Invisible Labor Is Real And It's Exhausting with Zach Watson

Today, I talk with Zach Watson about how “helping” at home can still leave one partner carrying the mental load, and how naming invisible labor changes the way couples work together. We break down emotional labor, cognitive labor, and the Fair Play framework so we can close more tabs in our brains and show up as true partners. 

• Zach’s “recovering man child” story and why humor lowers defensiveness 
• the hidden iceberg of cognitive labor and emotional labor behind visible chores 
• how Fair Play frames tasks as conception, planning, execution 
• why “I do the trash” often means only execution 
• dishes as a common flashpoint for mental load resentment 
• the “too many tabs open” analogy for overwhelm and burnout 
• how open tabs affect desire discrepancy and intimacy 
• practical tools like labeling the unseen work and using triple option defaults 
• trust building by showing your work before asking for help 

If you're looking for a free two-week course, Zach offered his mental load basics, first two weeks out of the seven-week program that he has in mental mastery. https://www.skool.com/mentalloadbasics/about

Transcript

Meet The Recovering Man Child

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, Monica Tanner, and I'm super excited to introduce you to my guest today. We've been friends for just a little while, but we have a lot to chat about, and we are trying to decide whether this episode is gonna come out as a Mother's Day episode or a Father's Day episode. Either way, you're gonna love it. My guest today is Zach Watson. He is a recovering man child turned mental load coach. And I love his content. I'm so excited about our conversation today. So whether it comes out for Mother's Day or Father's Day, please help me welcome my friend Zach Watson.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thank you for having me, Monica. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

All right. First, we have to address this recovering man child. Just explain that a little bit because I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So uh a huge part of my kind of identity online is as a content creator. And for a good, a good while I was just like, I was just having fun making videos. I wasn't a coach. It was not monetized. It was just fun having, you know, a small following on on TikTok. And one day I was hearing someone talk about like what a man child is, and I was like, it really sounds like a disease, almost like how alcoholism is like it's a disease, but people don't treat it like one. They're like just have better willpower. So I just I made this silly little skit where I was like, Hi, my name's Zach. I'm a recovering man child, hi Zach, and like pretended like I was in an AA meeting and like like would just talk about what the struggles are of being a man child and in recovery. So I think after I did that skit, the video performed pretty well. And I was like, that's kind of fun. Like, I'll just I'll try going that route. So I think it was like mid 2022. That was part of my outro was oh, and by the way, hi, my name's Zach, I'm a recovery man child. Hi, Zach. I teach men to better understand invisible labor and teach them to be better dads. And it's kind of evolved over the years, but uh it's been too much fun to not keep doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah. Well, I think when like I mean, when I heard you say those words, I was like, oh, that that hits something. It's it definitely, you know, connects to some part of me. Not that my husband, I would ever describe him that way, but I do work with a lot of couples who the maybe the wife is dragging her recovering or active man child into see me. So so yeah, I I think that that's relatable.

How The Man Child Skit Started

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, and and I think even I know that for a while, like one of my one of the free resources people get for me was mental for man children. And so many women were like, I can't give this to my husband. Like he's gonna flip out when he sees the title. Like, I can't do it. And so I had to change the name and I just recognize that there have been a lot of times where there are a lot of guys that are very triggered about that term, and I think it's helped me take myself less seriously, and it's helped me be so much more self-reflective and I think vulnerable because I don't fully take myself seriously. It matters a lot to me to improve in my own relationship and show up better for my wife, Alyssa, but at the same time, it helps me consistently be like, okay, that's right. I'm still unlearning. I'm not necessarily an expert, although people call me that sometimes. But like it helps me stay grounded and like I'm still learning. I still have things to unlearn to be better.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah. Talk to me about your journey a little bit. At what point did you feel like it was important that you pitched in more or you took more responsibility? Or, you know, like at what point were you like, hmm, this is probably important, I should pay attention.

The Wake Up Call In Marriage

SPEAKER_00 3:18

When I mean, so we were separated in 2018. We're three years into our marriage. We bought a three-family house in Massachusetts. We started like gutting it, and I was very excited about my YouTube career of 2,000 subscribers. But meanwhile, like I had signed up and was on the financial line for like this huge investment that we just put in. And Alyssa turned into a she's a full-time vet practice manager and was also now a full-time project manager for a real estate property. And I didn't have the words for that back then, but I kept being like, Yeah, like I want to have passive income. This is great. We're doing construction. Okay, Zach, can you call the electrician? Okay, you didn't get a quote from him. Can you follow up with the electrician? And she was just, she kept all the balloons in there, and I became one of the balloons. So I think that was that was a huge wake-up call. It sadly took me a really long time to hear that as a wake-up call rather than me digging my heels and being like, no, I'm I'm putting in a lot of effort. Can you not see that here? But that was a great example of like I could see the physical labor I was doing. I could see that I was learning a ton of new carpentry and like skills within our house. Like we're gutting walls and putting up drywall and fixing up stuff and sweating a lot. Like there's a lot of physical labor I was involved in. And I was missing the whole aspect of the cognitive labor that Alyssa was doing, which was paying attention to the needs, getting ahead of it, saying, like, oh, we're gonna need a permit for that. We got to get ahead of that so that when they shaft us for three months, like we have a permit in place and we started it nice and early. I know that we're gonna have to do this next, like there was also a huge learning curve to it, obviously, for anyone that's you know done done real estate like improvement. And then there was the emotional load that she was bearing, which was at one point we're about six months away from bankruptcy and generally dealing with my defensiveness all the time and being like, oh man, I don't really want to remind him again to fall up with that electrician, but I need him to do that. And he said he was gonna do it, and he didn't tell me when he was gonna do it by. So, like, I don't know, do I tell him now when he just ate and he's kind of happy, or do I break it to him in the morning, or like how do I poke him in a way that doesn't backfire me? So, like all that thinking, all that emotional labor that she's doing of like considering how she's gonna have to manipulate her own emotions and her own emotional presentation so that I respond in a pleasant way. I wasn't see that was all under the iceberg, like under the tip of the iceberg. So that was like my first wake-up call, which I still didn't have any of this language for, but I think I made improvements. We got back together. Um, and then in 2022, I was introduced to the fair play book by Eve Rodsky. And I read that out loud. I had, you know, a bit of a TikTok following, and I was like just ideating out loud in videos. And at some point I started talking about, you know, I think I just added mental load for my wife. We're about to put our sick kid down. Um, normally we give them milk, but I was like, we should probably do water instead. I was like, Do you want to do milk or water, Alyssa? And she just answered. But because I'd been reading the book, I was like, you know, I could have, I could have just chose. Like I could have just came up with the answer and presented to her, and she could have changed her mind, but like I could have just chose. And I did not see this coming, but that video hit 6.4 million views because so many women felt those minute little decisions all day, every day that will that are being expected of them to do that thinking is absolutely exhausting. And so today I'm on part, what was it, 346 I posted, and that was part one back in 2022.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

So cool. So today you would say that you're kind of an advocate for more equal distribution of emotional load in households.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah, and I think at a minimum, being the evolution that I encourage people to go on is acknowledging invisible labor in the first place. Like the thinking of when when to talk to your partner and how they're gonna get the least amount of defensiveness, seeing that as value added, seeing that as labor and it is it's has exhaustion to it, like getting our four-year-old up from bed and like thinking through, like, okay, noticing when she's about to have a shame response because I said no to doing something, or you know, she started playing with the plant that Alyssa really doesn't want her to touch. Like all of that thinking that's going on to make sure that my four-year-old has a positive experience and that my wife doesn't feel like she needs to step in between a fight between her 35-year-old husband and her four-year-old. That's emotional labor. So, one, just identifying it as a reality, uh, and that it's water we're all swimming in, but where we we refuse to call it water. It's just, it's just what we're swimming in. And then from there, starting to be like, okay, where are the imbalances in our home? And like, how aggressive are they? And are they worth looking at? Most of the time is yes, they are worth looking at.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah. I mean, I think you just cracked open something collectively, like whether you're a man or a woman listening to this podcast, and you're like, dang, that's real. I could continue to ignore this, but actually it makes a lot of sense. And so maybe I ought to pay attention to it. If this is the first time anyone is listening is hearing the term emotional labor and like a more equal distribution, the idea of maybe thinking about how that works in your household, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

The first thing I would encourage them to look at is where it plays out in like corporate leadership and corporate jobs, because it's really easy to dismiss. I think a lot of people dismiss it in a domestic setting because, like, oh, it's just like what moms do. Uh, it's just what parents do, versus if you look at where it where the different types of labor exists in, I'm gonna use like uh a real estate development company. You got like CEOs, executive level VPs, you get directors, and you got the guys on the pouring the concrete and putting the nails and the screws in. So the guys at the bottom, right, uh of the the corporate food chain, if you will, they're physically doing things. There's some cognition involved. Like they probably have to know how much to do it. They have to think about how they're doing some things, but it's mostly physical. They're walking home, they're sweaty, they're gross, like they've put in a lot of physical effort. And then you have, I'm gonna sit the managers, you get the directors, you get those guys in the mid-level. So they're doing a lot of thinking, they're doing a lot of clerical labor, they're checking boxes, they're sending messages, they're calling people, they're checking status updates, they're communicating with above them, they're communicating well with them. There's a ton of cognitive labor, fair amount of emotional labor, like checking in with their employees, they're checking in with the people above them. And then you go higher to like those VPs and the executive, they're doing a lot of strategic thinking. I would bet they're doing way more emotional labor than they are, they're definitely doing more than they are physical labor, probably a lot more emotional than even cognitive. Like they're thinking, who's the strategic partnership that I do? How do I go make friends with that person? How do I present myself? How do I talk with them so that I can affect the way that they're feeling emotionally? So when we look at corporate settings, emotional laborers are getting paid the most. They're getting paid hundreds of thousands, millions plus, versus like physical labor gets paid, you know, minimum wage and much lower. And the cognitive is much more that like white-collar clerical labor typical um job. So when we just look at the hierarchy of how it gets paid out in corporate places, the reason I encourage this is because I think so many people see this as valueless. And when we can look at how it gets paid out in corporate organizations, now we're like, oh snap, that is the most valuable labor. And it's also the emotional labor is going to be the one that AI is gonna be the slowest to replace. It's pretty darn good right now at a lot of cognitive labor, researching, thinking through ideas, consider like pushing back on concepts, great at cognitive labor, but you still got to give it input. But one of the things that it's not good at yet is reading the room.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

So true. I mean, it's interesting because I feel like that middle, well, I don't know actually. I don't know that AI can really replace middle management, but it's not gonna replace the laborers. Like you're safe there.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Not yet, anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. And I I think it will have a tough time replacing emotional labor. But yeah, I mean, I think that's a great way to think about it. Let's make it more tangible in a family setting. Tell me kind of how you think that plays out.

Fair Play And A Viral Moment

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Sure. So one of the things, so a huge part of what I'm teaching people is the fair play method. If I were to simplify that down to two main concepts, one is bringing things into CPE, conception, planning, execution. So most of the time, uh myself included, for many years, I would say, like, yeah, I do the trash, I do a hundred percent of it. What are you talking about? I don't do a hundred percent of it because I physically bring it out, I physically schlep it and put it in there. However, that's the execution part of it. So, what's the conception planning? So, planning might be, oh, trash bags running low. Gotta add, gotta put those in the grocery cart and order some, make sure we got the one that doesn't smell in a way that get the one that doesn't rip, get the one that doesn't smell weird. And the the emotional aspect of this is who in our family is that going to impact? Is that going to impact our neighbors if it smells terrible or if it rips open? Is that gonna hit the trash people that are taking it out? So there's the physical, which most of us are that's like the easy thing. You can catch it on camera, you can see it, it's visible, and then there's the cognitive and the emotional. So, whenever we're looking to implement the fair play method, the first thing is just identifying the difference between those three things and then identifying, okay, how can we be owning 100% of it rather than just the execution? Because what happens and helps holds across everywhere is that a lot of execution goes to the men and a lot of the invisible cognitive and emotional goes to women. So when we first started implementing it, I recognized, okay, my goal, I already own like 90% of trash. So I was like, okay, maybe I don't own the whole hundred because she still asks, Hey, did you take out the trash this morning? She still says, Hey, are we running on low on truck trash bags? Do I need to add some to it? Hey, do we need to ask our neighbor if we can put some of our cardboard in? Because we have a ton more than we normally do this week. So she was still doing some of those thinking aspects, even though she wasn't physically doing it. So the first thing that I do with people is identify what is the thing, especially for guys that are trying to take on more of the mental load, what's the thing you already own 90% of, and how do you take that last 10% of the invisible aspects? Second one, which I swear every single couple, it's trash. And then I'll let you guess. What do you think the next one is that guys probably own a lot of, but are missing the invisible aspect of?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I'm just gonna go straight to sex, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Much more like a domestic labor, not like an intimate thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

I mean that guys own 90% of the execution, it will definitely trash, maybe cleaning up the kitchen or yep, dishes.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Dishes is just about always the second place that we end up.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, because I think this is interesting because I I would say that among my circle of friends, and also I think in the work that I do, you almost can put a label on good husband versus bad husband, or I would want to be married to that guy and not to this guy, on whether or not they do the dishes. Is that crazy and simplistic?

SPEAKER_00 14:29

I mean, I would say in my community, I'm gonna say that both some of the guys I work with are a little bit more involved and a little bit less at the same time. But I would say most of the guys in my community are already doing dishes. However, they don't want to be nagged about it. I don't like the word nagged, but like they'll feel nagged about it and they might use that word. They'll be like, What do you mean? I do all the physical dishes. Like you shouldn't be reminding me to do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So that's what's so interesting, is because my husband, I I'll just use myself as an example. My husband will say, I do all the dishes, but he's right. He he I am so unbelievably grateful for his contribution and doing the dishes.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

But and so I'm gonna force you here. This is what I do in my coaching. Yeah, I want you to use those three words, like label as you're talking what you're about to say right here. Use like the different labor types in your sentence.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah. So he does a lot of the execution on the dishes, however, he executes on the dishes when he's home and sees the dishes, but he's not aware of the dishes that get dirty and done when he's not home. So in his mind, he's like, What do you mean? I do the dishes all. And I'm like, There's lots of hours in a day where you're not home and dishes get used and also done that you're not even seeing, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:46

So yeah, and then you have that conversation. Oh, you do 100% dishes? Okay, we can we can do that. And then he's like, Wait, why are all these things here?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Right, right, right. So I do find that to be a really interesting discussion, but yeah, I mean, you educate me. I don't know about the mental or emotional load of the dishes because I don't stress about it. Like my husband does the dishes a lot of the time. And if I need them done when he's not around, I just do them. I don't think about that as mental or emotional load, but but yeah, I I imagine it's it is a topic in a lot of families.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

So when you say they need to be done, what are the visual or other cues that are telling you they need to be done?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, I mean, I think if I'm having company over, I know the kids are coming home for lunch or something like that, that there's dishes in the the sink and they haven't been done, then I do them. Or if I have a project that I'm gonna do, like say I'm gonna cook something elaborate and I need the dishes, then I'll do the dishes.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So like uh here, I'm gonna label some things for you. So what I heard was there, especially if I'm working with chicken and I want easy access to the drain and to not get chicken stuff everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah.

Why Emotional Labor Has Real Value

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Um, is the cognitive labor of, oh, all right, I need to deal with this, this, and this so that I don't get chicken on a bunch of extra things and add to the risk factor. I'm also hearing emotional labor of okay, people are coming over the perception of me that they might have and/or our family is that we're dirty if they see a bunch of dirty dishes in there. You might do some of the more dirty things. You might consider which things might take more time, but you might leave out if they don't look that bad, but you know in your head that they need cleaning. So it's more of like a perception thing potentially. The other thing I would say is part of the reason that the fair play method is encouraged is because so because so often the C and P gets separated from the E all the time, and then it creates a misperception of the labor that's getting done. When you combine it together, I like to use the metaphor of like chrome tabs. Like I'm looking at my screen, I have at least 20, 30 tabs open right now. Do you roll that way too?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

So let's think about dishes for a second is one tab. Now, there's the physical aspect of it. I think on a daily basis, I feel like I'm doing it between 15 to 30 minutes a day, maybe like managing those things. But let's say Alyssa is also thinking about them on a constant basis. She also has that tab open. I know for me, a lot of the tabs open are mini tasks. So, like I have an email open or someone I need to respond to. It's somewhat urgent, so I left it open rather than just leaving it unread and falling in my inbox. So I'm just leaving that tab open to get that done, to like push that forward. Similar with Alyssa, she has that tab open in her brain a lot of times for if she owns even two, five percent of a task. So you have a tab open and he has a tab open for dishes. Every time he's home, it's open for him. And while you're at home, it's open for you. Now, when people feel mentally overloaded, it's because they have too many tabs open. It's not necessarily because they have too much work to do, but they have too many tabs open.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

So if you convert your thinking of total amount of effort, it's like some of those tabs is like a two or three minute task. Some of the other tabs, like one of them is finishing producing the podcast we did the other day. That's probably like a 15, 20 minute task that I'm gonna leave open. I don't need to have less time needed for the task, I just need less tabs. And so some of that overwhelm starts to decrease when you just have less total tabs, even if you have just about the same amount of time work, because there's like less balls that you're trying to keep up in the air, sort of. So by trying to combine it into one aspect where if you were to just own dishes where you can actually not think about it and X out of that tab in your brain, that frees you up for a lot of other things and you don't have to think about it. That I think is the main goal and attraction of the fair play method, is because it can decrease overwhelm because Alyssa typically doesn't have to think about dishes. Every once in a while, she'll notice that we now have a white sink instead of a silver one. So, like grime shows up on it a bit quicker. I would say in the six months that we've been living in this new place, she's been like, hey, you're clearly not up to date on you. You didn't get the rest of the tomato sauce off of our white sink. So I know that that is a tab open in her brain, and I'm working on rebuilding trust with her to have it at a frequency that she doesn't have to think about it anymore again.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah. So I love that analogy of the tabs because I think that's super, super true. And I I personally own a lot of tabs when it comes to our family, our children, taking care of them, the household. I would say, yeah, I mean, the way you described it, that would be awesome if I could just offload some tabs to my husband. But I also at the same time think it's a little more complicated than that because, for example, the dishes tab, he can't possibly know. I mean, the experience that I have very often is that my high school daughter will bring a bunch of her friends home for lunch. So even though my husband is doing the dishes continuously, if we've got morning dishes after he's gone to work and I know that the kids are coming for lunch, and that experience is like a whole bunch of teenagers descending on the kitchen. They don't have a lot of time, they make a big mess and then they leave. I can leave that mess for my husband to come home and clean, but I like to have it clean to start with so that they're not making mess upon mess upon mess. So what I'm saying is I think it's a little more complicated. I can't just give him that tab. Like we both have to manage that tab at different times.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

I'm gonna push back a little bit. You could let him have that and just what what would the consequence be to that?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Well, I mean, I think the consequence would be well, because I own the tab of like meal prep, and so he could own the dish tab, but his time at home is pretty limited. I mean, he works 10 hours a day, sometimes more. So I can't just give him the tab because like maybe I'm gonna cut chicken while he's at work and the there's dishes. So on.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

So I'm gonna correct you like you could, and it would impact you significantly with your meal prep.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah. Well, just other tabs that I have. Like sometimes I just I have to be in that dishes tab because it impacts other tabs that I own.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Right. So yeah, I can see where like And there's like the Chrome thing where you can group tabs. So like it's hard to close out of one when they impact each other. Right. So yes, I totally hear that. And I think that is a huge part of like the coaching that's required, sort of for fair play, is like figuring out what works for your family, because not all things are going to work out for family. There's there's other tabs that have connections in one house that don't in another.

Conception Planning Execution At Home

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Right. Like a like a just a general setting the rules for our children tab. That like there's tabs we just have to share. Like both of us have to be involved in the tab. But what I think is so valuable about what you do, Zach, is I don't know that men especially, but women are aware of the actual effort that goes into these tabs. So I think just bringing awareness to like, you know, let's appreciate each other a little bit more because there is so much that we both contribute, both seen and unseen, to our family and, you know, our household and to making money, right? Like my husband has a significantly higher paycheck than I do, but that doesn't mean that I'm not sharing that tab because I make an income too, right? So it's like it's just an awareness, I think, with the goal of let's just appreciate each other more because we're both. And I think a lot of times there's just no awareness of what the cognitive or emotional load actually entails. And so we take it for granted because it's not the execution.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of times, like, you know, the the societal structures that we're in lend us to rounding off. So I'll give an example of like when I hear about guys saying, Well, I pay the bills. I'll actually often push back and say, I bet you put money into the bank account. Do you actually pay the bills? Or I get that your sales and marketing, I know that you bring revenue into the organization. Are you also procurement in accounting? Or is your wife procurement in accounting? And she actually pays the bills, but you fill the bank account. Because, like I said, they a lot of times we round off to like, I pay the bills because we're not seeing invisible labor procurement in accounting.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Not to mention the fact that do you look for sales on garbage bags so that more money stays in that account, right? There's just so much that's unseen, right? Like I remember this time in my life where I was clipping coupons and spending hours and hours and hours on trying to save us money, right? Like I don't know that I got full uh acknowledgement for that, but but you know, even though, yeah, I'm not putting the money into the bank account, I not I don't even pay the bills. My husband does, but man, I do a lot to ensure that money stays in that bank account that goes unnoticed, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, yeah. I think the better we can get in. I was had a really wonderful conversation with a person that was a stranger. So we go to a church and uh we're going to like late day program. And she said, so there's a Forbes article that came out that I got to be a part of back in October. And she's like, Oh, you're the Forbes guy, right? I was like, Yeah, there was an article about Forbes. And I was like, I'm a big chat. She's like, What is it that you do again? And so I was like explaining to her just about invisible error. I was like, Well, what's your relationship with invisible labor? And she's like, Oh, well, you know, things changed about six months ago. I was like, Oh, what happened six months ago? And she had previously told me she's off social media. So I'm assuming she she's not on social media. She's like, Well, I saw his TikTok video where someone was talking about just like the invisible labor of like a stay-at-home mom. I was like, Oh, was it a guy or a girl? And she was like, Oh, it's definitely a guy. I was like, Is it this video of me talking about it? She's like, Oh my god, that was you. But what was important for me in that moment, yes, it was felt like a huge flex and ego stroke on my part. But in that video, I thought it was just gonna be like affirming and like validating for a lot of stay-at-home moms that don't feel like they know intrinsically that they contribute a ton, but they have very little validation that they're bringing financial value home. I calculated it in a very roundabout average way. A lot of stay-at-home moms per kid are bringing not quite per kid, but are bringing in close to a quarter million dollars a year, especially in like the early years. Most families don't have the money to outsource what a stay-at-home mom does, such that they could actually pay out a quarter million dollars. However, that's not to say that they are providing that level of value within their home. But what I was really surprised by was she that one video for her, all I did was label stuff. I said it's you know$1,800 a year. I'm literally I'm making up numbers right now.$1,800 a year to do the cognitive and physical labor of laundry, X dollars per year to do the cognitive and emotional labor of planning a birthday party for a child. All I did was label. And that one 90-second video changed the trajectory of our marriage the next six months. That's so wild to me that just by changing the language that we're using to describe the work that we're doing in our home can have an intense impact.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

I absolutely actually do love that because it's true. By I mean, I work from home. So I do have a very small, like I have a small paycheck that I contribute. Right. But I do cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring. Like if if you were to have to pay for those things, like sometimes I joke with my husband, I'm like, if something were to happen to me, you would like, it would cost you a lot of money to do all the things that to get done, the things that I do, right? And so like that we just tease about that. But it's true. And so coming back around to the value I I hope that my listeners are getting out of this is there is so much that I think we take for granted because it's unseen. And I think that's what you do so well is you just bring to awareness a lot of the things that we don't see and that we take for granted about our partners and their contribution.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

So I'm hoping so. Now, I'm still debating whether this will be a Mother's Day or Father's Day episode. I think can I share the story that I said before we started recording?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah.

Too Many Tabs Open In Your Brain

SPEAKER_00 27:48

So one of the things that we're debating being, because you know, I I talk a fair amount about fatherhood, and every once in a while I'll I try not to shit on men too much. And I know that every once in a while that comes out. I I get a little annoyed sometimes. I've tried I've gotten way away from that than I used to at the very beginning because my ego is flying way too high. But there is there's always moments I see on Mother's Day andor Father's Day posts on social media. It's like, hey, you didn't bother to even say that happy Mother's Day. Like, I'm absolutely returning the same energy to you on Father's Day. Like, don't expect anything if you didn't do anything. And last year on Mother's Day, we had a fantastic day. I would say I carried the mental cognitive emotional labor of probably 90, 95% of the day. Went for a picnic. I picked up the I came to her with a bunch of options. Here's the options I'm thinking. If you say nothing, like this is what I'm planning on us doing. Just like, cool, sounds great. I'll jump in the car for you. And she just got to show up to her day. I was really proud. I put together like a video compilation of her and our daughter, and I got a couple really simple gifts, not much at all. The video is like the main one, and we had sex that night. Historically, my experience, like you had said when you were guessing about the labors, I would say I probably put a lot more emotional labor into thinking about our sex life because I think it impacts me more when it's not happening. It was really surprising to me at first that we had sex that night because I'm like, oh, it's Mother's Day. Like, I want to make sure it's being in service. You probably want more sleep, you probably want more time to read a book and like I'll put our child down to sleep. It's just really surprising me that happened. But at the same time, it makes a lot of sense. She got to relax all day and she got to be able to be intimate with me because there was she didn't have to think about anything, she just got to exist.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Yeah, I would just go a little further to say her c her tabs were closed out. She yeah, she didn't have a lot of tabs open, so that left a lot of space for that.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

And then fast forward to Father's Day, and you know, she did a lot for me. She was the default parent most of the day. Any upset, any meals that need to be made, like she was managing that. At the end of the day, there was definitely a moment where I was like, Oh, can we you you up to to be a little intimate? And she's like, I am tired, like thanks, I'm I'm good. Too many tabs, and like yeah, too many tabs open, and there's a lot of work that goes into making those tabs open. So, you know, I think about Father's Day. There's so many moments over the years. Well, I've only had four Father's Days, so I can't say too much about it, but maybe on my birthdays, is I think to myself, like, oh, like I would hope that you would do something in service of me, but for a long time I I never saw like another couple years she put a fair amount of energy into having people over that I wanted to have over. And she did the party playing and the getting the food there and all this stuff. And I'm like, can't we have sex tonight too? She's like, dude, what do you think I just did all day? Like all all this event, do you think that was just by accident? So, like looking back and seeing that like when we want to be physically intimate, because I know that that's definitely one of the ways that I her I feel really connected with her. She's much more able to be freed up and do that when I'm closing out her tabs.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah. Well, all right. I still am unclear whether we're gonna publish this for Mother's Day or Father's Day, but I I one of the hallmarks I I hope for my podcast listeners is that they get something really tangible out of this episode. And I do feel good about that. So, like as we're just landing the plane here, I hope that what we've done through this discussion is kind of bring awareness to the invisible labor that is inherent in doing the work of marriage and family life and sex life too. So the other thing that I think is really poignant, and I'll let you definitely have the last word, but I think I talk about tabs a lot. So, I mean, of course, I loved that analogy, but especially when you're talking with a couple about the desire discrepancy and all of that, tabs oftentimes come into it. As a higher desire partner, can you help your lower desire partner? Or sometimes I talk about that as spontaneous versus responsive. A block of a responsive desired partner is just too many tabs open. So if you're in the mood and your partner is not yet showing interest, a really good starting place is can you help them close some tabs so that they can actually free up a little bit for to enjoy being together without being burdened down with all these open tabs. So, two things I think I hope that you'll take out of this episode, but really an appreciation for what your partner is contributing that you can't often see. And then, you know, maybe going through this process like Zach was talking about of labeling. Gosh, there's so much that happens behind the scenes, you know, cognitively, emotionally, when we're talking about everything that goes into having a very happy life. So go ahead, Zach. I'd love to hear your final thoughts.

Mother’s Day Tabs And Intimacy

SPEAKER_00 32:44

I'll yeah, I'll I'll give you so the two main things that I often encourage people to do. There's about four main ones, but I'm gonna give the the two easy ones that require little to no coaching on. That was number one, was just labeling stuff more often. Um, I know I went through a radical gratitude phase in my life some years back where I just I found gratitude in everything and it changed, it changed my happiness level in a lot of ways. And then when I started labeling, I started making a just about a video. I've made 1.7 videos a day for about four years. And I would say three to four times a week specifically, I'm labeling examples of mental oath that my wife carries or that I carry. The second one that I as kind of it's fun clickbait is I give my wife to-dos, triple option default options. So effectively, what that is is hey honey, I'm gonna cook dinner tonight. Instead of saying, what do you want for dinner? I'm saying I got three ideas. One is we have that beef leftover in the fridge, probably needs to get used in a day or two. I'm thinking spaghetti and meat sauce with uh salad to start. Second idea is we could order out because I Jane was telling me the other day about the sweet place downtown that just opened up. Or the other ideas we do have leftovers we could absolutely use. We might need to throw those out tomorrow. I'm leaning towards the first or the third one, probably the first one. If you say nothing, I'm gonna do the first one. What that then allows her to do is not have to think. She can am I opening this tab? Oh no, I get to just close the tab. And furthermore, like she can opt out of decision making without doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Or she can say, I like option three.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah, or yeah, or can or she can be like, actually, I really want this thing instead, which has been very much my experience while my wife has been pregnant. We're in in week 34 right now with twins, where it's like, oh, you want something that doesn't exist in our house. We gotta go to the grocery store. Her gravings have been wild. So, what I like about that exercise is that it forces us to do cognitive labor that historically we might not have done, and it forces us to reckon with that's like labor coming up with those three options, even for me just saying it here on the podcast examples, that took something. And a second one that you can take the same concept and extrapolate it. If I'm looking for my keys or my sunglasses or something, or my AirPods, and I say, Hey, honey, have you seen my AirPods? Versus if I say, Hey, honey, I checked my pockets, I checked the three other places that you you would probably first tell me to check and I would think to check. I didn't see it in any of those places. Any chance you saw our four-year-old running around with it, or any chance you've seen it? Monica, is that a totally different experience for you versus me just saying, Hey, have you seen them?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yeah, I actually feel like we should teach children mental.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Mom, where's my brown shirt?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Yeah, so it's like it's similar. It's like three options. I'm I'm you know, I was a former math teacher, and when I would give students, yeah, when I would have them show their work in a problem versus them just like guessing an answer, I'm gonna give them more credit. And a huge part of if someone's hearing this and it's hitting way too hard to home, you're probably in a trust building phase. And this is, I think, a really great way to build trust is like, look, I'm thinking through these things. I am aiming to be an equal partner that's also thinking I'm not just throwing the cognitive labor on you to choose what you want for dinner and where the heck my AirPods are.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, gosh, I love this. Any final thoughts about whether you think this should be Father's Day episode or a Mother's Day episode?

Triple Options And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_00 36:09

I personally think it probably could go for Mother's Day episode, probably week before, so that the wives can be like, hey, uh, you should you should not that I'm saying that I'm gonna have sex with you on Mother's Day, but your chances are much better if all my clothes, my tabs are closed. Or it could be like, if that's what you want for Father's Day, here's how you know, but it's not gonna be the Father's Day you thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

That was an interesting place to go. I would say that this could be a Mother's Day episode. And to the fathers out there who want to create such a beautiful experience on Mother's Day, I would suggest doing a little bit of research into the mental or emotional and cognitive load so that you can impress, I would say, your wife with your knowledge of all of this invisible labor that you probably have never talked about before.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

And if you're looking for a free two-week course, uh I have my free school community, uh, mental load basics, first two weeks out of the seven-week program that I have in mental mastery. So if people are looking for that, I'll give you the link more.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, that's awesome, Zach. Where can people watch your videos and learn more about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Um, I would say the the free community is probably a great place if you're looking for like tactical. If you don't want to binge watch my stuff to glean information off of it, that'll like simplify it for you. But if you want to follow me on Instagram, that's my sort of main platform. Just broke 500,000 recently. And yeah, that's where that's where I put my my fun, silly skits, uh talking about becoming a recovery man child on there.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Amazing. Thanks so much for your time, Zach. This has been really fun.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Thanks, Monica.