While I'm highly skeptical of the notion that this concept is inherently manipulative, I certainly understand that select people will use whatever tools they have at their disposal to affect manipulation. I'm fascinated that you have had this experience and I'd like to hear more about what brought you here.
This is where I come from: The claims I can find about emotional labor mostly seem to refer to the PSID report, and it currently seems like there is an effort at claiming the conclusions of the PSID report support a similar claim about how the genders relate in the workplace. Emotional labor seem to be interchangeable be used for both contexts without a clear definition, and as a generalization of the PSID report. However, I can't find any data supporting that this is how the genders relate in the workplace and as I showed earlier the PSID report is also not a good representation of how people relate at home due to its misrepresentations.
Emotional labor as a concept is manipulative, and it makes it harder for us all to appreciate the part each of us play in making a whole in exactly the same way as the PSID misrepresentations and make it harder for us to gain the meaning we normally do through mutually caring relationships.
The sad thing about both the PSID and the emotional labor concept is that it discourages the ones with few healthy relationships from mimicking the actions that will most likely help build them.