You often hear this buzzterm being flung around among feminists and in their forums. I always thought it referred to "women having to listen to men's problems" or something along the lines of providing some sort of emotional support to men. Needless to say, they do not enjoy this "emotional labor" and they certainly sound like they resent men for having to do it.

However, my understanding of this term was wrong until very recently. Emotional labor is simply everything. Literally any task or thought, no matter how complex or mundane.

Doing the laundry, making the bed, taking the kids to school, planning family dinners, calling the accountant, driving to the grocery store, sending an email, unpacking the dishwasher, talking to the neighbor, zoom meeting for work... etc, etc. Since every thought a woman's mind processes is filtered though her emotional centers, every single task, be it mental, physical, both or neither, takes an emotional toll on her.

Now consider a man. He has a finite amount of mental and physical energy allotted for each day. Each task he does in the day drains either his mental or his physical energy reserves; and both if the task demands mental and physical exertion. But unlike women, men do not reroute all conscious and subconscious thought through their emotional centers. Thus doing the dishes and calling the plumber do not take an emotional toll on a man. Men do not even have the natural1 capacity for "emotional labor" because it simply serves no evolutionary purpose. On the contrary, were a man to reroute all conscious thought through an emotional filter before any action was taken, our species would have likely died off while we were still living in caves. Emotional detours in thought, lengthening the period between recognizing a scenario and acting appropriately, would likely result in death in most life-or-death situations.

1I say "natural" because while men might not be biologically hardwired with this "emotional energy meter" it is probably something that they can learn to adopt over time, eventually becoming habit. I suspect this is where the "Happy Wife, Happy Life" slogan fallacy comes from, aka "reduce her emotional toll in life as mush as possible in order to stave off her mounting resentment towards you for not being as equally emotionally destitute".

But why does this "emotional labor" lead wives to resent their husbands? Because nothing he does during the day, or at least very little that he does, takes any sort of emotional toll on him. Men in general simply recognize the nature of the task before them, and allot the necessary mental and physical energy to accomplish it. But for women it is only a matter of emotional energy, and since everything they do is emotionally draining because everything they do is driven by their emotions, they burn out quicker and more absolutely than a man facing equal odds.

Then she has to look at him at the end of everyday. Sure he's probably physically tired, and most certainly mentally exhausted, but emotionally, he is just fine. And that is all she can see because to her that is all there is. And they fucking hate you for that.

This here illustrates the theory nicely: https://archive.is/TQgrb

https://www.katykatikate.com/the-blog/2019/5/7/so-you-want-to-help-around-the-house