The Indignity of Hetero-Inequity

it is inhumane to force your partner to beg for help - and we need to stop normalizing it

I had planned to write about patriarchal inertia this week — the ways that men are allowed and encouraged to maintain a base level of mediocrity, while women must constantly adapt to make up for their partner’s stagnation as life circumstances change. Think a husband who says, “I haven’t changed. I’m the still the same guy that you married” — which, two kids and a career shift later is exactly the problem.

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

But then I got a message from a friend that left me floored with rage. It was actually one of many stories I’ve heard over the past week of a similar vein:

My partner doesn’t even know I have a spreadsheet dedicated to planning and saving for summer camps already underway.

I feel like it’s my responsibility to figure out a way for us to split up the chores so I don’t end up doing everything.

I asked my husband to watch Nightbitch with me and it totally went over his head.

This type of overlooked mental and emotional labor is usually relayed to me with disappointed nonchalance. Men, am I right? There’s also often a kneejerk reaction to add, “But he’s such a good guy. He does way more than most. At least he tries.”

Yes, well, good to know the bar is still in hell.

The final message I received this week was of a different variety. It was what I call a “burnout confessional.” Women detail to me the myriad ways they have asked—begged—their partners to help them during times of duress, and been turned away. How they’ve been left to take care of the household while physically ill or in pain. How they’ve tried so many different ways to ask (nicely!) for reprieve, when they’ve reached their limit. How their partners seem uninterested, unmoved by their emotional distress and physical burnout.

Sometimes they are reaching out asking me for help — what am I doing wrong? How can I make him understand? As if it is somehow their fault for not framing their desperation in the right words or tone.

Or sometimes, as in this case, women follow up a story of neglect with a sense of normalized resignation. Sure, I am wasting away in front of his eyes. I am burnt out and begging for help. I am crying myself to sleep at night, because I am so overwhelmed. But…men, am I right?

I keep rewriting a sentence about how and why we normalize this level of emotional and physical neglect in hetero relationships, but all I really want to do is write WHAT THE FUCK. How the fuck have we normalized begging our partners for help in a way that strips us of our dignity and makes us feel so incredibly alone? Why the fuck do we expect less humane treatment from our partners than we’d expect from total strangers? Who the fuck looks at someone they love when they are struggling, and then turns away without helping?

It might be normalized but this behavior is not normal — it’s monstrous. I’m tired of excusing men’s lack of empathy toward their partners as a product of cultural conditioning. It is cruel to watch the person you love suffer and do nothing to ease that suffering. You do not deserve to be in relationship with another person if you are going to treat them with this kind of indignity.

I do not want to act like this is normal. I do not want to agree sympathetically that “this is just how men are” in a way that suggests expectations cannot be changed. I do not want to shrug and nod like I am in on the joke: Men, am I right? No, this is not right. This has never been right.

There is a baseline level of care work that many (perhaps most) men are not engaging in — and that lack of care is inhumane. It has been over six years since I wrote Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, and countless, excellent books have been written on the topic of emotional labor and the mental load since. There is no shortage of information out there for men who care to educate themselves on this topic — even in short-form like podcasts, articles, and TikTok videos.

But I don’t think a vast (or even cursory) knowledge of feminist work and philosophy is necessary to understand that you should you should step in and act when the person you love is literally begging you help them. And that you should mitigate the harm your inaction caused by changing the way you show up in relationship moving forward. Which is to say, your partner should be able to rely on you consistently, instead of having to ask, to grovel, for even a crumb of effort.

Because the alternative is a level of disrespect and indignity that no one should have to endure. Least of all in a relationship that is supposedly based in mutual love and commitment to care.

So let’s stop normalizing the suffering of women in the context of hetero relationships; let’s stop expecting inequity as inevitable. Because when we accept the lack of support from those who say they love us, we become willing to accept far worse from a world that makes no such claims.

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Suggestions for furth reading, listening, etc.:

Emotional Labor by

Rose Hackman

Time To Lean Podcast with

Crystal Britt

and

Laura Danger

Releasing the Mother Load by Erica Djossa

We Need to Talk About Negligent Relationships by

Kate Manne

Liberal Women Should Not Marry Republican Men by

lyz

Our Fair Play Discussion Signaled the End of My Marriage by

Cindy DiTiberio

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