A lot of basic life tasks that we think are fairly easy, hence our use of the word “basic” when referring to them, are actually really difficult.
Take something “basic” like going grocery shopping. This is really hard.
Because grocery shopping doesn’t just involve driving to the grocery store and buying stuff at random. You have to buy specific things. Which means there’s preparatory work to be done.
First, you have to go through your pantry and your fridge and see what you’ve used up and what you need. Sometimes you find that some things in your fridge have gone bad and need to be thrown out, or things in your pantry may have gone out of date and need to be trashed. Which means you messed up somewhere in the past and that feels bad.
This task is even harder if you have a family or people you live with who don’t always stay organized and put things back in exactly the place you’re used to seeing them. Then it’s hard to figure out what you need and what you don’t. You can have a grocery list people are supposed to keep updated when they want something or use something up, but people forget to do that so you still have to go through the pantry and fridge to plan for your grocery trip every time.
You also have to decide what you want to eat this week and figure out what you need to buy in order to prepare those meals. Sometimes you even have to go online and look at your grocery store’s ads to see what’s on sale to help you make this decision. You can ask those people you live with what they think you should buy, but they usually don’t care and just tell you to get whatever looks good and is fairly priced.
Look at all of this! You haven’t even left the house yet and you have to undertake all of this mental load just preparing for a grocery trip!
When you finally get to the grocery store, you’re going to have forgotten to do at least one or two things. For example, maybe you didn’t check the drawer in your fridge where you keep the shredded cheese. So now you don’t know if you have enough shredded cheddar to make the casserole you were going to bake this week.
This is a crisis. Because now you have to make a decision: Do you buy cheese anyway, but maybe you don’t need it and now you have to find something else to use it on, and if you don’t use it then it goes bad and you wasted $3.79 of your money on cheese you didn’t eat? Or do you not buy it then get home and figure out you needed it and now you have to figure out some modification to that casserole, or even find a whole new recipe? Or do you not buy it, figure out you need it, then have to make a whole other grocery trip to get it?
And God forbid you go to the store without a meal plan for the week figuring you’ll just check out the meats and vegetables, pick up whatever looks good and is priced okay, then figure out dinner. That just moves an obscene amount of mental load to later in the week when it’s dinner time and now you have to figure out what to cook!
…Does any of this sound silly to you?
Like maybe I’m being a little bit neurotic when describing the routine act of figuring out groceries and dinner?
Like maybe I’m inventing extra stress for myself that is completely unnecessary then getting really angry about how much ‘mental load’ I have to endure to do a very basic task someone normal like you might just get in the car and go do and be okay with whatever outcome happens?
Welcome to the mind of women.
There are three things women hate more than anything else in the world: 1) not knowing something; 2) being wrong about something; and 3) taking risks.
Actually, all of that is just #3 - taking risks. Because taking an action when you don’t know what the outcome will be and possibly getting something wrong is one possible thing that can happen when you take a risk.
Taking a risk and having a bad outcome feels bad. Whether it’s a big bad outcome like you raced to run a red light and got into a car accident and now you’re out $8,784 for body work and a new radiator and your insurance premiums nearly double and you don’t have your car for a week. Or a small bad outcome like you didn’t buy more shredded cheddar cheese and now you have to make your casserole with whatever’s left in the open bag of shredded Mexican blend cheese.
The worst part about taking a risk and having a bad outcome, big or small, is that it’s your fault. You made the decision and got it wrong.
But it doesn’t have to be your fault.
Maybe you can blame the other driver for not looking. Maybe you can blame your spouse or kids for not updating the grocery list. Maybe you can blame your spouse for making you have to do the grocery shopping at all and not sharing all of this mental load with you, and if it weren’t for all of that mental load stressing you out you never would have had the car accident in the first place!
Wait, I’m doing it again aren’t it?
One thing that really pisses women off is how blasé the men in their lives are about risk.
Did you know a man will just get in his car, drive to the grocery store, and buy stuff? Sometimes, he gets home and doesn’t have something he would have liked to have and has to make do. Sometimes he has an extra thing he didn’t need and has to figure out what to do with it.
Sometimes - get this - he ends up with chicken leg quarters that take 45 minutes to cook, but he can’t make them tonight because Becky, Jr. has piano lessons (did he forget or something?!) and he should have bought something faster and easier to make for Monday nights and he…has to order pizza or run the kids to Chick-fil-A for dinner before piano lessons. Then he has to grill those leg quarters Thursday instead.
And the whole time he pivots and makes bad decision after bad decision, he acts like it’s not even a thing! Like it’s no big deal how he’s screwing up again and again. The kids are fed, they’re making it to their activities, but look at all of this mental load he’s oblivious to!
Crap. There I go again.
Internet men: Women can not handle risk. Even when the potential consequences are minor. They don’t even want to choose where to go out for dinner tonight because she doesn’t want it to be her fault if the food isn’t good or she doesn’t have a good time.
You being that blasé guy who can just shrug and say “Okay, no biggie. We’ll run the kids to McDonalds tonight and cook the chicken Thursday”, then frown stupidly at her when she’s griping at you for some dumb reason…
You being that blasé guy who can just shrug and say “Pitch the old cheese. We’ll just get more next time we’re at the store”, then frown stupidly at her when she’s bizarrely upset about the $3.79 that cheese cost when you make six figures and she makes another 50k on top of that…
You being that blasé guy who just picks a restaurant for dinner, and even if it sucks, still seems to be having a great time just being out with her…well, that guy’s okay actually!
Take the risks, deal with the outcomes, let her gripe about whatever she wants to gripe about.
She can’t handle the risk, and even though she’s griping, you’re her hero.
