Have you ever felt, much like Jennifer Aniston’s character in The Breakup, that you didn’t just want your partner to do the dishes; you wanted them to want to do the dishes? If so, you were likely dealing with an imbalance of something called emotional labor.
The concept of emotional labor is essential to a happy, healthy household ecosystem. When we fail to recognize its importance, we open the door to frustration, exhaustion, conflict, and resentment.
There is a hidden cost to managing a household that once had no name but now goes by many. For today’s purposes, we’re calling it emotional labor. Others have also called it invisible labor or mental load.
You might call the first meaning “workplace emotional labor,” which refers to the emotion-regulation work an employee might need to do on the job—for example, maintaining a positive attitude and showing empathy to a customer, even temporarily suppressing negative emotions like anger.
The negative effects of unbalanced emotional labor can cause significant psychological distress within a household. When one person bears too much mental load for everyone, they will likely feel emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious.
An uneven mental load is particularly unhealthy when it remains invisible. Often, even a person who feels overloaded due to emotional labor may not know how to express the persistent tension they’re feeling. Likewise, someone not used to doing much emotional labor likely won’t have much self-awareness of their avoidance of the work.
Conceptualization, Planning, and Execution
One effective way to illustrate emotional labor is with the Conceptualization, Planning, and Execution (CPE) model, which Eve Rodsky coined in her book, Fair Play.