Furthermore, since doing laundry was one of my responsibilities, him not putting his clothes in the hamper just made my job harder. And, no, it wasn't really acceptable to just not wash his clothes because they weren't in the hamper. We were financially dependent on his job. He had to be presentable. Plus, leaving dirty clothes laying around is a hygiene issue and I have health problems.

It would be a little bit like if I went to his office and dumped my laundry on his desk and he would either have to deal with that or work around it -- all day, every single day. We were married about 16 years before he grasped that and stopped leaving his dirty clothes on the floor.

When you are in a partnership, the actions of your partner are going to impact you. If they aren't considerate, they will impact you negatively. That is simply reality. Acting like it is not is crazy talk.

He did not think he was a sexist pig. He was very idealistic and talked about the importance of women's rights. It wasn't apparent I was marrying a troglodyte until well after we married and our first child was on the way. On some level, he wanted a modern two career couple lifestyle. But, when push came to shove, he expected me to pick up after him, cook for him, etc. Trying to get him to see where his words and his actions parted ways was very challenging.

A lot of people are like that about various things. This is part of why psychology distinguishes the conscious from the subconscious.

People never have perfect information about their partner. There is a lot dating does not reveal.

(My ex was not a bad guy. I don't hate him and these issues are wholly unrelated to why we divorced.)

And we do not agree: He was not a bad choice for me.

How does the fact that HN is an overwhelmingly male forum make this a no win situation for you? Are you suggesting that only a few HN members could ever see things from your point of view?

For what it's worth, I thought that this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15359215 was a little too callous, but not in an intentional way. Talking about relationship problems in broad strokes after someone gave specific details about an old relationship is almost never going to end well, as it sounds like they're summarising a relationship they have no knowledge of. However, I get the sense that gkya was talking in broader strokes to talk about patterns rather than single cases, so whilst it sounded like it was about a specific relationship considering the context, in practice it was just a badly directed comment, in my opinion.

The problem is that isn't what you said to me. Instead, you informed me of your discomfort and asked me to delete my remarks out of deference to your comfort.

Every single remark here by you errs on the side of some man's feelings mattering a helluva lot more than mine. I am not implying you are a sexist, but your actions continue to err in a particular direction. If you don't like the impression that makes, you can just stop doing it and genuinely apologize to me instead of adding yet more faux apologies wherein you repeatedly act like I am somehow in the wrong.

If you speak English as a second language, it is totally fine to say "Whoops, I didn't mean to offend. English is my second language." It is not totally fine to tell someone else they are being offensive, they need to change their behavior and then excuse the misunderstanding based on your poor English. That isn't cool at all.

Mz did not attack you, you've blown their comments out of all proportion.

Once a man says or does something moderately problematic that is a stereotypically gendered issue, the odds are long against a woman getting a fair shake. Your choice to reply to me and accuse me of making this a gendered issue instead of siding with me and letting them know that their remark is a sort that does not work well is completely consistent with that pattern.

With all due respect, on HN I don't care whether I'm replying to a man or a woman, someone young or old, someone who lives close or lives far away. I barely even look at usernames, and will often only do so if I'm replying to someone, or someone makes an interesting comment (good or bad). If you say you're the top ranked openly female member here, good for you, but it honestly makes no difference to me. If you've found yourself getting flak for being a woman, I'm sorry about that, there's no justification for that, but I suspect that many people are of a similar mindset to me and judge based on written content rather than background.

> "Your choice to reply to me and accuse me of making this a gendered issue instead of siding with me and letting them know that their remark is a sort that does not work well is completely consistent with that pattern."

I commented on your gender remark AND sided with you in the general discussion in the exact same comment. I did not take one side over another. How you could come to any other conclusion is beyond me. Here it is again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360339

EDIT: To the people downvoting Mz in this comment thread, can you not please, it's not warranted.

I didn't expect you to know who I am. Nonetheless, it remains true that men will notice remarks they feel are disrespectful of men and pounce on them, oblivious to the fact that it is a woman being ganged up on and only trying to defend herself from unfair criticism. And the ganging up on her is very much a gendered, problematic thing.

It puts a woman in a position of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I only mentioned my position as the top ranked woman here to advise you of my long standing firsthand experience. That's it. And yet it has become yet another reason for you to act like I am somehow doing something wrong.

This whole thing is off topic and a ridiculous, unfair derail. The odds are very high that others will join this debacle and it really won't matter how I handle it, I will still be framed as being in the wrong and also framed as making it a gendered issue rather than as having a right to rebut the original remark that started this nonsense.

Anyway, I am running a fever, so replying at all is probably rooted at least in part in poor judgment. So, for the record, I plan to bow out. Hacker News can have a brouhaha if it so desires. But there is probably zero good to be gained by me participating further in this utter and complete nonsense.

If I found gkya's comments more interesting than yours, then I'd be responding to them directly, and more openly discussing their comments. You could see this as argumentative if you want, but my main line of questioning was asking you to clarify a statement you made. If you can point to a single sentence I've said in our exchange that you found offensive I'd be interested to hear it.

> "I only mentioned my position as the top ranked woman here to advise you of my long standing firsthand experience. That's it. And yet it has become yet another reason for you to act like I am somehow doing something wrong."

I'm not suggesting it's wrong, I'm suggesting it's mostly irrelevant. I could say something like "I'm the most vocal proponent for Brexit on HN", and whilst that has a small element of truth to it, I don't think people hold it against me beyond a comment thread. I'll probably forget we had this chat in a week, and we may find ourselves agreeing on a different topic before too long. That's the impermanent, impersonal nature of HN, most of it isn't tied to identity, it's just people playing around with debating ideas and sharing experiences. What I'm saying is, I doubt people hold a grudge on HN, and if you choose to be openly female on HN and people like or dislike what you say, perhaps they're just liking or disliking what you say regardless of your gender.

This is exactly why emotional labor is a popular catch phrase: Because women are expected to care deeply about how men feel and to twist themselves out of shape to cater to the feelings of men. But, how women feel is not supposed to matter.

By framing the issue as something I care about (my wife's health and happiness) and not something I don't care about (whether or not clothes are on the floor), effective communication saves the day.

I think the issue with the article is that it demonizes this very communication as a form of unfair, sexist "emotional labor", and therefore (at least to my mind) makes it less likely to occur.

EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that your personal situation went one way or the other, or that it was a failing on your part to communicate effectively. I'm just citing my own personal anecdote, because that's all I have.

Most of the comments here are pretty dismissive and attacking of the article and its author, while acting like she is just an unreasonable bitch. Most participants here are male. The author is female.

Women tend to just not get listened to. Getting heard is a huge uphill battle. The effort involved in trying to find some means to get there gets us accused of being nags, etc.

That is, in fact, the entire point of the article.

Altering behavior's rarely worked for me. My own, sometimes, my spouse's... well, pretty much never. So if it's the effect you want gone, it's often possible to make it go away really fast and with little fuss (often praise!) through a change in your environment. I'm sure lots of people of both sexes put this into practice, but I can say with certainty that it just never, ever occurs to some, and they'll put up with and complain about the issue indefinitely if someone else doesn't spend a few bucks and a few minutes making it permanently disappear.

[1] just taking your example, not implying that the solution was appropriate in your case or that it wasn't attempted and failed—to be clear, this approach definitely can't solve every problem.

In concept, your environmental adjustment makes a lot of sense, and probably works well for many (not all) use cases.

But again, here we are, where the WIFE takes the 'burden' of solving that problem. She has to put a plan together of how to change the environment, that requires time/effort.

Other comments elsewhere on this thread mention that the wife/woman should relax her standards. Not related to the above, but I'd like to just call out, why are we not asking the man/husband to raise his standards!?

But, from the article:

“That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.”

The word considerate means to consider how your actions or inactions will impact other people. The vast majority of the ongoing internet discussion of so called emotional labor hinges on the detail that the societal expectation is that women are required to do this. Men are not. And when a man's failure to think before he acts negatively impacts a woman and she complains about it, she gets told she just is failing to communicate, etc.

No matter how much effort a woman puts into effectively communicating what she wants, it will never put a stop to the fact that someone else's consistently inconsiderate behavior will consistently negatively impact you. That is the crux of the issue: Women as a group are asking men as a group to think before they act and are being told by men as a group "How dare you! That is an unreasonable expectation!" (In essence.)

    I could either live with the clutter and step over it or pick up after him

If you decided to park your car in the middle of the street, the choices of those around you aren't limited to either put up with it or to clean up after you. Instead, you car gets towed.

The key difference between these situations is that one has agreed upon expectations and consequences. People only resort to nagging when they find themselves in a situation where there are no agreed upon expectations and consequences. Further, consequences are extremely effective. You only need to be towed once before you learn to be more careful about where you park.

If you agreed upon an expectation/consequence of "clothes left on the floor for more than 2 days will be thrown away", you wouldn't be putting up with clutter for very long.

This also helps with directing negative emotions. When someone is nagged, the negative emotion is usually directed at the nagger. But if he broke the rules and had his clothes thrown away, he'd be angry with himself.

When you are married, that approach fails on a number of fronts.

First, unless you are ultra wealthy, throwing out his clothes will painfully come out of the family budget to replace, especially work clothes, especially if you are a household living on one income -- his -- as we were. Second, replacing them takes time and effort. I was a traditional homemaker, so I handled a lot of his errands. So, I do what? Pick them and put them in the trash can, then go shopping for more, instead of picking them up and putting them in the hamper? Third, it is just bitchy and hostile. This man was my lover. Just being a bitch to him every step of the way was not one of my goals.

You don't create a more loving, caring environment by seeing just how much you can piss on your lover before they decide to file for divorce. He did eventually get what I was saying. It just took an unfortunately long time.

You're right, adding just one expectation/consequence would be a real problem, because a lot of the fallout would eventually end up in your lap. To make this work, it would have to be part of a larger system. The consequences have to be set up to make things more fair, not less fair.

    throwing out his clothes will come out of the family budget to replace

    So, I do what? Pick them and put them in the trash can, then go shopping for more

    Third, it is just bitchy and hostile

Also, this can cause an unhealthy blame shift for me too -- instead of blaming myself for breaking the rules, I'm tempted to shift blame onto her for perceiving the clutter (leading to the "why is this such a big deal?" argument, which is the worst possible button I could push at that time).

    You don't create a more loving, caring environment by seeing just how much you can piss on your lover before they decide to file for divorce.

I don't disagree with the general principle that, in theory, you can find other alternatives. In practice, that is not always true. Furthermore, you are taking an example from my actual life and telling me I am wrong about my own life, in essence. And you are doing so very much after the fact. I am not even married to him anymore.

Plus, your solution sounds a bit like "Well, there are always alternatives. Like you could just burn the house down rather than clean it!" Sure, you could. It is also utterly ridiculous and impractical for the vast majority of people.

The reality is that if you are married and cannot get their cooperation, some things will negatively impact you. Period. There is no clever hack that lets you stay with an inconsiderate, uncooperative person and somehow not get crapped on by that fact.

That is true regardless of gender. But, certain social norms mean women tend to be subjected to certain problems of that ilk more consistently than men. If a woman actually wants a relationship and doesn't want to just suck it up and feel victimized, asking him to change some is unavoidable.

It is a question I wrestle with: Do I ever want to get involved with a man again? Because women get horribly vilified for even trying to talk about the problem space. I am very much a conflict avoider. If just asking nicely for someone to be considerate makes me some mega bitch in not only his eyes, but the entire world's eyes, I dunno. Maybe sex isn't that important to me.

Because that is what it boils down to: Women can put up with this kind of crap, they can try to sort it out with their man while he and the entire world act like that is just bitchy of her, or she can sleep alone. The first two both feel like being a professional victim.

Such questions actually make me suicidal because sleeping alone is not my cup of tea. So, in my book, those all look like terrible options. But, hey, I am menopausal, so sleeping alone is beginning to look less like a reason to go jump off a bridge.

Anyway, I think it would be wise of me to bow out of discussing this further. It would be super nice if your future hypothetical examples do not implicitly suggest I was just an idiot and if you had been there to advise me, all of my marital problems could have been readily solved with some little hack or other. Thanks.

Thank you for pointing that out -- I hadn't realized I had done that. Brainstorming solutions is useless if my communication makes someone feel like an idiot.

With luck, this system will sharpen the subject of arguments to being solely about re-negotiating the rules, rather than the anger, resentment, guilt and blame which come from a system of unstated expectations and silent burdens.

Sounds to me like the partners in the article have a dysfunctional relationship and this isn't really a gendered issue but a "people issue". My experience probably isn't the norm though (both of my parents are engineers with careers) so I understand that this probably colors my perception of this not being a gendered issue, just wanted to offer a contrary perspective to the one posed in the article.

This isn't about forcing a man "to fully adopt her perspective." This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the ones which have to point out these rifts in the relationship. More generally, to do the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy.

To flip around what you just said a bit: Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it? Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem, to articulate it and to come up with a solution, as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

And a relationship where one person feels such an emotional burden is not healthy.

I have to point out this as well:

"This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the ones which have to point out these rifts in the relationship. More generally, to do the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy."

This is outrageously sexist. In my relationship, I'm continually suggesting compromises, and "doing the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy." The idea that women are the caretakers of relationships is silly. In a healthy relationship, both partners have responsibility and the ability to keep things operating on an even keel.

I'm also not blind to the fact that there are still some deeply ingrained stereotypes, however subtle, about gender roles in our society, and I'm trying, perhaps poorly, to rephrase some points from the article (and others like it), in which the author very clearly names this: "the mental load bore almost exclusively by women."

This isn't a personal attack on you or your relationship. On the contrary, it sounds like you have a pretty healthy relationship, and I'm happy for you!

But the fact that this concept resonates with many people though, men and women, probably means there is something here that warrants more conversation for a lot of people, even if it isn't something that is a problem in your particular relationship.

Did you miss the words "more often expected" in your quote? I don't see how it's sexist at all, let alone 'outrageously'.

> why isn't anyone paying attention to what I do?

Q. Why does my flatmate leave his freaking tools every bloody where? A. 'cause he is the house handyman and when stuff is broken he fixes it.

Q. Why am I constantly tidying up my flatmate's mess? A. Because he's a bit careless but ultimately its flatmate B that's requiring the clear table so its in deference to them.

Q. Why does flatmate B always leave the damn hoover plugged in like a freaking tripwire around the house? A. 'cause when they've done the hoovering they can't be bothered to tidy up that part of the tidy up.

Everyone has their foibles and everyone can do better but to expect everyone else to magically assume your perspective and notice you all the freaking time is a selfish position. To be exasperated that you have to communicate your discomfort is a laziness of its own. If you fail to communicate then that's on you. Sure you shouldn't "have to" but part of accepting other people into your life is accepting their imperfections.

Anyway, pushing this into some genderised codshit is bollocks.

> Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it?

Blind spots of attention. When she does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, I'd be fine either way". When he does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, so I wouldn't do it, but I did anyway".

> Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem,

It's not that woman must notice a problem, it's that woman did notice it.

> [...] to [do all the work with problem], as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

Again, it's the attention and its blind spots. The problem didn't get noticed and acknowledged as such in the mind of man.

If you want me to do something, it's you who normally should put effort, not me, because I don't care if you will have it done or not. This is how interaction between two people works. It's silly to expect me to look around for the ways to please you out of the blue. Why would you suddenly expect this mechanics to work differetnly in a relationship?

--

[Clarification]: The description above is about how things work between people, not a praise of man's passiveness. If a couple wants to change how this mechanics, they need to put continuous effort in working against it, and this means they need to notice it and decide to do so.

It's not silly. It's called kindness, and it's part of emotional labour.

Which seems to bring us back around to the first point again.

Had the gender roles been swapped, it would have been a very hard to stomach article for a lot of people.

The fact that he doesn't proves he's still mired in patriarchy, which of course he needs to be educated out of.

Assuming your partner is sort of okay, I guess, but essentially ideologically defective is not a particularly healthy basis for a relationship.

Aside from chores, it's not as it men - feminist or not - never provide emotional support to women. I would be astonished if the husband never listened to problems, provided cuddles and backrubs, and all the other emotional maintenance that men give their partners.

I sometimes think this culture has a very poor record of educating people how adult relationships are supposed to work. Unfortunately this article seems to be an example of that.

Yes, but it needs conscious effort, which means that you need to realize you need or want to do it. It's very difficult to do something if you never even thought you could think of doing.

It's not clear to me where the compromise in this situation might lie. First and foremost, I think it's important to admit that this isn't a big deal either way. But the fact that I am uncomfortable, or that the knowledge of the full bin itches at the back of my mind, makes it an issue I find difficult to dismiss. In my own life I try to remind myself that this is my own issue and that leaving the bin until later is not an unreasonable attitude to take.

In practice, I believe I often just deal with the bin (or whatever issue is at hand) and move on. Sometimes, I am ashamed to say, I get cranky and maybe even huff and puff as I do so. By the same token, on many occasions my partner will empty the bin even though they may prefer to leave it for later. I think that this is compromise, but it's not anything systemic and there's no "rule" that dictates who does what.

It's not really about standards, more the fact that it's not fair to women when the default assumption is they are in mental charge of household and child-rearing duties - certainly when both partners are working.

I'll share a comic others in the thread have I had enjoyed before: https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

I hope I have gotten massively more in-tune with others' emotions and desires, having read more, witnessed modeling aside from my parents, and gone through a more varied and extensive set of personal and interpersonal experiences to compare with.

While I have observed most people's personalities being fairly static, I do think it's possible to morph into an empath. Quickly, even, if tragedy or mental health issues strike.

This comic calls it the mental load, the posted article calls it emotional labor. Based on some additional googling, I think mental load is the more established term.

The question goes both ways. If their mutual goal is living together, that is.

I agree that the role of woman-as-manager is encouraged by societal expectations, but when it's this distressing, she needs to let go of some standards rather than piling them on to her emotional plate. You can't marry someone with different standards of cleanliness and expect yours to prevail — the only fair expectation is to land somewhere in the middle.

Dirty clothes on the floor? What is this, your college dorm!? It is an unlikely option that the man/husband could also raise his standards.

In a household with more than two people, especially, the resulting mental load can get unreasonable very quickly.

Fortunately, my wife is a clinical psychologist, so #3 was off the table in our house.

It sounds like you've got a good thing going...1 and 2 I can deal with, the quiet seething is a no-go.