grow up to become their own people. And home, children, and marriage, however much you want them, might not be accessible for everyone.

But so often for wives, the measure breaks when we ask for the scale to slide in our favor.