I want a diamond
I really do
I think that you
Should give me one – “Diamond Mind,” Rasputina
Emotional labor isn’t a thing.
Or rather, it is a thing – but not the thing you may have encountered in popular online discussions. The term comes from sociology and refers to the emotional control – most frequently suppression – required by employment. Most jobs have elements of this, but in some it’s particularly pronounced – “customer service voice” being a prime example.
The sociologist who coined the term, Arlie Russell Hochschild, differentiated between the emotional labor that’s part of the actual labor market and emotional work—the expression, regulation and suppression of emotion that comes with any intimate human relationship. In pop culture, these two terms have merged, expanded, and become swirled into the larger concept of domestic labor (AKA chores and gritty, boring life stuff).
In essence, it’s “disease creep” applied to language.
So, at least in the online world, we’ve gotten to the point that:
- If your loved one talks at length, particularly about difficult topics (i.e., “trauma dumping”), that’s emotional labor and a form of exploitation.
- If you feel responsible for the “little things” that keep a household running – what chores need doing when, what appointments need making – that’s emotional labor and a form of exploitation.
- Anytime you feel burdened emotionally by another person, that’s emotional labor and a form of exploitation.
I’ve addressed trauma dumping before, so let me aim that second bullet at something resembling the truth. Whenever you do the “little things” that keep a household running, that’s not emotional labor; that’s actual labor. In fact, a lot of it can be classified as “household management,” which is a subset of the larger management category. Management – determining what tasks need doing, in what order and with what resources – is a high-level skill, which is why your boss makes more money than you do.
Household work is real work – because nobody scrubs toilets as a fun hobby. And yes, there are skills involved – which is why there is a professional class of people who get paid for this sort of thing, whether housecleaners, handymen or executive assistants.
For way too much of history, these jobs were performed by a dedicated class of people: women and wives, who were trained since early girlhood with these skills and expectations. Lower-class women were often hired as servants by the wealthy and similarly raised to expect this. So too slaves, born into bondage.
To be fair, men were also raised with limitations on their future, similarly forged by social class, caste and race. Your father was a farmer or a machinist or a carpenter, so you became a farmer or a machinist or a carpenter.
You married a woman of a similar background who, in addition to managing the household, often helped run your family enterprise, whether keeping the books or pulling the plow. The farmer and the farmwife were both farmers. The innkeeper and the innkeeper’s wife were both innkeepers.
The idea of women as being strictly limited to the domestic sphere, in which they sacrificed endlessly for the physical and emotional comfort of their spouse and children, comes from the Victorian Age. In literature studies, it’s often referred to as “the angel in the house,” the name of a very long and very shitty 1854 poem by Coventry Patmore that was immensely popular in Victorian times.
The angel is a particularly middle-class affectation: Families who managed to claw their way out of the underclass attempted to mimic what they saw as the aristocratic ideal, in which women were seen as ornamental service animals. (“Seen as,” by the way, doesn’t mean they actually were; aristocratic and middle-class women could and did engage in art, spirituality, professions and more – usually at risk to themselves or their social standing. I’m talking about societal expectations here.)
In the aristocracy and the emerging middle class, servants were hired to do the “big jobs,” while the proper woman engaged in embroidery – a good kenning for the delicate shaping of the family dynamic. Meanwhile, farmwives and factory workers and the people in tenements didn’t bother with “emotional work” because they were doing actual work – the sweaty, dangerous, poorly paid kind.
The 1950s, Donna Reed ideal could be seen as a modern iteration of the Angel in the House. But listen up, would-be tradwives: The Angel didn’t objectively exist for many, if not most, women. The traditional division of labor came about not because women are uniquely talented at toilet-scrubbing, but because there are a lot of jobs and only so many bodies to do them.
In societies dating back to ancient times, women tackled the household labor, while men worked outside the home – often long hours, and typically in physically demanding professions. (More people were sailors than lawyers back in the day.) And, if you go back, say, to the Norse: The money they brought home was often given to their wives to manage – because running a household with thrift and effectiveness was a matter of skill and survival.
No money, no wife. In ancient Norse and Germanic societies, the sacred symbol of the wife was the ring of keys she always wore at her belt — because she managed the household’s resources. Hell, throughout much of history, women often earned a household’s wealth through fiber arts; all that cloth-making, tapestry-weaving and embroidery adds up.
All this is to say: Labor is fucking complicated. And who has it worse at any given moment in time has more to do with social class and caste rather than gender.
I’m probably the Goblin in the House.
I want that diamond
I want that thing
A tennis bracelet or a ring
If we’re going to tally the amount of “emotional labor” – as popularly and incorrectly defined – in my own household, then I am clearly the slacker.
Shoshen is retired and I’m not, so he picks up the bulk of the housework and much of the cooking; I manage the cat box, cook on the weekends, and also clean bathrooms and occasionally do laundry. (I am the arbiter of when our aikido outfits need to go in the wash because I am a sweatier unit than Shoshen.) But I will do whatever needs doing, if I can see it needs doing – dishes, cooking, swabbing up cat puke, you name it.
And while I kind of suck at this, I have also taken on the role of “social” coordinator – figuring out stuff related to vacations, church, aikido, etc.
But here’s the thing: Early on, I sucked at all of this. Our marriage suffered because I essentially took on the “stereotypically male role” – including the whole being emotionally distant thing. (Fun fact: I probably meet the parameters for avoidant personality disorder, although I’m not as bad as I used to be.)
These failures are on me: While I dated quite a bit before marriage, I had very few long-term relationships and no real idea how to deal with people. I didn’t know how to “human”; I had to figure that out much later in life and I relied a lot on Shoshen to teach me, as well as other very tolerant, loving people – including Neighbor Girl when I was growing up. I was not a fast learner.
Why am I telling you this?
Because as social mammals, we need to learn behaviors. And part of learning is that we need to be told and taught and occasionally reminded when we screw up. While we’re more likely to remember those lessons when they’re served with a heaping spoon of shame and anger, we’re actually more likely to learn from them and apply them when they’re served with compassion. Our natural reaction to shame and anger is to deny, fight or transform into a featureless, static lump.
If someone doesn’t know that something needs doing – the management part of housework, or how to treat people with kindness, or maintain relationships – they need to learn how, from someone … maybe even you.
I understand if you don’t want to take this on. Toilet-scrubbing produces more immediate rewards and, frankly, I probably deserved to be yeeted into the sun by Shoshen and sundry other people in my personal relationships many, many times during my life.
I try very hard to be a decent person, but the fact that I need to try so hard – and I really do — is alien to some. For those of us who learn how to “human” later in life, it doesn’t come naturally – and it may never come at a finger-snap. There will always be a delay as we pause and sift out our maladaptive first responses to choose the better way.
If you have the spoons today, I have a challenging thought for you: Maybe people like me aren’t evil or narcissists or unredeemably selfish or whatever. Maybe we’re just … clueless.
What happens when you step back and view the frustrating person in your life as clueless rather than evil?
Bonobos like to throw hands.
And what other thing Have I ever axed you for? Besides The ability to read my mind And I didn't get that either Yet.
The problem with emotional labor (incorrectly applied), trauma dumping and other pop-culture concepts is that they normalize an expectation of mind-reading. You should know what needs to be done, what needs to go unsaid; my having to tell you is unjust labor and exploitation. And if you don’t know, you’re an abuser and a narcissist incapable of change.
It comes back to my hotel-room theory of human relationships. To recap: In late-stage capitalism, we view right relationship as essentially light and transactional, making no demands of our time and being. There are no messes and, if there are, someone else is paid to clean them up.
But actual relationships are more like a lived-in house. It’s important to tidy up, but there will always be a delightful amount of crud because life is messy. This is true also of bonobos, our closest genetic relatives.
Bonobos – the matriarchal “hippie apes” known for their social ties – actually exhibit more low-level aggression than chimpanzees … three times more. In fact, some of them seem to wake up on the wrong side of the nest and come out swinging.
But there’s an important difference, the researcher concludes: “Chimpanzees murder and bonobos don’t.”
So, as someone who cleaves to a concept of “good enough virtue,” let me repeat: Chimpanzees murder and bonobos don’t.
Negotiating in relationships is frequently painful – but it’s also part of how relationships work. Because we have speech and bonobos don’t, our conflicts look more like arguments and painful discussions than savanna fistfights. Because we are social mammals, these arguments and painful discussions can hurt as much as a fistfight, sometimes more.
It’s never fun to scrub that messy house, but you need to.
If you feel you are doing all the “emotional labor” in a relationship, then it’s time to use your words – and ask for what you need. But as you ask, you need to remember that the other person is a person – with human feelings, human needs and a human history. They may be clueless or even in a state of harm, but they’re not some sort of “toxic” Echidna-spawn dragged from the depths of Tartarus.
Here’s some truth from the drain slime: If you view the person as toxic Echidna-spawn, your relationship is already over. If you’re constantly tallying and keeping score, your relationship is also over unless you’re some kind of sports announcer. Reciprocity is critical, but it won’t always be a matter of exactness and equivalency: People get sick or overwhelmed, or they just don’t know until they learn.
If you don’t feel that you can voice your needs, your duty is to explore why. Is it really about this person or who does the chores or takes the kid to dance, or does it reflect deeper patterns in your life? Sometimes, you need to end a relationship. A lot of times, though, you need to look more deeply – past the shallow waters of the shoulds to the deeper waters of desire, history, expectation.
Sometimes, it feels strange to offer up these “how to human” posts to the larger world – and as vulnerable as walking the mall in my skivvies. And I’ve wondered: Where did our culture go astray, that we’ve lost the art of relating to one another?
Late-stage capitalism – in which every human relationship is seen in transactional terms – is to blame for a chunk of it. Related in a complicated way: Our web of social connections has frayed, something that political scientist Robert Putnam documented in a famous 2000 book called Bowling Alone – which, admittedly, I haven’t read. But the more we are socialized to hierarchical individualism – “What’s in it for me?” – the more the idea of communitas dissolves in acid.
And we are left in a society comprised entirely of would-be monarchs, which is hell.
I specify hierarchical individualism because non-hierarchical individualism – An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt, as they say in Wicca – isn’t the actual problem. It’s individualism based on privileging the Self over the Other that’s the problem: domination woven into the very fabric of the self.
On the way to building partnership culture, we’re going to jostle and snap and argue; after the orchard bears fruit, we will still jostle and snap and argue sometimes. Tending the Garden involves dirt, after all, but it’s so much more beautiful and meaningful than the cold, hard light of a diamond.
White Cat Grove 