Women are have more power. They have more economic power. They have more education. Men are interested in being primary cares, primary shares, and they’re doing more work. And yet everyone still feels exhausted. If you’ve ever felt resentful, angry, overwhelmed, or just drained because it feels like you are doing more than your fair share in your relationship and running life compared to your partner.

I’m so glad you’re tuning in today because we are going to talk about this. If you are constantly doing a million things at once, while you’re doing is fragmenting your energy and pushing yourself towards burnout, right? And so a lot of times I would hear this as almost a badge of honor. Like, I’m really good at doing all this simultaneously, but I feel so burnt out.

I’m exhausted. And by the end of this conversation, I hope you have some new insight into what’s going on and some actionable strategies that you can take back into your relationship to create a more balanced and, dare I say, equitable partnership that feels better for both of you. There are moments where life is hard, but coming together and caring and understanding and deepening and sharing the load is actually pretty critical.

And that took about 20 years to get the right balance on. If this is your first time listening, welcome. This is love, happiness and success. And I’m your host, doctor Lisa Marie Bobby. My background. I’m a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, a board certified coach. And this subject, I have to tell you, is near and dear to my heart.

I have experienced this in my own marriage and many couples that I work with do as well. And today we have a very special treat. I have a guest doctor Leah Ruppanner.

Doctor Ruppanner is a professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne, and she has a lot of experience researching inequities in relationships and why they exist.

It has a lot of thoughts about how to restore order and balance. So Doctor Ruppanner, welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So let’s just dig into this. I was so excited to learn about you and your work, because frequently as a marriage counselor like this is a primary complaint. People come in and they are honestly angry, they are exhausted, they are resentful.

And when we talk about it, it’s because they feel like they are shouldering the burden of all of this stuff and their partner isn’t. And it feels unfair. And they have tried talking about it. Nothing changes. And I know that there can be many different reasons for this. But first of all, you know, take us into your research and some of the things that you’ve you found.

Okay, so I am a sociologist, which means I am studying the ways in which we individually move through the world and how we behave in ways that maybe we don’t quite anticipate, we don’t quite know. And what do the patterns look like across groups? And so I’ve spent 20 years looking at, you know, the division of household labor, women in AI.

And one of the things that I consistently found was like, hey, women are doing more of the housework in the childcare. On average, men have stepped into more care as well. So we have a paper showing that actually men are doing more now than ever before. Generationally, they’re taking on more of the primary care, they’re taking on more of the housework, and women are also doing the same amount as previous generations.

And so the question for me was like, I keep looking at this thing where I see that women are have more power, they have more economic power, they have more education. Men are interested in being primary care as primary shares, and they’re doing more work. And yet everyone still feels exhausted. Everyone still feels burnt out. Everyone still feels like there’s not enough time energy in the day.

And what are we missing? What is the piece of this puzzle that we haven’t actually articulated and what I kept bumping up against, or I kept finding, was that we don’t have a good measure of the mental load. We haven’t brought that conversation into the conversation. And part of that is because we don’t have really the language for it.

We’re talking about these things in all these different ways. But my goal with this book, my goal with this piece of research, is kind of saying, hey, let me help you articulate perhaps what you’re feeling, perhaps what you’re caring, so you can step into conversations in a more honest, direct and open way. Amazing.

love this and I think we should. I’d love to dig in more deeply to this idea of the mental load, the energetic burden that just like remembering all the crap could, could take on us and and you guys here, here is the book we’re referencing. The book is called drained. Reduce your mental load to do less and be more. And and I also just want to say this out loud as we, we start rolling in here.

So Dr. Ruppanner and I were chatting about this right when we started recording. And I understand that your research has revealed gender inequities and sort of socialization, and how there can be imbalance gender lines in opposite sex relationships. And I’m just going to be the also the voice of a different perspective in this conversation, because what I have seen in my own family and in many people around me and also in many couples, is that having a relationship that feels out of balance is really, really common.

That happens to so many couples. It happens to save sex couples, but in my experience, it is frequently male partners who are actually the ones who are shouldering more of that mental load and doing all kinds of things and feeling annoyed about it a lot of the times. So I just wanted to share that, that this can look like a lot of different things in a lot of different families.

so help us pack this idea. So mental load. I think I’ve probably experienced that, but what do you define it as? Okay. Thank you for letting me be the researcher. Again I appreciate this I appreciate this. So with my colleagues Brandon Churchill and Liz Dean at the University of Melbourne, we wrote an article in 2021 where we actually gave a clear definition of the mental load.

And one of the things we were saying is the mental lotus emotional thinking work necessary to keep your work life and family running. So we often think about the mental load as being like, akin to list making or kind of the work that mothers do. But it’s it’s not. Everyone carries a mental love. Everyone does emotional thinking work to keep your work life and family running.

You are all carrying a mental load. The question is what does the composition look like? But let me give you an example. So if you’re thinking about something like is the milk running low for breakfast tomorrow? If it was just straight cognitive labor, we’re just doing this thinking work and then list making. We would go, okay, the milk is running low.

Let’s put it on the list. Let’s buy it from the store. Problem solved. And everything is

Sometimes our mental lows do work this way, but often what happens is we go. The milk is running low. Oh, that means that my kid won’t have enough breakfast for tomorrow if they don’t start the day off right? Then what does that mean for their future?

Actually, what happens when they show up at school? They won’t be able to concentrate. Are they actually concentrating at school? What does it mean if actually AI is coming in? Are we? Or is my kid going to even have a future? But wait, am I going to have a future? And then I know, I know, I know because it goes like this.

Right? And then what about my health the way, have I got enough calcium? Am I going to have osteoporosis? If what I’m saying is triggering to you, I’m sorry a I’m okay. I was like,

no, I’m tense. And yes, sometimes our mental loads kick off in this way where they start to go from A to B to C to D to eat F, because there’s actually, as my book defines as a research devices, eight different types of mental it you might be moving across.

My goal is of course not for you to do that ping pong, but it’s for you to get the language, the clarity, the understanding of why you’re going A, B, C, D, and E so that you can take some control back. You can start to go. That’s not important, that socialization, that you can start to push some of that away.

And so that is the purpose of kind of my big vision for the world. But you know, the book does one piece of that. But I have Lighten Lab where you can go and take a free assessment and see, like, I’m trying to help people understand what this might look like so that you’re not just there passive to the thoughts, and you can start to say, oh, hey, wait a minute, that’s the meta mental load popping back up for me.

Do I need to think about this right now or not?

can I say one other thing? Oh, yeah. Oh, God. I’ll say so many things to you today. But I’m like, the only other aspect that came from that research that I just want to say is what we what we also said, okay, so it’s the motion thinking work you do to keep your work life and family running.

And it has three characteristics. It’s invisible. You do it internally. So you could be doing it right now. People won’t even be able to see it. It’s boundary less. And what that means is you can take your mental load with you everywhere you go. You. Yes. Right. You probably don’t take your dishes like you don’t go like, oh, I have dirty dishes at home.

Let me just bring them to the work, the work, work dishwasher and put them in. But you’re going to bring your mental load with you to work onto your walk everywhere into your into the bath, even if you’re awakened when you’re sleeping. And the third thing about it is it’s enduring. It’s tied to the people we love the most, including ourselves.

And so when does that thinking work? When does that emotional thinking work? Stop? It does it. Right. Because it’s it’s it’s what tethers us to each other and what’s makes us human and whole. And this is that string that connects us to each

Right.

I have like, questions sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain.

And now I have to figure out which one to ask you

Okay. Question number one. And this I thought was also interesting. And this is why I think this is going to be a really cool conversation, because, you know, you are a researcher, academic and a professor. I mean, like sociology.

think my perspective is as a practitioner, you know, clinical psychologist.

I have to ask and I don’t know if your research has ever gone in this direction, but I’m curious, part of what you described, like the chain of events and the oh my God, we’re out of milk. Therefore doom kind of, you know, like that kind of

I am curious to know if you have ever explored personality variables and differences in that, but also it it has a whiff of anxiety to it, like it’s it feels like an anxious process that kind of goes out into the future and all these unsolvable problems.

Like, did you did you ever go into that with your research or not? I love this question because we have been trying to figure out that exact thing. Right. Like I said, mental load is a mental load. The trigger.

I’m going to make the argument to you that I think the mental load is the trigger to anxiety. It doesn’t always lead that like a chicken and the egg kind of thing for sure.

Yeah, it’s like the antecedent piece. It’s like the piece where your your brain starts to go, ping, ping ping, ping and then your body reacts, right. You start to go. And it’s not that you’re doing this because you’re, you know, a over or anxious or it’s because sometimes, well, two things I’ll say sometimes like the consequences are significant.

Like what I kept hearing across the interviews was it’s like I can’t it’s tied to the people we love. So like, I can’t let my kid down or I can’t let my aging parent down

this is important work, right? And so sometimes it’s hard to not let it come and not let the anxiety go. But it’s also important work to figure out when you’re socialized.

And this is where the sociologist and me comes in. When you’re socialized into caring about things that like, if you’re totally honest with yourself, like you don’t care about, like you really, and you’re deep and your core and your values, it’s not important to you. And so my goal is how do you kind of put up a shield a little bit to, to that moment

in terms of the personality types?

Like this is not the work we do. So we have not. But I am desperate to hear what you think about this. Like, how does this resonate for you when I say that? Like what does it what does it make you think? I guess I would be curious to hear. I think that there are a number of different variables, but there there’s a certain type of of personality specific wiring that lends itself to worrying.

And if this, then that and kind of going out into the future versus other sort that like,

I mean that the technical term for it is neuroticism, honestly, and you know that, but it’s also associated with conscientiousness, right. Like wanted to make sure that things are okay.

But okay. So then another question for you.

It seems like this is tied to what people care about.

And I heard I heard part of your definition as being that this primarily manifests in a personal life type situation, a mental load. I am curious though, so I’m speaking for myself. I am a stone cold entrepreneur. It’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve always run my own businesses, for better or for worse. Usually worse. It’s fine, but like the experience that you’re describing has always come up for me as a a business owner.

There’s like, you know, managing like 20 plate spinning in the air. And like, if I’m not watching something, it’s going to fall over. It’s like I can absolutely relate to that experience.

Have you like different populations of people without mental load? Just the exhaustion that comes from like, why is nobody else caring about this thing that I am caring about right now? Yes. Okay. Well, I’m going to answer like in three different ways, but and then pick the one you like. I asked you like 18 questions in a row and now we will have a buffet of answers.

I’m going to give you 18 ministers in a row, and then y’all pick the ones you like. One of the things I’m trying to do through this work is to try to get people to. So when you say, like, as you’re saying this to me, I’m thinking about like, as an entrepreneur, I’m doing this in all these different areas of my life.

It’s training. I want you, I want people to start thinking about the mental load in this way. Right? Like thinking about like, yes, you are. And the book is mostly focused on family life. But what my work currently is doing is, is how do we understand the mental load to life to work with these eight different categories? So I yeah, right.

Like you will be doing life organization for your businesses. You will be doing emotional support at work. When you’re thinking about your coworkers, you will be doing dream building when you’re trying to build something new and interesting and dynamic. All of these are meant to load pieces, and one of the things I really want you to get out of the book is like, hey, you have finite mental load energy like you, you are not unlimited, but and, but and you might be spending it in a way that’s unlimited.

But if you start to really get strategic, which I am sure you have had to do a million times if you were running your own businesses, tell me. Well, like, I’m sure you have to get strategic and go, okay, I can’t care about that. I can’t, I can’t worry about that and get clear on priority.

True or false?

You know what? I am aware of the need. But it’s really hard to do because it all seems important oftentimes. And so I think that that’s something that I’m still sorting through. But you’re absolutely right. You cannot care about everything. You have got to be willing to let some stuff go or it will incinerate you. Yeah. Seriously. Like, yeah, I get it.

And what you’re saying is perhaps that’s one piece of it is recognizing your own personal limits. And when you’re starting to get maxed out. Absolutely, absolutely. So part of my solution is this mental load audit, right. And again, I’m saying to you by the book, of course, but also go to the website. A lot of the pieces are there if you just wanted.

If you want to take a deep dive, right, go to the website at Lighten Lab. And I have this assessment. So I have these questions that are like, you know, you know, are you burning through your energy faster than you can replenish? Do you find it difficult to concentrate on life’s moments? Do you find that like actually when you’re sitting there, you’re thinking about the next thing?

Do you find it difficult to respond to opportunities? These these are clear indications of what we’re calling mental a burnout. And what I want you to be able to do is go like, oh, I’m getting close, right? I’m getting close to where I’m hitting that burnout. What? What can I either take off my plate, reduce, or get rid of some of you?

Can’t some of you? We heard this across the interviews. Some are. You are managing complex, complicated care dynamics, difficult things going on in your life. And and the idea of me saying to you, oh, just drop some of that is a real jerk move, right? Like it’s a real jerk. I’ve had people tell me, like, you shouldn’t work as much.

Like not back off. Right back off, back off. I don’t know if I said that out loud, but I thought it. I’ll say it for you. Just have them call me back off. And so in those moments. But I want you to have as two pieces, like when you’re talking about work, I want you to have the two pieces tied together.

One is like, what are you working towards and what are you working for? And that will help to align your energy in a way that is strategic, that isn’t just everywhere. And and if you cannot drop what is happening during the moments of replenishing what is happening during the moments of rest. Because what I heard consistently was people, in particular women who felt an incredible amount of guilt and anxiety about taking resources for themselves, taking time, taking tapes, laying down on the couch like, and I’m not the only one who showed this.

My friend, good friend Katie Collins at has written a book all about guilt being a very American experience. Not all women experience guilt, but in those moments, you cannot be sitting there watching Bridgerton or hanging out or whatever you’re doing with a mental load that is ruminating or guilt. You need that recovery time. So I want to say you deserve it.

You have permission to take it. It’s it’s the right if you cannot drop we we I am seeing you. I’m I that is so incredibly hard. And then the recovery time becomes even more important. Whatever that looks like for you.

Permission to take it, permission to take the resources. And it’s like, almost like a non-negotiable, right? Like like you need that.

Yeah. You absolutely do. Okay, well, and I cannot wait to dig in with you around what what it looks like to rebuild and replenish and kind of get back into balance and be okay again. But but first, can you share a little bit more about what your research uncovered, what starts to happen to individuals and also by extension, their relationships, their family dynamics, when they really are maxed out?

It is out of balance. They are, trying to hold up the sun and it is objectively too much what happens. It’s interesting. I’d be curious, like from your experience to what you see on the practice side, because I it’s like a slippery slope. Right? You okay? Sorry. I’ll take one step back. One of the things I ask you to do in the book is to use sociology as your superpower.

And one of the things I kept hearing across the interviews when when people would describe in particular when would describe like, I am so overwhelmed, they would also simultaneously to say to me things like, But I’m a really good multitasker. Like, I am so good at multitasking. The problem is, is that sometimes you no one can multitask. You actually can’t.

Our brains can’t. No one’s better at it. But if you are constantly doing a million things at once, while you’re doing is fragmenting your energy and pushing yourself towards burnout, right. And so a lot of times I would hear this as almost a badge of honor. Like, I’m really good at doing all of this simultaneously, but I feel so burnt out.

I’m exhausted. Right? Like like it’s this kind of like there’s a disconnect, a cognitive disconnect between the two things. And what that means is, is that you are stepping into your family. You’re stepping into your relationships depleted, depleted, exhausted, and potentially angry and frustrated. Like, I’d be curious when you get the couples at what point they are in the conversation or the like, what are they in crisis or, you know, so no, that’s a great question.

And so what I have seen, and certainly this is in the context of of relationship coaching, you know, couples work is that it has turned into bad feelings between each other, where one person and, you know, this is very true, like in some family dynamics, for a variety of reasons, one person is sharing, shouldering more of the running of the household kids, parenting, cleaning, cooking, all, all the jazz in a way almost feels like non-consensual, right?

And they want to feel like there’s more teamwork and the relationship that they are pulling together in the same direction, like on the same page. And when that doesn’t happen, in alignment with what they expect or believe should be happening, it turns into anger and resentment, then that breeds conflict where the other person can feel also like they’re being criticized, not appreciated, not seen or recognized for what they are contributing.

And it it turns into a downward spiral that can feel really, really yucky because of the core is

if you really loved me and cared about me, why is this happening? Why can we not be doing this together? Why won’t you x, y, z?

That’s what happens. I have one one of the last chapters of the book. I have a couple that that is one through the audit did the whole thing and really felt like they were, you know, she says that they I’m like, I realized this isn’t about the mental lotus about my marriage.

Right. And one of the things that was really helpful for them were was hard, was like, sometimes is that feel like when you say, okay, you don’t care about me. Why are you not doing this if you don’t care about me? Is that sometimes, like what I would hear across for the heterosexual couples, right? Is that like, they almost couldn’t understand each other’s worlds in ways right?

Like, this feels heavy for me because of this reason. Because I know I’m going to get a social penalty. I know if I show up, my kid is disheveled. They’re going to blame me at school because I’m a woman. Even if we’re both busy and we’re both working and there’s going to be a penalty. And sometimes the men would say back to them, like, don’t worry about this.

Like you’re, you’re you’re worrying about the wrong things. No one cares. We have research showing that people do care and they are expecting a judgment for that. But simultaneously, the women would be men would be saying like, look, you want me more here? You want me more present, but like, my boss is going to punish me, right? If I do this?

Like there’s going to be a consequence at work for me. And we have research showing that that’s true too. And this is where gender norms are bad for everybody, right? Like, they trap us all in these systems that we might not actually want. And so I think I love when you say like, you know, sorry. I’ll say one other thing.

One of the interesting things was because we did interviews and then we brought people in and said, here’s what we’re hearing. You say, like, here’s a cross interviews, what, what we’re getting and pulling through. And we and that was identifying the eight different types. And often what would happen is the men would say, like, I didn’t even know that was happening for me.

Like they didn’t know. Right. And this, of course, as you’ve noted, can go in both directions, right? It doesn’t have to be. People can be unaware. But how can you have known if you didn’t have the language right? Like how could you have known if if someone just told you? Well, the mental load is about making sure the permission slips are done and the mental load is making sure that the milk is there.

But if I say to you. No, no, no, it’s much bigger than that. It’s emotional support for families. It’s making sure that relationships are strong. It’s magic making to make sure everything feels interesting. It’s stream building, it’s made out to the world, it’s individual upkeep, and you’re all carrying these, but you’ve never before, as a couple, as a society, had the language to be able to say, whoa, right, I’m carrying that.

Do I want to? Is it valuable? Is it not? It’s not. You’re not to blame if you can’t communicate what we don’t know. You know what I mean? That I hear that. Well, no. And this. This is so good. Let’s unpack this

what you’re really saying is that there can be differences in what people are caring about or indexing or like, things that are on someone’s radar that might not be there for their partner.

And I have to laugh. And so just just to share, I my dad was a feminist and so I, I’m a very bad woman doctor of hammer. So you know I’m an outliner so. But my sister is too. But like, you know, it’s so funny when, like when we have people over to our house, I’m like, why do we have to click?

There are friends. They’re going to love us anyway. And my husband is like, no, they cannot see our house like this. And it’s like running around like cleaning things and, you know, all this stuff and, and, and tends to be much more kind of conscientious and, and prioritizing some of the things that you have talked about. But it’s like there are, there are differences in terms of like the things that we are viewing as being important in that moment.

And I think that the real core here is that if any of us cannot not just see and understand, but actually care about something, just because it is important to our partner, that can really create a relational rift,

if it’s important to you, it needs to be at least a little bit important to me if we’re going to have a good relationship with each other.

So yeah, agree with you on that. I love it, I love that you have the reverse deprogram and like, I love this, I love this. And your partner is like, no. Oh yeah.

Yeah. In many different ways. But well, one of the things, one of the things I said, I’ve, you know, as I’ve been talking about this work with people around the world, which has been such a delight.

So thank you for having me. And thank you to your listeners and all this. It’s always makes it like it’s such a gift as a gift to hear how the idea is, because you spend all the time writing this thing and you have ideas, and then you don’t know how it’s going to land in the world. So thank you.

Is like, you know, hey, maybe we’ve put a lot too much pressure on this, like single unit. One of the things I ask you to do is get clear on. Where are you going? Where are you specifically going? Where do you goals your dreams? If you could go anywhere and it could be as small as, like, you know, women would tell me, like, I want to learn to play the guitar, or it could be as big as, like, I want to run for president.

Great. We need it. All right. When you start to get clear on where you want to go, your dreams, then you need to get clear on your team. Who do you need to help you and the values to align. And sometimes the answer is it’s not your partner.

It’s not. It’s not your spouse. It’s not your partner, it’s not your family.

And so some I think some of that strategic work is going to the places where it is the most valuable, where the expertise is the greatest, cultivating the networks. And so it could take a little bit of the pressure to I mean, I agree with you. Like, we all have to care about the things that our partner cares about, even a little bit as a respect and a value and a connection point.

But we can also figure out but sometimes, actually, we shouldn’t go to our partners, we should go to our someone else. And that I think, is a valuable just like cognition or awareness. Yeah. Yeah. You know that that makes a lot of sense to, to be able to own something that you care about and not make it somebody else’s problem necessarily.

Because I also see that a lot in couples work. You know, if you have a certain desire for things to be a certain way and your partner doesn’t share drive, I guess, to create there are other ways of fulfilling that. If it’s really that important to you, as opposed to trying to get your partner to see the world differently, because that might not always be a reality based thing, and that in itself might cause problems in a relationship.

I’ve seen that many times, actually. People judging their partner by their own yardstick, you know, like how things should be. I’ve experienced some of that. Not not judging, but like, how people, especially in relationships, like, let’s just focus on relationships now because this, this dynamic can also definitely happen in workplace environments and work relationships.

I’m doing more than you. So the mental load piece. But then when we come into our intimate partnerships family life, this can take a lot of different forms. And if it’s okay to ask, have you experienced this in your own life? When things started healing out of balance, would you mind sharing? Like, I’ve been married for a bajillion years, so of course, of course it’s the ebb and flow in the up and down of all of this.

Yes, yes. I mean, I could give like a couple of points, like where, you know, at the start of the relationship, you’re negotiating everything. It’s like getting figuring out who, who likes what and what’s what. You kind of kind of the thing you said at the beginning, right. Like, what’s important to you? What’s important to me? Yeah. Where our standards and values and how do we align on this.

Right. And kind of renegotiating that. But one of the things I talk about in the book is, you know, I my partner, my husband, Casey, you know, he he ran this business in Australia. We had a microbrewery and and the mental load there was huge. I mean, yours.

You know. And how do you then maintain your relationship? How do you renegotiate when things are heavy and difficult and when people are chasing their dreams and it’s hard, right. And you want to be the support. But we’re two career couple. And what does that look like? And so yes, there have been moments where mental loads have spiked incredibly and that I’ll give you another example to you and then you’re going to feel sad for me.

But oh, you’re listeners are going to feel sad for me, but I’m going to be okay. Three months, three weeks before this book came out, I got a serious health diagnosis. Wow. Right. Like who knew? But the mental load to that, to illness. Right. To thinking about, am I going to be okay? Is my family going to be okay?

It was incredible.

The my spike right. It’s a spike in one direction. It’s a spike in one category. But the the love that my family gave me. So I guess what I’m trying to say is this these there are opportunities. I have had a roller coaster of a marriage, like many of you have in all of the downs.

We’ve connected in a deeper way and aligned. Yes, there’s always a mental load, but what it has done is allow, I think, allow us to understand that there are moments where life is hard, but coming together and caring and understanding and deepening and sharing the load is actually pretty critical. And that took about 20 years to get the right balance on.

How about you? Okay, now I’m done. How about you? But I know I just and thank you for for sharing what you just did. But, you know, I just like the image that came into my mind as you were talking is like, there’s this very heavy thing that, like, you’re carrying around with you all the time and that if that isn’t recognized and seen and have people who love you care about that, it feels very lonely and it feels like energetically really debilitating.

And so that to have it be recognized and feel like you can share it, this is important to me. I’m thinking about it night and day, you know, like it takes up so much headspace. And so that’s the experience that a lot of us are walking around with. It takes different forms, you know, based on our circumstances and the things that we’re orienting around.

But yeah. Yeah. Well, I love you for saying that. What am I, good friends? When I found out, said, if only someone had a book where you could think about finite mental load energy and realign your way, realign your mental load and energy strategically, I was like, I love you. So she’s like, use the work, use the work.

So I did do it. And it’s been true where you say, right, like, and I’m not alone. I mean, we heard this for people about complex care that like they would talk about I, you know, I’m carrying this and then I can’t drop it because someone will die or someone will be injured that I love. And then I’m spending my mental energy and negotiating with, you know, insurance or schools or health.

So I am in no way isolated. And it helped give me a little deeper lived experience, insight into the experiences that were coming through the interviews. But I guess I’m just saying, exactly like you say, you never know what people are carrying. And the and if we can share the weight in critical and key ways. God, what a gift that would be for all of us.

Okay, but how about you? Can I? How about you? Do you have. Oh, you’re happy to share a number of different examples. And I think, you know, as I shared previously, I think that part of the way that I was socialized, you know, we’re sort of more oriented around work and career and things of that nature.

But I know, like in my own relationship and I could speak to the other side of this dynamic.

I have, my husband has and we’ve worked through this like we’re in a better place now. But, you know, he he has said things like, I feel like I do everything for everybody and nobody please up after themselves. And you know, like describing this experience in a way that like, we all need to pay attention to and to to be able to reset that.

You know, I’ve heard my I love my brother in law so much. Every time I show up at my sister’s house, this man is wearing an apron, holding a broom, and oftentimes has some kind of like construction project going on at the same time. And he’s a very Navy man, but he’s he’s a fantastic cook. He does so much stuff.

But, you know, I think he, he has expressed feeling like if it’s travel planning, if it’s finances, if it’s all the things, it’s like, you know, just what it feels like. My, my sister is an artist and she is lovely, very creative and absolutely beautiful, great sense of humor. But like, he’s sort of the responsible one. Do you know what I mean?

And so like, I’ve heard that from that. And in so many couples, this experience of like that’s what it wheels down to. How can you not care about this? Why? Because what happens, I think, is that if somebody cares about something, they feel like somebody has to do it. And if the other person isn’t going to do it, then it falls to them.

And that’s where that energetic weight comes from, you know? But I think it goes back to who cares? More like this is a silly anecdote. So, you know, and I was so grateful. I walked in the house from work last night and my husband had gone to the store, gotten stuff for dinner, cooking the dinner, all the things.

And I was like, I’m going to help. And like, what do you want me to do? Is like, chop the tomatoes. So I go to chop the tomatoes. And I went to grab a the knife that we used for cutting vegetables. It was in the sink. It took it out of sync. CategoryRocket tomatoes. And he’s like, what are you doing?

And he literally took this knife out of my hand, and he was like, this has to be washed and turned on the hot water and the dish soap and, like, scrubbed it and like, I mean, like a solid two minutes under the hot water. I’m like, this is really necessary. But like, that would be the kind of thing that would irritate the heck out of him because he’s like, how?

How could you have cut our vegetables with this knife without washing at first? Are you trying to kill us? So that would be an example of something that somebody cares about, that it felt to him like, do I really have to do this for you? But I think that that’s where it kind of comes from, right? I could hear it about laundry folding.

That’s right. Yeah. Oh, my. Columbus. Oh. Keep going. Sorry. No, sorry. Keep going. Okay, so I made the terrible mistake, and I would like to warn everyone within the sound of my voice not to do this.

There’s a show on Netflix, Marie Kondo Tidying Up. She’s this little Japanese woman. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show or not.

Oh, I kondo my house too, so keep going. I you know what? If I had to rewind the clock and, like, you need to like this fork in the road moment of my life. It would like do not watch that show. Because now I have very specific ideas about the way laundry should be folded and everybody else does it wrong.

So now I am in charge of folding the laundry because I want it in a little squares, and I want to be standing up in the drawers and like, I will literally refold the shirt that somebody else hold it, but then it’s like, oh, I have so much laundry to fold. And, you know, then that starts to feel like, I think because I care about it.

Is that ridiculous? No. Why do I care? Oh my God, no. You’re the perfect example. Okay, can I, can I? Yeah. You are giving me the perfect example of where I hope that couples end up right when I the. And the short answer is like, there are tasks that we have to do. Like people are going to have to do some of the housework, people are going to have their tasks.

We all have to do. We all have to carry a mental load. We have to do some tasks to keep our household functions, some things, some things right. The goal is to figure out how do you align people with the things that they either care the most about or love doing? Yeah. That’s it. I have for the new America Better Life Lab at New America, we had this coin exercise where, you know, I asked people to start to articulate what is the cost of this, right?

Like, do you love to do it? Do you hate to do it? And you can get that for free. It’s there. It’s on their website and you can access that. Right. And so what you’re describing to me is actually like, hey, there are things that I love to do and there’s things that my partner loves to do or is better or, you know, we’ve allocated these ways to our strengths, to our strengths, not based on our gender, but to our strengths.

And we are doing these. It’s a strength based exercise. That is what I would hear from the non couples, from the, you know, the same sex couples, the LGBTQ plus bubbles they would talk about. We don’t have you said this at the top two. We don’t necessarily have more equal arrangements at home. But we don’t have as gender.

We have more gender fluid arrangements. They’re not fixed. They’re not stuck. People take things based on their preference. And you’re raising another important thing, which is like I would talk about, like, sometimes I get so sick of folding the laundry in the little squares, I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to. So can we are important to me than having somebody else do it.

I mean, like, but I have to trade.

I have to own this. Yeah, yeah. So can we reallocate and they would talk about like. Okay, well, sometimes I get bored of doing this. So then we just reallocate it that then now now you could be in charge of the dinners right.

I know that this might create a drama.

I know, but like you could. And the other thing is, one of the things I asked people to do is like, good is good enough sometimes, right? Like, if you care about some things very importantly, then yeah, you should have, you know, you should have them. But sometimes good is good enough. And we are our expectations. Our standards are too high and it creates conflict and overwhelm.

And so how do we take some of the pressure off some of the stress off. And so I think you are actually the model example of all of this.

what happens to us when we are out of balance and our relationships and our lives, like too much is on us

you know, really diving into the experience of someone who is in a situation that is not okay.

It is not consensual. They want things to be different. They feel like if they stop, things are going to fall apart and it feels like there is no responsiveness. When they try to renegotiate, the who does what.

From your perspective, or maybe a better question like what does the research say about where we can begin to to chip away with this and, you know, redistribute the load?

That’s a really interesting question. One of the things that I would hear consistently would be kind of exactly what you’re describing were, you know, one person was feeling like if I step out of this dynamic, everything is going to fall apart, right? Like I’m the linchpin on this. And, and if I don’t do it all and I don’t do it to a certain standard, things will fall apart.

I would hear about developing between 1 and 1 million contingency plans. Right. Like, you know, okay, what about this? What about this? What about this? I would I would ask, if I were in this moment, I would ask this person just a little bit sense checking which of these is true. Right? Like, is it true that actually it will fall apart?

Like, is it true and what are the consequences? Like is that and in fact, is that true. Right. Like reality testing. All right. Yeah. Because sometimes, you know, we will of course we can see the best. This is where I say the good is good enough. Of course we can see the best option. And of course we can see the 8 million things that could go wrong.

But oftentimes the 8 million things don’t go wrong. And sometimes, actually, if you are so determined to have it in one certain way, then you miss the ways in which others. I describe this in the book

you get to see different ways to do things, and then you can see the skills and talents of your family, and you can actually build beautiful moments when things go wrong.

Right. Like, actually, sometimes the things going wrong or this big and they’re kind of cute because our kids step in and do things that are kind of funny. So I would want I would ask, what is that? In fact, a true assumption. Is that a reality check? So what would be an example of what we’re talking about and what people get get sort of fixated on like, no, everything is going to fall apart.

And it has to be this way that you found, like when you really go in there. Oh, we have a little bit of wiggle room.

For example, I would hear things about, you know, dishwashers that got restocked, like men would say like, okay, I’m in, I’m in the kitchen. Knives that got washed correctly.

I had my dishwasher reorganized, by the way. Yeah. Okay. Yes. And then the question is, if that happens to you, let me I’ll ask. Well, how do you feel? Do you want to participate? Like how do you feel in that moment when someone is coming and redone your work after you? I don’t really fold the laundry. I mean, we’re everybody’s a weirdo in my house.

I was like, be a weirdo. It’s fine.

So sometimes people would do like, sometimes people would describe coming in and redoing, and then they was like, well, I don’t want to do this. If you’re just going, if you don’t let me do it the way I am going to you, then I don’t want to do the work. I would here talking about, like, you know, a million things that could go wrong.

Like, okay, what if we drop the kids off and this, this goes wrong or they don’t have this or the, the 18 things, like what if they need that? And, you know, there’s always this joke about men stepping out of the house with nothing but their keys and women stepping out of the house with like a bag full of stuff.

And that is a stereotype. And it’s a it’s kind of emblematic of this, right? And my goal is like, can we come a little bit to the middle? Right. Like, like, okay, maybe you don’t step outside with nothing, but do you need to step outside with everything? And what is the cost of actually step doing that work to step outside with everything?

There is a cost on that, right? Yeah. Right. And so how do we figure out where? I guess this is my long way of saying where are things strategic crediting, valuable investments of your mental loading, your energy? Where are they actually unnecessary? They take away from you. They don’t give you anything. It’s like the sugar high that gives, you know, knocks you out and makes you exhausted.

What’s the nutrient dense? What’s the sugar high, and how do you get to do that? I have heard to people, one of the things I’ll ask is like I would ask too is like, have you been clear on what your dreams, goals and ambitions are? Not what that person is doing wrong. Not about the standards, but like, where are we trying to go as a family?

Where am I trying to go as an individual and using that as the anchor point to come in and have the conversation about what work is valuable, and not because I think that’s a useful starting point as opposed to evacuating times you don’t care about it. This, this and this getting clear on okay, here’s where we’re trying to go.

Here’s what I value. Here’s what’s my non-negotiable. How can I communicate that to my partner of like this is where I’m trying to go. This is my.

And then what is the labor that needs to come around that. And then you have the anchor point to refer back to. Oh, I really think it’s important for me to do x, y or z.

How do we do that. What does that look like? Remain curious a little bit in that moment and then be an active listener. That’s what I would say. Now, what would you say? What would you say? How did I do and what would you say? No, no, no, I think that’s great. And I love what you’re saying because I think that there’s this level of self-awareness.

And when I look at this, you know, of course, like the marriage counselor lens. Right. But but also, even in my own life, it’s like, there are these core beliefs about what should be happening that could be different from person to person, and that if we believe with all our heart and soul that this should be happening and something terrible is going to happen if it isn’t happening in our partner perceives that differently.

There’s this there could be a real disconnection. And what I have seen as a marriage counselor is there can be a lot of criticism and conflict around trying to get a partner to be more like them in, in a way that can really take a dynamic and push a partner away, make somebody feel very alone.

But I was kind of laughing a little bit as you were talking about, like walking out of the house with the keys, right? And thinking of an experience that I had personally. It was probably a couple of months ago now. So I have a seven. Oh my gosh. Now, eight year old and I went to the pool with my kid and another mom friend.

It was sort of like a family, and my mom friend had I don’t even know how many bags. There was a bag full of clothes. There was a bag full of toys. There was a bag full of snacks. There was a bag full of towels. Like all of these things. Right? I think she had a tent. It was.

It was Attica. And I, like my kid. Got her little swimsuit on before we left. I think I brought a towel in case, because they have a snack bar and a water fountain, like, it’ll be fine. And she lost her mind when I didn’t even have a change of clothes because I was like, she can ride home in a bathing suit.

It’s fine. And but like, that kind of thing, like, if she was married to me, she might be really upset because she would believe that she is, you know, putting in all this mental energy into getting the kids ready for swimming or whatever. And I’m not participating. When Virginia Satir actually said this. Virginia Satir is a marriage and family therapist back in the 70s, like.

But she said there are literally hundreds of different ways to wash dishes and what makes your way so much more special and important than somebody else’s way, necessarily, right? And of course, there can be people with different values and opinions about the way that they should be, and that’s valid. But like, I think what you’re speaking to is the individual like, how did I come to believe that this was so important and that this is what we should be doing?

And you’re tying a lot of that in your work? I know, to gender socialization forces that we might not be aware of. I think it was a bit buffered by this in my own life, but it is it is real for many people. Do you want to say more about that? It’s so funny when you said it like I had to get rid of the I, I must.

I have a section in the book where I talk about starting to quiet your I must I shoulds and the what ifs right? Like I must do it because I must have these 18 bags. Because if my kid doesn’t have the perfect experience at the pool, or something goes wrong or right, it’s like, then then what does that mean for their future?

I mean, sometimes we can go in that direction, right? Like, like like, what does that mean? And I will say to you as a sociologist, what I think is going on is we’ve like slowly or quickly eroded all sorts of supports, social supports, community policy support. And we’ve basically said, you know, health care support, all the supports. And we say to families like you’re on your own, you are now individually responsible for making sure that your child not only is safe.

Melissa mielke talks about safeguarding children’s futures. I love this idea. Not only are they safe crossing the street, but you need to make sure they’re safe against, you know, inflation and global warming and fill in the blank, right. Like and so now some mother sitting in Poughkeepsie is, like responsible for making sure that their child is prepared for, you know, stock market crash in 25.

But that generative AI ridiculous, right. Like, actually if we brought community back video games. There’s the others. It’s just like it’s a there’s this direct correlation, I think, between the right Uber capitalism, neoliberalism and then this like pressure on us, constant pressure to be perfect. And what I love about what you’re describing is you’ve you’ve got I’m asking women to do this, get rid of some of this.

I should like there’s a snack bar and they can sit on the, on the chair and that’s A-okay, right? Right. It’s all going to be okay. And that idea that there’s a hundred different ways to do something is we can learn through that. I had a friend. I’m like, at their 40 years old, my friend came over and loaded up my dishwasher.

I’m just going to tell you this because this has changed my life.

And maybe you already do this. Maybe you already do this, but I never did. When I would go to the dishwasher, I would throw all the cutlery in as fast as possible in whatever direction it went. She organized everything like spoons in one forks and one oh yes, mazing.

The other. It is like has changed my life in that. Like now you don’t have to sort at the end. It’s all you just dump it in. You’re like pre sorting. I mean that is a strategy okay. And now if I had been pernicious about my house and that’s the wrong word particular about my house and said and said no, no, no, don’t load the dishwasher or I got it or I pushed her out of the way.

I would have been denied a life changing dishwasher sorting strategy. So how can we start to see the beautiful variation in each of us humans that then allows us to learn and be and play in different ways? I love this and you know what? That is an exit strategy. If you are caught feeling trapped, like I have to do all the things.

Like what? What would actually happen if you made space for your partner to do things their own way?

Like we can have some cheese and crackers and baby carrots for dinner. We’re all right, you know, like that kind of thing.

And that’s that’s a different problem and a different conversation. Right. What we’re talking about here is taking a step back so somebody else can can take a step up. And what you can control are your own. This is the way kinds of things that may or may not be true

right that that’s one strategy

question though, when it when it comes to because this is all about what people care about, right. And why we care about them. How have we been taught to believe that these things are important?

has your research uncovered ways that have been effective in creating a mutually consensual, shared vision for what our life should be like that makes space for both people’s truth there? Or is that more a a clinical application or a practice application?

I think it’s both. Or, you know, I think this is one of the goals I have for the mental audit is to start this conversation, start have people have at least a little bit of the tools and do the thinking work to start this conversation? One of the things I like about what I created, how about that for an egoic statement?

How about that for arrogance? One of the things I didn’t even register that you’re a horn girl. Thank you. One of the things I like about what I created is the fact that you can do this individually, right? Like, if you have a partner and it’s interesting when you said you, your partner, there might be other things going on.

Right. And this is not worth speaking to. Yeah. Right. And in addition to that we have your partner. You might not have. One of the myths I talk about is, like most of us don’t have equal relationships. We’re told we do. We’re told we should, but we don’t. And you might feel it’s very I heard a lot from couples who were trying to fight towards 5050.

You might not want 5050. You might want ebbs and flows and ups and downs, and you might want equity, but not equality. Two different things. Right? And so I guess what I am trying to say to you is I am not here to tell you what to do with your partnership, because you might have something that’s totally imbalanced and you’re happy and that’s and that’s great, right?

Like that’s in different directions. But my goal for you would be to to to if you don’t if you’re the person who’s like I don’t and I want some change. But I would hear from women like okay, great. Now I’m going to have to get him to do this audit and come in and try to your, you know, partner where you’re not aligned with them and have to force them into this.

And my answer for you is no, you don’t have to actually but even just you getting clear. So this can be something you do individually. In conclusion, this can be something you can do individually. And even you just getting clear on where am I trying to go? What do I value, what are the must I shouldn’t do? Where’s my energy going to?

I wanted to go in that direction. Even that just self-reflective work and reclaiming your mental load, reclaiming your energy back that can shift your relationship in ways that you don’t have to do it as a couple. And then in the ideal world, like you said, you come together and you have that conversation together about where do we want to go?

What do we value, what do we care about? What’s important to us? Who’s important to us? What kind of world do we want to create? What kind of legacies do we want to do? I think right now people are so burnt out. Those big, big, actually very exciting, dreamy things. We’re so conditioned to be scrolling and and we’re, you know, thinking about everything, giving our mental load energy.

We’ve been told if we’re informed, were engaged, you’re informed all the time and you’re burnt out. Drop all some of the information and create some space for your dreams and your partner’s dreams. And I just think even if you do it independent, like yes, together would be great. But individually even that can take a little shift, right? You just need a little shift and let’s see what happens.

Research supports that. You know, and again you know, from a systemic perspective, marriage, family therapy like when one part of a system changes, meaning like you or me, it changes the whole dynamic. And so don’t devalue changes that you you make on your own.

and right. Maybe shifting from how do I get my partner to sit down and do this worksheet with me to, you know, maybe getting curious about what what do they care about?

Yes. And what do I care about? I care about something. Yes. And like, what a fun conversation that is like, oh, you know, I’m really excited about x, y. You know, I’m excited about doing this. I’m excited about a new project. I, I want to learn Italian. There’s an energy that comes from that. When you’re stepping in with with your ambitions.

Right? I mean, so that’s one very last thing. And then I know we need to wrap up, but so, so what your research and you know, even as we were reflecting on I was reflecting on the things we talked about today. You know, I think as I reflecting on my own life and how it, you know, is maybe compared to what research shows is the norm or whatever, I mean, it certainly does not represent my relationship in any way, but I think that a large part of that is probably due to early socialization influences.

So me being raised by a dad who was a feminist and there were only messages about how are you going to take care of yourself, you know, like all of that. My husband, in contrast, he grew up in a family where he really did take on more of like a caretaking role. And so, like, there you

And I think that in our family, like, you know, our older child, a son, he has all kinds of fluidity.

And one of his very favorite things is cooking. And so, like, he likes, you know, taking charge of those and creating spaces for it to be okay, to be a lot of different ways in your life. Right. But what have you found? The research say that, you know, parenting practices or perhaps early messages that can buffer people from conforming to some of these, like gender based ideals that maybe aren’t really true for them?

Do you know what I’m saying? Like in a culture that that often creates that and we always laugh because like my daughter’s school, something comes up. They still call me for some reason, which I think is hilarious, like, joke’s on you, dude. But like, that is our society. There are a lot of assumptions being made about who’s supposed to do what and all that jazz.

What do you say to that? Was the research thing I love. I love what you’re talking about, an early exposure. I love what you’re talking about is like two things, like making the box bigger for everyone. It’s like, what? What type? That’s very sociological. Right? Like, how do we make the box of activity that people can engage in without judgment, without fear, without social penalty, bigger and more fluid?

Yeah. I was just at a talk the other day where Stephanie Coontz was talking about like there was this split in the history where actually femininity and masculinity became at opposition, that, you know, if you’re more feminine, you’re less masculine. And what what a shame for all of us that this has happened. When I think about the research, I think about what you’ve described as opportunity.

Early opportunities for care, for caring and for caregiving is is such a life changing experience. And it’s life changing across different demographics and at all moments in time to be humanistic care. We’re all going to have to be cared for or cared by someone else at some moment in time. And so to open the opportunity and there’s so much value that comes from that connection to each other.

We had a research project where we actually asked people about their confidence. Right. Are you confidence caring, confident, caring for little babies, toddlers, and then, you know, children who are about school aged. And what we found was that actually women on average had higher confidence across everything. But that confidence gap closed when people became dads, right? Like that.

Dads were just as confident in their caregiving across ages when they had the direct experience of care. And I think one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve we’ve we’ve made care dirty for men, right? Like, we’ve we’ve done that in a really perverse and discussing way within society to make men feel like when they’re caregiving that there’s that they’re going to be called a pedophile or there’s some risk to them, right, like about caring for others.

And that message comes so early. I mean, I’m like on a tangent, but I do like that. I’m sorry. I know, I’m like, now I’m really out in the woods, but I just want to say like that, that’s a social conditioning and that’s a context that actually we I think what you’re describing is like we all come in and we care for each other and the ways in which we can, and we celebrate that.

And I think that is a critical moment in particular, bringing boys in early on to the care and then showing young girls right like that. There’s not that it’s not just caregiving, right. It’s a little bit opening the box. That’s what I think it’s all about, opening the box up. So yeah, there’s a range of experiences, activities, behaviors that are not like that are just things that humans do, not things that women do not things that men do.

We all do because are valuable. Absolutely. And so you’re saying like giving young people exposure to lots of different ways of thinking about things and exposure to different opportunities and activities to see what is like kind of naturally in alignment with them and what they want to to develop, as opposed to sort of predetermined rules about the way things should, you know, you’re going to play with the pink toys or the blue toys, like that kind of thing.

Exactly. Opening up the options. And what I love, what you said is like, we’re trying to do that in the family because we know once they move out into society, we can’t control that. It’s going to come true to you. I mean,

yeah, well, and gosh, we could keep going. See more about an observation of society and where that can can happen in ways that are subtle.

Absolutely. Even what you just described about one of the things I heard from parents across was like, I get if the mother got so much school correspondence, they text me, they call me one. One mother said, like, I am in a secure bunker. My cell phone does not work. I have put down call the dad right? And they still call me first.

And so this is ways in which, you know, even and then on those school level, because we’ve talked to people at the schools and they’ll say, well, sometimes the dads don’t pick up, right. The moms pick up. And so this is the way in which does not pick up. I don’t pick up either. This is where it’s like, this is where, you know, you can be explicit, like, I don’t want to be called and yet you’re still called.

That is. So when you gave that example, I thought, oh man, we heard this across the interviews that schools reinforce this and put work on mothers and. Right. And so but any movement through the world, right things that people are going to say, ways in which we get pushed back into our boxes. You’re like in this little box, and women’s box can sometimes be a little bit bigger about what you can do.

And I think that men have a narrower box about what is appropriate. And so my goal is like, let’s get rid of the boxes. Let’s just like make it a rainbow. Let’s make it like you can do whatever. Totally, absolutely. And I love that too. It’s like, you know, if you and your stupid box is like, we all get to decide what we want to participate in or not, and, you know, to sort of who cares if other people think you should be a certain way?

They’re not in charge of you and your life, and you’re going to feel a lot better if you can, like, have that be true. So I love can I give you an example from my child? Okay. This will give one more. Yeah. Yeah okay. So my I have a daughter right. And she was about three and she went through.

Many of you have daughters who even if you’re like me and you’re trying to create a gender fluid world, gender just shows up. Right? So she was obsessed with princesses and clippy cloth shoes, which would call clip sheets. And so she would show up in princesses. And she said, my friend Benji, who was a little boy, he really wants a pair of Clippy Klopp shoes.

Can I bring him one? Of course you can. And he really likes yellow so he’d like the yellow Clippy Klopp shoes. So we brought of course bring whatever share with Benji. Give him the Clippy club shoes. Right. So we brought that into the daycare center. There was an uproar from some of the parents because they felt like this was inappropriate to have, you know, this moment.

And what they said to us was like, actually, kids aren’t thinking in gender norms. They’re not. They’re just actually experimenting. I like the way it sounds or those are kind of interesting. And we then come in and impose that on that. At this age, they’re just they’re flute. They’re moving through the world and trying to figure out the world.

And so this is like at three, right at three you’re being told you you can you can’t. This is not for you. This is for you. And that’s just the start. Right. And then we go from there. That’s wild. And that was interesting. I have to show you that we’re like bonding that. But like,

so you know what I really, I have to wonder about like, how much of this stuff is hard wired, like my, my niece, you know, we called her Princess Evelyn because she, she was that, you know, with the dresses and all the things, but like, let’s see if I could.

So my, my kid, I don’t know, I, I, I don’t know if I could find this photo, but, like, she is now eight and when she was three, she. Oh, here’s what I’m looking for. It’s very into reptiles. We took her to the. Yeah. No, seriously. Like at a festival kind of thing. You know that the face facing and she could, like, do the princess or whatever, she’s like, no, give me the snake right inside.

Maybe like, she’s at a reptile, she’s a snake. But like, no, I, I do not like snakes. Actually, we never had that conversation or like, you know, snakes are cool. It’s just like, kind of who she is. I don’t think it’s in here. Is this even come from. But that’s wild. That is just wild, And so how do you how do you then nurture the individual and their preferences and who they are in their core, in their spirit?

Yeah. And try to keep some of that social bullshit away for as long as you can. Also give them the tools, which is my goal. Give you the tools to go reject that. Right. Like which is to be fair to you, is what you do. By the way, as you describe this, I’m like, this is what you’re doing, your sociologist.

So congratulations. Okay. I’m an honorary sociologist. You’re welcome. You know, like but but it would also seem to me like, in order to create that space for your kids to be who and whatever they are, and if they want to be some hyper masculine or, like, go for it, that’s fine too. But like,

it would seem like you need to manage your own conditioning first, because otherwise you’re going to be influenced by these shoulds and anxieties.

And what are people going to think and maybe even not even be aware of

Also of the world problems. All the world’s problems. Oh my gosh. I turn into like a Joe Rogan like seven. Our podcast. Just one more hour. That’s right. Oh my gosh. No. We could talk all that. This was such a fun conversation.

I’m glad we did this today. Thank you. This is good. Thank you for having me. Well, hey, before I let you go, so you have your book drained. Reduce your mental load to do less and be more. Dr. Leah Ruppanner. So we’ve been speaking with. But you have you have a website. You have a quiz before I let you go.

Tell us more about where people can find you if they want to start working through this stuff.

okay, y’all, I will tell you how great I am everywhere. So I’m on. Don’t you worry. I have an Instagram that I’m active on Instagram, I have a LinkedIn. I have a TikTok you can go to and take the free assessment.

Did you say Life Lab? Oh. Sorry. Okay. Yes. No. This is this is happened to me before. Lighten, like L-I-G-H-T-E-N. Lighten the load. Okay? Yeah. Lighten Lab. Okay. Yes. And to take it, I have a podcast too. I have a podcast called MissPerceived, where I’m talking to you about the mental load and I’m talking about some gender stuff.

And. Oh, and I just started a Substack today. I don’t know, I’m crazy dances. Yes, yes, yes, I get kind of manic during the summer too, so thank you. So you say this is normal. Okay, good. But I really do like I love I want to hear from you. I’m saying this sincerely. Like I, I have decades of research.

I have 80 articles I published, but like I this is I want to hear how these ideas. I’m trying to get the ideas into the world. And I want to know what connects for you, what resonates, what doesn’t. Because that’s the next research idea, right? It helps to strengthen. And then when you give me your insights and your information, I, I synthesize it and I bring it back out to the world.

So thank you for this. Oh well okay. So get in touch with Doctor Leah. Weigh in on your experience. I’ll put it into the hopper and and maybe turn it into your next book. Okay. The book again is Drained, Dr. Ruppanner, lightenlab.com. And thank you so much, doctor Leah. This was a really fun conversation. This is great.

Thank you for having me. Thank you.