Tiny Thoughts: How do we engage with emotional labor?
Exploring the emotional give-and-take of relationships.
*Tiny thoughts will be a segment of Do You Love Me? consisting of short essays regarding big ideas. Today’s topic is Emotional Labor.
About a month ago, I was running around my boyfriend’s parking garage when I slashed my leg on the tow hook just below the back bumper of his roommate’s truck. My thigh immediately started to throb with pain. In the front seat of my boyfriend’s car, I pulled down my yoga pants (which were somehow left unscathed) and revealed a giant gash dripping with blood. He went to grab bandaids and Neosporin while I sat with my leg elevated and scrolled through TikTok.
This is just one small example of the wounds my boyfriend has patched. Some of them are less serious, and the majority are metaphorical. Lately (and specifically since the onslaught of COVID19), I’ve been coming to him in tears—inaudibly and audibly expressing anxiety regarding the future, creative projects, my career, etc. It’s gotten to the point where even I can tell it’s a little much. I feel my neediness rising like steam in a kettle; I boil and boil and suddenly I’m shouting for someone to come turn me off.
The phrase “emotional labor” crept into popular vernacular after this Harper’s Bazaar article went viral, but the idea was initially coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book on the topic, The Managed Heart. In the Harper’s story, emotional labor is defined as the invisible work done around the house; author Gemma Hartley is frustrated because she’s constantly reminding her husband of important dates, keeping track of groceries, and organizing the family’s schedule, all things that objectively require a great deal of mental and emotional bandwidth.
If I’m being honest, however, I think that what Gemma is describing is straight up labor. To me, emotional labor feels like using your energy to manage the emotions of others, and not necessarily the schedules. For example, if Gemma has to pretend to love doing the household chores in order to make her husband happy (she might), than that’s emotional labor. It’s the exertion of energy for the purpose of managing someone’s feelings or making them feel comfortable. In any case, performing emotional labor asks that we take from ourselves in order to give to another.
Below are some more examples of where I have personally seen emotional labor in action:
When a friend offloads some anxiety or personal drama and expects an immediate and compassionate response.
When a person says or does something racist/sexist and then expects you to explain the error of their ways rather than educating themselves.
When a person is criticized for honesty, vulnerability or sensitivity and then must go to extreme lengths to censor themselves for the benefit of others.
When a partner asks “what’s wrong?” and you respond with “fine” even though something is indeed wrong, making them perform the investigative guesswork to figure out what’s going on. (Oh, heeeeyyyyy…)
I’ve provided excessive emotional labor and unfairly consumed it. Some of my closest friends and I have an “open door” policy—I explode my feelings onto you and you can explode yours onto me. Though I never really mind (I love giving, potentially to an unhealthy degree), now I’m wondering if my friends do. The fact that I don’t know, and expect them to tell me if it’s getting to be too much, is also asking them to perform emotional labor. Oops.
Because talking about emotional labor becomes emotional labor. In the Harper’s article, Gemma (apologizing all the way) illustrates her frustration through more examples: when she brushes her daughter’s hair at the end of the night, she’s fulfilling an expectation. When her husband does the same task, it’s applauded—he’s such a good dad. While that in and of itself isn’t emotional labor, it’s still problematic, and explaining why is it’s problematic is pretty fucking emotionally laborious. I’ve had to explain internalized misogyny and poisonous gender roles to nearly every man I’ve dated, tirelessly scouring my brain to pinpoint specific examples in an effort to educate them. It’s exhausting, and I often wonder why it’s my responsibility.
The emotional labor I require is different, but it still exists. As a person with anxiety and occasional bouts of depression, I know that taking care of me requires a lot of patience and energy. But just like I can’t expect to be the primary educator for my partners, I also can’t demand they be my sole source of comfort. I can’t ask them for all the bandaids—I must learn to dress my own wounds.
I’m not saying we can’t ask our loved ones for help, solace or clarification—that’s how humans support and learn from one another. Emotional labor is not the enemy; it’s merely a fact of life that deserves acknowledgement. We all need help from time to time, particularly during a pandemic when it’s easy to feel as fragile as a carton of eggs on the subway. It’s important to be a resource for the people we love—100%.
But it’s equally important that we know what we’re asking of them in order to keep the relationship healthy and symbiotic. Understanding what we take from others forces us to become responsible for ourselves. It fosters wisdom and resilience. It allows space for our loved ones to breathe into their full selves, rather than inflating ours.
I guess my point is that it’s easy to take the people we love, and the invisible work they do for us, for granted. We can take and take and take, but if that’s the pattern we end up living in, we’ll all end up feeling empty. If our loved ones are not taken care of, they cannot take care of us. (After all, humans are not an indestructible pair of yoga pants.)
So I’m curious: In what ways do you perform emotional labor? What do you ask of others?
And as always… I love you.
xo,
Amanda