the mental load can even ruin olive garden
Have you heard of the “mental load”? It’s the phrase that is meant to capture all of the planning, organizing, attention giving, thinking and tracking that you do to run a household. It’s the unseen stuff: the birthday party planning, the tracking doctor’s visits, the noticing your child is picking their nails and might be anxious, the tracking the things you need to buy for the school year. It’s all of it besides the visible chores.
The mental load never stops. It even happens at Olive Garden.
This story is about how to achieve really wonderful outcomes in your marriage:
more teamwork
the feeling that partner is a PARTNER and not a CHILD
the feeling of being connected and loved
less stress in your life overall!
My Olive Garden Story
We were in the waiting area, sitting on a long bench seat next to a family of eight: two parents, four kids, and two grandparents.
Dad had 1 year old kiddo on his lap. Kiddo was not happy. Kiddo was crying, twisting, whining, and generally trying to get someone to notice how freaking miserable he was. Dad was sitting, talking to others, loosely holding kid. After several minutes of this, Mom leans over and says, "Can you walk him around?" Dad then gets up and stands in front of the group, holding the crying 1 year old.
A few minutes in, Dad continues to stand there, sometimes talking to kiddo, mostly looking at his phone, sometimes showing the phone to kiddo.
Kiddo continues to cry. Loudly.
Mom stands up, grabs kiddo out of Dad's arms, and proceeds to talk in a soothing voice to kiddo while she walks around the waiting area, pointing out various things and generally distracting the kiddo.
(I'm sure you'll be shocked to find out that the kiddo stopped crying.)
Despite the fact mom is taking care of the two other kids, and talking to grandparents, she is monitoring the 1 year old the entire time. This, my friends, is the mental load. The constant monitoring and tracking her brain is doing. The EFFORT that is happening constantly while everything else is also happening.
Let’s add one more vocabulary phrase!
Enter: weaponized incompetence. The idea that if you are pointedly terrible at doing something, someone will step in and do it for you.
Weaponized incompetence shows up in couples soooo often you'd think it was taught in premarital counseling. (Actually, it's just taught in most American homes...)
The person in the male role generally has learned that they actually don't have to do much. If they wait long enough their mom will do their laundry... their girlfriend will cheer them up.. their wife will pick up the dirty clothes from the floor... you get it.
(This is why you sometimes feel like your husband’s mother.)
It’s curable. It doesn’t have to be a life-long condition. But, the cure isn’t pleasant for anyone involved. The best way to cure weaponized incompetence is to let them figure it out for themselves.
What would that look like at Olive Garden?
Try saying this:
"Hey, he’s disturbing everyone here in the waiting area. Can you please take care of that?"
Why is this a good solution?
It's made up of a couple important ingredients:
You directly state the problem: the kid is disturbing everyone
You make your direct ask: you want your partner to fix it.
You don’t make it personal, you don’t shame, you don’t create an argument that distracts from the problem. (e.g. a shaming response would be “I asked you to quiet him down, can’t you even do that?!”)
Why I like this better than these alternatives:
Not as good: “He’s still crying and I asked you to take care of it. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
>>> This phrasing turns the problem from the crying kid to the relationship pattern. But, we know the answer. The answer is weaponized incompetence. So nothing your partner says in response is really going to help out here. And, it actually doesn’t get you what you want in that moment which is a quiet child and a partner who is DOING something.
Not as good: “Why do I have to do everything all the time?!” usually paired with taking the kid from the partner
>>> This again asks a question that we now know the answer to (e.g. weaponized incompetence), and reinforces that if the partner doesn’t do anything than you will fix it.
The cure for weaponized incompetence, and the way to hand over the mental load, is to let things get messy for a while. Practice REQUIRES messiness. It’s the only way we learn and grow. But it will lead to really wonderful outcomes: more teamwork, feeling like your partner is a PARTNER and not a CHILD, feeling more connected and loved, and having less stress in your life overall!
Blogs are pretty full of generalizations. If you want specific tips based on your personality, take my quiz to get your workbook of 3 Simple Steps to get Teamwork At Home based on YOUR particular personality profile. Take my QUIZ to learn more about your strengths, and how to get the most out of your relationship!
