Relationship: This is how you solve the conflict of the “division of tasks” – according to the couple therapist

relationship
So you can share your “mental load” more fairly – according to the couple therapist

In a nutshell:

By sometimes letting go, sometimes taking over. Learn dance steps where nobody is leading.

Now in detail:

With the Industrial Revolution, work and family life separated. But thanks to emancipation, increasing digitization and the desire for a different work-life balance, this separation became less and less strict. And it continues to dissolve: We are currently experiencing the trend towards home offices.

Conflicts are a side effect of equality

The good news is that increased conflicts about how childcare and housekeeping are organized only arise because fathers are more and more naturally also standing at the kitchen block and changing table. A woman who today still happily announces that her husband doesn’t even know where the dishwasher is, is no longer a discontinued model, but roughly corresponds to living powdered white under a Rococo hat.

We know from research that couples are generally happier when both partners are actively involved in coping with life at home. On the other hand, the door to domestic paradise does not fly open immediately when two people act together on an equal footing. On the contrary: it’s damn hard.

Because between two people who are absolutely equal, conflicts are inevitable. The fact that the sink is full, as always, may be accepted. But the fact that the spatula cannot be found again brings anger to the boil. It will never be put where it belongs! But who actually decides where the spatula is located? Couples are faced with the question of who decides who decides. And can’t decide. Which is why, in many relationships, unresolved conflicts about household and childcare are smoldering.

Keyword “Mental Load”

These conflicts are discussed publicly, for example under the heading “Mental load”. Because if one gives up her tasks – traditionally it is the woman – then the other does not necessarily take on them 1: 1. the whole mental burden is either not clear to him or he deliberately leaves the responsibility, the plans, foresight, overview and many small decisions to her.

The downside of this is discussed as “maternal gatekeeping”: men complain that women simply do not let go and prevent them from putting the daughter’s pink sandals on with green socks or from putting the cheese in the box on the table. And the women complain that Men don’t really get involved in family chores because they are doing just such “impossible” things.

Together to the solution

Instead of silent or noisy When it comes to power struggles, it is important to write down and divide up what is to be dealt with and how. And to get together for the parents’ conference. How do we understand our children? How do we want to meet them? What are the goals? What should be achieved with and for the children? And can we only achieve this in exactly one way or are there several ways? The aim is to lay down basic common rules. Once we have agreed on this, we no longer have to fear that values ​​that are really important to us will be ignored. Then it is easier to tolerate differences.

These are not easy conversations. You question our unreflected self-evident facts. But that is exactly what is necessary. Because having these conflicts is not a failure. We live in processes of change that stretch over generations. And we have to work on it consciously.

Brigitte