[00:00:00] Do you know, what size shoes your son wears? What sauce your daughter likes on her chicken nuggets and where the band-aids are in your house? My guess is yes, you probably do. That's because you keep track of lots of things for your family. Like when your daughter needs to see the dentist or what your son needs for his class trip. Even if you don't remember everything at once, you still carry around all of this important information in your head. That's what we call the mental load. I'm excited to bring back this episode because it is pure gold. Our guest, Dr.
Morgan Cutlip is an expert in how to lighten the mental load and make the invisible visible. We recently read her book, how to love your kids without losing yourself in the moms with dot capes book club. And it is so relatable chocked full of ways to prioritize yourself as a mom. Welcome to moms without capes the podcast where you'll get practical strategies for reclaiming your sense of identity within [00:01:00] motherhood. I'm Onnie Michalsky
and my goal is to help you prioritize your needs and carve out space for yourself so that you can discover who you are beyond your role as a mom. As a mom who wanted to go to a Zumba class, but for the longest time, couldn't figure out how to get past the piles of dishes and loads of laundry to do something that didn't revolve around my family. I'm here to tell you that I figured it out. We moms need to get ourselves on our own to-do list and we need to do things that we enjoy and that are good for us.
I've discovered that this is the key to not losing ourselves in motherhood. Over the years of raising a half a dozen kiddos, I can confidently hang up my supermom cape. And now I want to help you do the same. How does the mental load affect us and our relationships and how can we help our partners see that we are struggling with the mental load. When it is invisible, even to those closest to us. These questions and more we will tackle on today's show. This is moms [00:02:00] without capes.
I think if people don't know what this is after you hear what it is, I think it'll be a light bulb moment because when I learned about it, I guess maybe three or four years ago now, it's when I first heard about it.
And I was like, this is it. This is sometimes just defining our experiences is so liberating. So I was like, Oh my gosh, finally, this is it. Like this whirling sensation I experienced in my life. This Spinning has a title.
Morgan is a relationship expert with a PhD in psychology and along with her father, she co-founded love thinks. A company that helps people form lasting and loving relationships. From what she shares in this interview, she was basically born to be in this field.. I feel like I've been in the field of relationships since I was a little girl. My father has his doctorate in psychology and started writing courses at a, I gosh, I think before they were cool, maybe 30 years ago, [00:03:00] he started writing courses. And when he was working on his PhD, I used to. go to classes with him.
And I would ride in the car with him. And we would play this game. It was like a 30, 40 minute drive where he would give me fake cases. I was probably six years old at the time and, would ask me, you know, what would you do with this family? What would you do with this couple? What would you do? And it was my, one of my.
Favorite things to talk about with my dad. And so I feel like whether it was intentional or not, he was like raising his future coworker.
From going with her dad to numerous marriage conferences and eventually pursuing degrees and doing her own research on relationships.
It's safe to say, Morgan knows a thing or two about what makes relationships work. But when she became a mom, she realized that the mental load was something that could absolutely affect her relationship with her husband. If she didn't directly address it.
I was first [00:04:00] introduced to Morgan. When I attended an event at my church. That was aimed at improving. You guessed it. Relationships. Afterwards. I started following her on Instagram. And if you aren't following her, you'll want to be. The first time I heard the term mental load was when I was completely overwhelmed by it.
And I was really struggling to feel connected with my husband. I felt weighted down by all that was falling on me and honestly, I was considering a separation, which thank God I didn't pursue. And instead I sought the help from a counselor. So when the counselor mentioned the mental load, I immediately felt relief. Simply knowing that there was a term for it.. So the invisible load. It's also called the mental load or invisible labor is basically something that's predominantly carried by women.
It's The running list of to-dos and all that's involved in it that [00:05:00] we carry around in our heads. Things like, organizing the home, researching things, the worry work of the family, managing our relationships, restocking the home, remembering, all of this stuff. Yes. The fact that the mental load is invisible adds to the frustration. Since it's not something our partners or others in our life can see that we actually carry. It leads to feelings of resentment because here I am carrying so much. About whether the doors are locked when we go to bed or if the dogs had been fed, if my kid remembered to put the permission slip in her folder, And my husband seems to just not worry about these things.
A lot of this stuff, is not so obvious. nobody really talks about how toilet paper ends up in the cabinet or on the roll. It just shows up. This is stuff that we're doing, like these little ninjas behind the scene taking care of it, or nobody talks about what the steps are to get that clean laundry in the drawer. it's [00:06:00] invisible.
And so. It becomes really kind of challenging to explain it to our family and our partners, because it's invisible, because I don't think it's malicious, but it gets taken for granted a little bit. And then the other piece that's really important about the mental load is that it occupies a lot of our cognitive capacity.
And It takes up space in our minds and it crowds other other things out I don't think that my husband will ever fully understand what the mental load is all about. No matter how many times I try to explain it, but I do know that you get it. I used to compare it to being a waitress where I have to remember what table one needs while simultaneously taking drink orders for table two thing, grabbing the food for table three.
Everyone in my section needed me at one time. All different things. And that's how I sometimes feel with my kids, especially when they were younger. While also throwing in having to know the birthdays of those sitting at table [00:07:00] four. And at the people at table five, like ketchup or mustard with their burgers. My husband never waited tables. And he isn't a mom.
So while I try to explain it to him about the running checklist, I hold in my mind at any given moment. It's not something that he can ever fully grasp.
And it's exhausting. It's exhausting remembering all these things. We're like this big holding container for all the inner workings of our family life and that's a massive task. Feeling like angry and resentful and just feeling like, why am I doing it all? Why am I because he doesn't know that all of these things are have to get done in my mind. They're all in my mind. They're invisible. And then to say, well, just to explain it, it feels like, oh my gosh, I don't have the end.
It's hard. Now I got to. Remember it and speak it and then that feels really exhausting and too. And so it becomes this really like tricky [00:08:00] thing to navigate. One other way that I like to bring the mental load to life is to pick an object in the home and unpack it.
Because I think that the objects in our home are sort of like these representations of just a sliver of our mental load. And then when you look around your home and you say, oh, look at all of the things, it becomes so expansive. Let me give example. , my daughter is really sensitive, , to her clothing.
So if I took a pair of her leggings, they have a story all their own that describes one little tiny part of my mental load, which is that I have ordered. Probably 10 different brands of leggings. So that's, , what she likes, what she doesn't like, what's important in the legging, researching the different brands, taking the time to sit down and find the different brands to order them, to then have her try them on and [00:09:00] deal with the emotion and like managing my own self when she's melting down, right?
So all those things, and then finally finding the winner, washing them, folding them, stock, making sure she always has clean ones.
So I think, , sometimes it's challenging to explain it to our partners. But if we can say, okay, let me unpack this one thing. That's all the stuff that I'm carrying around that maybe you've never thought about. And I can do that for just about everything in the home. After learning about Morgan's way of explaining the mental load and unpacking the different items. I decided to try it with my own partner. I was able to share with my husband, why taking out the trash, isn't just taking the trash to the big can outside. But it also means gathering trash from the kids' rooms and the bathrooms replacing the trash bags. And that means making sure that we have them in our cabinet. And then remembering to bring the cans to the curb, paying attention to the holidays and all of the different days [00:10:00] that they may or may not be picking it up. When you throw in the recycling. It becomes even more.
So all the tasks that we carry in our load can get really heavy, really fast, and it can have a huge effect on our mental health and our relationships.
There's the relational effects. Within is stress. The effects of stress are absolutely insane on our physical cells and our emotional cells. You look at the rates of autoimmune disease, and it's staggering to how many women compared to men. And there's different reasons for that. But stress is absolutely a factor. So that's a big one. It can affect your sex drive.
Partially because of the stress. But also it crowds out like this cognitive capacity piece. How do you feel like you're in a sexy state of mind when you're thinking about all this stuff you got to do? , it increases anxiety. It can lead to burnout, depression, all sorts of things. So that's the individual factors.
, it's significant. It's not a little deal. The relational stuff is [00:11:00] resentment is a big one. I think I can just. Start to be like, this entry point in creating disconnect, , in your relationship, when you and your partner aren't in a good place and you feel that tension, your relationship feels, sours the tone.
And that can start to trickle into all other areas of your relationship. And it affects our sex lives, , in a pretty significant way. , I find that to be true and it creates stress and you can't be in the moment with your spouse. When you're checking off all of the things are going through your mental checklist. Another piece that I hear a lot from women is, , it's something I got to do for him.
But he's not doing the things I need him to do outside the bedroom. So it becomes this sort of, I call it standoff where you're like, you want something from each other that you're not getting and that can create all sorts of issues. Let me just say how much I can relate to [00:12:00] this. Morgan is in my head with this one, but it got me wondering, I know my husband can't fully understand the invisible load as I carry it. But do dads carry their own sort of mental load? I didn't think so. But I wanted to confirm.
So I talk about the mental load a lot on Instagram, and every now and then I'll get this message, and it's like, I'm a dad, and I carry the mental load. And I'm like, well, I've posted about this. hundreds of times and I've heard from two men.
So you got some unicorns. I mean, things are changing and there are more stay at home dads than there ever have been before. And so, they're welcome on my space. They're welcome to the table for this conversation. I think that there are some men and some dads who do, we interviewed a man to hear him live on the mental load.
And, It was really interesting. He was really honest about it. One of the questions I asked him was, , he was working in the home now, but before he wasn't. And I said, if you had a pie chart, how much of your pie [00:13:00] chart was occupied, by thinking about things in your home life and your family life.
And he's like, well, a lot for my family, but like actual things that need taken care of. , A tiny slipper. I don't think it's the same way for a lot of women. I think there are men that do, I think it's less common for men to feel this way. I think, , what we're really wanting and what women feel like they often occupy is if you think of it like a company, I think women feel like we're the owners of the company and we have partners who are employees, we're like, This is what we need to do this is how we need it done and , we're delegating and handing out orders and what we're really after is we want to be co owners, we want our partners to step into taking some personal responsibility for all the stuff that needs done in the home. I saw this quote once that said, women don't want to care less. They just want men to care more often, we work our butt off trying to compensate for our partners conscious or unconscious refusal to, to adult. I know that's a strong statement, but I know for me, I [00:14:00] sometimes feel like a project manager and that's just more work that I have to do. I don't want to micromanage the housework or the childcare. I think this is why so many of us say it's just easier to do it myself. Because the micro-managing takes energy that we just don't have.
I think there's resentment. I'm a big proponent of speaking it out and asking, but I do think that there is then there's resentment piece, which is why is it assumed I own it all?
Like I'm the owner of these responsibilities so I think that's the other piece about it that becomes really tricky. Yeah. Why do I have to ask? Can you not just see it? Can't you just see that she prefers a certain kind of leggings.
She's your child too, , recently we went to in and out and our kids get the same thing every day. . And we pull up and my husband's like, And I think I was just one of those days. I'm usually very good about these things. And I was like, you don't know yet.[00:15:00]
Because also his response was. Well, sometimes they change their minds. True. , it's helpful to get that perspective as well. But yeah, , next time we went, , he's like fire off their order, like nothing, but I think that's a frustrating piece of it. So the invisible load is indeed invisible by its very nature. And so talking to our partner about it can be tricky. Sure we can unpack different items on it. But starting in having a conversation about it. Can be quite difficult. I know when I was feeling completely defeated by it. I didn't have even the word for what I was struggling with. All I knew was that I couldn't take it anymore. I was burned out in every sense of the word.
I felt so disconnected from my husband and whenever I brought it up, he would immediately get defensive. Talking to Morgan helped to normalize my experience. And I learned how to approach the conversation [00:16:00] in a more effective way. A lot of times there's all these roadblocks that come up, whether it's the Defensiveness or just being in completely different pages about expectations around who does what. So it helps navigate all of that. Part of it is you have to talk about it. That's like the very unsexy you do have to initiate a conversation about it, particularly because, It's invisible and you have to start making it visible, and I think that, , the reason why I unpacked the legging story is that sometimes doing something like that with your partner can help bring it to life if they're like I don't really get it. Just do one thing at a time, right? Like cliche advice that sometimes we're given, it can help to bring it to life and make it really real. Like, Some of this language around project manager or owner versus employee.
I think these types of languages can help when you're having this conversation and to bring it to life. How did our load get so heavy? Anyways, it seems that [00:17:00] it's an unfair happenstance. I think about going to bed and my husband will say, he's going to bed and do just that I, on the other hand, say I'm going to bed and end up doing a whole laundry list of tasks before actually climbing into bed.. So I have this. theory around why our loads get so heavy. I think there's, of course, there's like the societal things, there's the gender role things, there's all this stuff that has an importance, but I like to be in the practical, so I'll share that.
I have a theory called piling on precedence. Which is that early in our relationships, , we do things for our partners because we love them and we just want to care for them. And we may be repeating what we saw in our own family. , when we do that, we don't talk about it. We just like. Take care of them.
We intuit their needs and we take care of them and take care of the things. And what happens is that when we take care of them enough, our partners forget about them. They're like, [00:18:00] Oh, that's taken care of. I don't need to think about that anymore. And it gets removed from their awareness because we've got it.
Right. This with thing after thing after thing, and we don't talk about it. Then kids come in to play and literally overnight, our amount of responsibilities exponentially grows. And then we're like, we can't do this anymore. Why don't you know what to do? Like, why don't you see it? Why can't you take initiative?
And it's like, it's not a blame thing. It's a shared responsibility. And I think partners need to step into being in an ownership role, but also Maybe we've taken care of a lot of stuff and basically fired them from some of those responsibilities. And so the solution to that is one to not take on any more things without having a conversation, because.
It's important that they keep it in their mind, that it's in their awareness. And so if you get an invitation to a [00:19:00] party and normally you would just take care of all of the pieces of that. This time you say, Hi, we got an invitation. Can you handle that? This time you got RSVP, you got to get the gift. You got to do this. I started doing this with my partner as well. I've given up the responsibility of buying gifts for his side of the family. At least and had the conversation with him. I felt that it was one less thing that I wanted to carry or that I needed to carry. And it wasn't a one and done conversation either.
It's something that we had to revisit several times and I'm okay with that. You've probably been doing it most of your relationship. It's almost like an unwinding or unraveling of past ways.
And so part of it is not taking it on anymore and talking it out. And when you talk it out, like I actually, it's really probably annoying, but nobody's complained to my family. I will narrate what I do sometimes. And this isn't just for my husband, but it's also for the kids. And I kind of talk [00:20:00] through like, Oh, I got, you know, this in the mail.
So now I'm going to have to do this, this, and this. And I walk them through it because I don't want them to think that I'm just like a ninja and things magically get done. I want them to understand all that goes into it. And then also it's an opportunity for them to jump in. My husband asks me this question a lot, where he'll say, what's on your plate for today?
And I'll say, Oh, I can take care of. A and D for you. So I think the more we can make things visible, the better off we are. There's all sorts of things, fair play is like a New York Times bestselling book on this. And she has a game that helps if you're very, ,systematic about it. That can kind of help show the distribution differences, which I think is good.
You can list things out if you want to depends how receptive your partner is and how that conversation goes. And then you can determine what are my next steps. ./ [00:21:00] have the conversation, but also think about what do you want out of it? Because sometimes we want logistical help. Like we just want our partner to take certain things on. And if that's the case, be prepared to talk about those things. Sometimes we just need them to understand and offer us. Support and encouragement and appreciation.
I think having that in mind when we go into this conversation can really help us be clear. With my partner, there will be times when I share something with him and he is quick to jump in with his advice when that isn't necessarily what I'm looking for. Then I get frustrated because I'm not getting my needs met. I may be simply looking for validation or empathy. This is why I can't overemphasize enough.
Why we as women need to stop and ask ourselves, what do we need? I think sometimes like our partners will leave conversations about things like this and they'll [00:22:00] be like, yeah.
Okay. Like I got this. Better. And then. Then they leave it and they're like, I don't really know what doing better looks like. I'm not saying that it's our job to spoon feed them, but I am saying know what you want to see be different so that you guys can be on the same page with your expectations. Such great advice and so relevant to so many of us moms. My biggest takeaway from all that Morgan chair today is how important it is to talk to our partners about the mental load and why we need to make the invisible visible. I know when I was buried under the crushing weight of it, I felt like I was all alone and that just kept me feeling buried. I desperately wanted my husband to understand, but I didn't have the words. I hope that in this episode, you gain some insight into how to approach the conversation with your partner. Especially if you are feeling buried [00:23:00] under the weight of it. Before we wrap up this interview, I wanted to learn Morgan's favorite way to practice self care.
I don't wake up and go right into pouring into everybody else. That's one thing. When I'm in a bad spot or just feeling it, it's usually a music thing. I go to where I turn on something that just seems to hit, . And I turn it up really loud and I dance.
Another question. I wanted to ask Morgan as I have with all my other guests. Is what books she recommends for us to read. I love the book Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski, they're sisters. Have you read it? I haven't. I like it. It talks a lot about our stress cycle and gives you ways of kind of, it's called discharging or completing the cycle.
And it's been like a book that I just keep in the forefront of my mind all the time. It's been really good. Turns out that we actually read and discuss this exact book [00:24:00] in the moms with that capes book club. It's an excellent book. And who knows. Maybe we'll read it again someday. Another amazing read is Morgan's book. Love your kids without losing yourself. Another one we read and discussed in our club. At the time of this recording, it hadn't been published yet. But I do highly recommend her book.
It was chock full of awesomeness. The final question that you might be asking is where can we find and follow Morgan? I'm mostly on Instagram. As you said, my handle is doctor and there's no period. It's just dr Morgan cut lip, like an injury to your lip is how it's spelled.
Also on our website, my love thinks. And if you do backslash moms, , There's content there just for moms, more on the mental load, and also free gifts that cover a lot that's involved in this topic and even guilt. I have a freebie there about guilt because part of stepping into talking about the mental load or stepping into caring for ourselves and the way we [00:25:00] need means we have to get rid of that guilt.! All of Dr. Morgan's information can be found in the show notes of today's episode. Thanks for listening to moms with that keeps, as you learned from tuning in the mental load can profoundly affect us and our relationships. And it is vital that we learn how to make the invisible visible by having conversations with our partner. About all that we are carrying you are 100% responsible for your own life.
And for creating the joy you want to feel. Stop living on autopilot, slow down, check in with yourself and please above all take care of yourself because you are worth it.
