It's a hot topic for relationships. Women on FDS will tell you all about how draining it was to direct their partners and families to keep up with the housework all the time (if they're lucky to get help at all.) LVM on Reddit balk at the idea and demand to know what's in it for them before they consider picking up their own laundry. There's a popular HuffPost article that's made the rounds on the subject. But people still don't get it.

So, gentlemen, let me break this down into terms you may understand. Imagine you're at work, and are responsible for training the new hire. You need not have management experience for this. In today's workforce, anyone somewhat reliable in their job will have this responsibility thrust upon them.

You are now responsible for showing this new hire everything they need to know about the job. Sure, they claim to have the necessary skills and a resume to prove it. But you quickly find out they don't know what they're doing. Maybe they did learn a few things from their last job, but they've learned all the wrong habits. Now it's on you to teach them new ones.

After a trying day of walking this new hire through everything, you both clock out. You're confident you've made some progress in teaching this new hire what they need and tomorrow will be better.

Nope!

New hire comes back completely exhausted from the day before. Maybe they have a few blisters! Worse, they've completely forgotten everything you showed them the day before. They're even working slower because they're just "sooo tired" and you're there to help them out anyway. The following days show no improvement.

Finally, you pull new hire aside for a little heart-to-heart. You explain the importance of the job and how they need to step up, because you can't be around to bail them out all the time. You have your own job to do, after all. And that's when new hire smirks at you and says, "Well, what's the big deal? I'm getting paid either way. You're better at this job than I am. If I'm fucking up, it's your fault."

Then you realize you've spent the past week training someone who doesn't want to learn, has no intention of improving, and for no added pay. Congratulations, you're now responsible for the workloads of two people.

This is what emotional labor is like. In the domestic sphere, you've got one person (typically the woman) chasing after her partner and children to get the chores done. Laundry, dishes, sweeping, taking out the trash, washing the pets, and so on. She also has to keep appointments straight, school events, meal planning, grocery shopping, extracurriculars, and so on. On top of her own adult responsibilities. If you're a functional adult in an LTR, taking on your share of the above is part of the deal. You don't get to shove all of that on your partner and wonder why she resents you.

What's in it for you? You get a healthy relationship and a functional life. That takes effort.

And don't give me the "tell me what to do and I'll do it" line. New hire in the above example is willing to do the same. Are you willing to tell them every step of the process of your job every single day for the rest of your life? Didn't think so.