The mentality exhausting burden we bear as men listening to feminist talk about thinking.

RealStarkey · 2025-03-05T12:04:31+00:00

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/05/i-feel-like-im-on-holiday-inside-our-week-long-mental-load-marriage-swapI'll swap your obligatory...

[–]AbysmalDescent 68 points69 points70 points 1 year ago (9 children) | Copy Link

Feminists are often quick to throw this idea of mental load at men, only demonstrating how detached they are from reality but that they will really look for any excuse to hate on men. The reality is that men not only do a lot of mental load in relationships for women, but they also take on the brunt of the mental load when it comes to dating as well(with men who fail to establish themselves as a stronger mental partner often being rejected and dismissed by women entirely). Men not only have to be considerably more emotionally stable than women but they are also expected to be able to handle all of women's emotional instability, and countless shit tests, without fail. Men have to establish themselves as this emotional rock, often pushed to suppressed any and all of their own emotions, in order to provide a space for women to be emotional and put their needs above their own. Men are constantly fighting emotional battles that they aren't even allowed to discuss without being reprimanded for it by women or the rest of society. Men are also expected to listen, offer solace, emotional support, understanding and solution(only when requested) while never really receiving that kind of support from women themselves.

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I think it really just comes down to few driving factors. The idea that women are "the prize", the idea that women are "more complex" and the idea that women are "more sensitive/empathetic", none of which are inherently true but simply different aspects of existing social constructs.

The idea that women are the prize effectively creates a power dynamic in which women feel as though they of a greater worth than men, and therefor not only do not need to concern themselves with the feelings/problems of men but also that men should simply accept them as they are no matter what that might be because men are lucky to have women in their presence.

The idea that women are more complex also allows for a lot of women to feel "superior" to men. It feeds their egos and effectively enables them to look down on men or refer to their emotions in a condescending manner. Women are not actually more complex than men, but the way they express themselves is regarded as more "complex" because there are so many positive biases in their favor, which also comes back to women being seen as the "prize"(placating to women to make them happy because their happiness matters more than men's).

Women are also often seen as more sensitive or complex because they have the ability to fully express themselves emotionally without really having to fear judgement from men. Men will still want women in their lives, will still want to love women or have sex with them. Men will accept women far less conditionally and, again, this goes back to this idea that they are the prize. The idea that women are more sensitive or delicate also plays a big role in society catering or placating to their emotions as well.

So, women have a far greater degree of expression, emotional or otherwise, because men accept, embrace, support and love them no matter what, while men simply do not because they are expected to live up to greater expectations in order to accommodate for women's own emotional failures or shortcomings(which aren't seen as failures or shortcomings in women, because they are seen as the prize, more complex or more sensitive, and the bias that this creates). All of it comes down to female privilege, and men's acceptance/love of women vs women's contempt/indifference to men.

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Really? You personally know both people intimately enough to say the man s lazy while the saint his wife does everything (or nearly). Or is it that you've listened to women claim they have lazy husbands?

I think you are partly right that for some women mental load may be code for “my husband s lazier than I want him to be”l that doesn't mean he's objectively lazy, just that, in her opinion, he's lazy. My wife and I, happily married for 36 years have had some tense times. At one point a therapist asked us to write down our household work load. And assign time frames boy did that stir the nest. My wife's notebook would say “clean bathroom, 45 min.” She actually took almost 2.5 hours from start to finish. I did mine in 20. Same size bathrooms, we are empty nesters so I have moved into the hall one so she can have more counter space in the ensuite. I focused on bathroom and nothing else and got it done in 20 min. My wife ate some of her breakfast, scrolled social media, answered the door and chatted for 30 min., sent a couple of emails and did a quick Amazon purchase, plus posted something. She just mentally went back, subtracted the time she spent doing other things and wrote a time down. I pointed out that we both clean bathrooms about the same way, we have same size bathrooms, and all the other stuff she did. Next week we had to record our Sat., just turn the phone in, leave it where it can show what we did and go about our day. Same with any time at home not doing exercise, entertainment or sleep. Then we each had to document the other person's time.

Bottom line, as a remote worker,doing 5 one hour days at work to her 4 tens, I was doing nearly double the work she was in terms of time. And more in terms of task. Many she had no idea about because I did them in the 1-2 hours when she went at home. But according to her I had it easy and never did my fair share. And never carried the mental load. Know what I don't do? Worry needlessly about things. If I have a task I plan it and work on it. Same with a problem. My wife worries. It’s her favorite past time. If nothing is wrong she hunts for stuff to worry about.

So when people talk about how women are so burdened by their “mental load” I want hard objective evidence. Otherwise it's just claims to assert victimhood.

Where I think so many get it wrong is that they assume all women carry entail loads, like worrying about each child, their friends, what party, event or other thing they need to prep for, and so on.

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[–]pbj_sammichez 39 points40 points41 points 1 year ago (3 children) | Copy Link

I have yet to see one of these couples you claim are so frequent. Yet I have seen multiple relationships with women who can't be bothered to cook, clean, or work.

A woman's notion of a lazy partner seems to be a partner who doesn't spend 100% of his time working to improve HER life. The mental load complaints are all just a way for women to pat themselves on the back for accomplishing nothing. Want to know what a mental load is? Knowing that I have to listen to her prattle on about whatever stupid shit has her upset. A real mental load is knowing that, no matter how bad things get for me, she will never actually care. A true mental load is knowing that when I finished working, I was going home to a woman who expected me to continue working when I got home. A mental load is knowing that she is lying about spending money, but knowing that I'm the bad guy if I mention that she needs to stop buying stupid shit. No, we don't need more Christmas lights just because they were on sale at the dollar store. A true mental load is bearing responsibility for the existence of our home, but women want to complain about the load of knowing when her friends' birthday parties are and ensuring that her boyfriend gets dragged along to something he never wanted to do. When women take on the load of something that matters, then I'll care.

[–]avocado-afficionado 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Just offering some perspective I guess.. I’m in one of these marriages and it genuinely almost broke us before we had a come-to-Jesus moment and he’s finally gotten better at doing chores without needing to be asked 2-3x.

I’m the (sole) breadwinner in the family and also a part time student. He used to be a full time student but is now part time as well and doesn’t work. I cook every single meal for our family and I used to do all the cleaning as well.. At some point I felt genuinely burnt out and told him I needed him to pick up the slack because I couldn’t do it anymore. His response at the time was “sure, make me a list.”

Like… No. I do not want to make you a list. Keep in mind I’m no clean freak here. These are not unreasonable tasks for a grown adult to do— do the dishes when you notice them piling up. Scrub the toilet if it looks dirty inside. Take out the trash if you see it overflowing, don’t just keep putting stuff next to the can until it starts to stink up the house.

He claimed he just doesn’t think about these things. These aren’t “buying Christmas lights at Home Depot” type of tasks, these are basic daily household maintenance tasks that I also contribute to as well (for example, even if I cook everything for the house, I also wash the dishes as I cook to lighten his load when he wraps up after me).

Some men just aren’t raised to think or notice these things. In my husband’s case, he was raised by a mother who has an extremely lazy husband (his stepdad), so she was used to doing literally everything for him and by proxy her son. He never had to wash his own clothes because she would do it for him. He never had to clean his room. He never had to wash the dishes. I was also raised by a single mother but.. Asian moms would probably rather die than let their daughter not help with the chores.

Just something to think about. These situations do exist.

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Title	The mentality exhausting burden we bear as men listening to feminist talk about thinking.
Author	RealStarkey
Upvotes	327
Comments	202
Date	March 5, 2025 12:04 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1j41j2k/the_mentality_exhausting_burden_we_bear_as_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-mentality-exhausting-burden-we-bear-as-men.1545664 https://theredarchive.com/post/1545664

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