From managing to co-creating in partnerships

I’ve begun to notice trends working with straight couples or women on the brink of marriage — standing at that threshold between the independent shape of their lives and the subtle shift that begins when a shared future comes into view. There is excitement there, devotion, and deep love. But oftentimes there are also trends surrounding the same questions seem to emerge:

“Why doesn’t he know what to say when I’m upset?”“Why won’t he plan a date?”“Why do I feel like the manager of this relationship?”

These don't surface as accusations as much as genuine confusion and a desire to stay emotionally connected to the person they love most.

The ability to recognize the limits of our own knowledge about another person — especially when it comes to experiences we have not lived, and particularly across differences in class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, and power — is generally an invaluable form of intellectual humility (Porter & Schumann, 2018). Intellectual humility is also crucial in any partnership to support mutual understanding and psychological safety, so that judgment about differences can be gently suspended in favor of learning and growing into perspectives that carry deeper meaning.

So why not combine intellectual humility with research to explore the invisible load (hetero-normatively speaking) that both sides carry?

When you widen the lens — beyond the surface of couples’ banter and into the roots of early learning — the pattern begins to make more sense. Specifically a layered pattern emerges when you read reflections from teachers, early childhood educators, nurses, and parents — especially in online forums where people speak candidly about what they observe in children. Trends demonstrate that a lot of girls grow up not knowing that they are constantly becoming fluent in an advanced curriculum surrounding emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983; Erickson, 2005).

They’re reminded to be kind.To think about how others feel.To smooth things over.To apologize.To notice tone shifts.To keep the peace.

They’re praised for being “mature,” “helpful,” or “easy.”They’re expected to avoid any behaviours that could be viewed as selfish and anticipate others emotional needs (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013).

If they express anger directly, they risk being called "dramatic" or "too sensitive."

Over time, this builds a specific skill set: tracking emotional climate, anticipating needs, coordinating logistics, softening conflict, maintaining connection. If something doesn’t go perfectly, girls are often taught to be flexible. You adjust. You repair. You try again.

A lot of boys grow up with a different pattern. They often receive louder praise for performance than for emotional attunement. Mistakes are more visible. Teachers may correct them publicly. Emotional reactions get less patience and can be paired with accusations or belittlement that can look like "his getting too soft" or even directly to the 3 year old boy who is crying at drop off when his mom leaves for work and the teacher scolds him "your not in the preschool now your a big boy". Tears become responded to with insisting, “You’re okay, you’re okay” or they can become immediately paired with aiming to transition them into laughter or forced play rather than allowing them the opportunity to release tension and return to an emotional baseline (Pollack, 1998; Way, 2011).  These tears then can become stored in the body as tension and slip out as defenses which can be harshly judged.

From a young age, boys are frequently corrected more than comforted. They’re teased for vulnerability. They’re praised for winning, fixing, doing. Emotional mistakes (crying too long, being scared, not knowing something) inevitably become associated with an unpleasant response. Over time being visible is evaluative. Trying is risky. Getting it wrong is costly.

No single moment creates this. Instead consistent repetition creates aversive instincts surrounding the vulnerability of engaging in emotional labour (Levant & Richmond, 2007).

If we fast forward years to the overall accumulation of these patterns and associations, planning a date is not simply, “Let’s spend time together.” It can carry an unspoken undertone for him and he might consciously, passively or in practice intuit the emotional labour of planning a thoughtful date with what might feel like a strange or random aversive form of anxiety. Beneath the surface this aversive experience may automatically default to a self protective behaviour which surfaces as shutting down or avoidance even though he knows his partner needs him to learn and initiate new skills - he might need to overcome the performance anxiety that he struggles to justify or understand himself. Especially if faced with the anxiety of falling short when meeting the needs of someone he might even love most in the world.

When something feels like a test, anxiety enters the room. He might still face self doubt but hesitantly ask his partner to help him overcome self doubt when asking her a ton of questions about what she would prefer when thinking about planning a date. He might not be able to recognize that this compounds her feelings of overstimulation when she has mountains of invisible labour that he isn't aware of (given the invisible curriculum previously discussed) that feel insurmountable and infinite on her side of the fence.

She might acquiesce into the familiar role of reassuming the invisible load that leads to burnout and irritability and reclaim the task because helping him learn and complete the task is even more challenging than doing it on her own. Unfortunately this might also cause him to assume lack of competency and avoid learning because her choice to reclaim the task may reinforce his feelings of inaptitude. Exhaustion and frustration also may slip out for her as a dig towards him which causes her to internalize guilt and shame later and causes him to feel confused and possibly retaliate with his own experience of resentment.

There are two truths and two realities here. Anxiety does not always look like effort. Sometimes it looks like delay. Overthinking. Waiting for the perfect idea. Avoidance. Freeze mode.

To a partner who experiences planning as relational and collaborative — low-stakes, flexible, something you build together — that avoidance can feel like indifference.

But underneath, it may be fear of getting it wrong.

For her though, she might feel powerless, burnt out and frustrated about not being able to understand someone she loves and even struggles to sometimes trust when faced with the disparity surrounding emotional labour.

If men’s early experiences around feelings included the instinct that emotions need to be fixed, problem solved or changed with immediate competency their partner’s distress can feel like a problem to fix or a test to pass. If missteps once led to teasing, correction, or shame, they may default to searching for the right answer instead of providing the emotional support that they know their partner is more fluent in communicating (Addis & Mahalik, 2003).

Emotional processing lends itself well to reflective processing which then lends itself well to strengths surrounding varying degree's of emotional labour. If boys were guided to avoid processing emotion, they therefor don't often have the fundamental pre-requisite tools to learn the skills that are central to strengths surrounding emotional labour.

He may go quiet not because he doesn’t care, but because he cannot locate the “correct” move quickly enough to feel safe making one. Many men do not experience this as freezing. They experience it as failing.

Meanwhile, the woman sitting across from him may have had years of rehearsal in tracking emotional cues, anticipating needs, initiating repair. When something isn’t happening, she steps in almost reflexively.

She plans the dates. She remembers the birthdays. She initiates the difficult conversation.She coordinates the family calendar. She smooths the tension after conflict.

From her perspective, this feels basic. This is what partnership requires.

From his perspective, initiation may feel exposing. This is not about intelligence or investment. It is not about capacity and it is not meant to infer that hetero-normative gender trends point to the false generalization that men and women are hardwired to be relationally incompatible.

Understanding the context surrounding systemic norms that do not benefit our overall society affords us awareness of the ways that these norms intersect with relational patterns which can in turn help strengthen mutual humility and explain why one partner may feel like, “I’ve been doing this since I was five — it’s not rocket science,” while the other quietly feels an impending sense of doom that they are going to be graded or evaluated about something that their other half equates as common sense.

Over time, that asymmetry starts to change the emotional tone of the relationship. What once began as a loving act of service can begin to feel like management or grounds for a fight (Daminger, 2019).

Couples conversations can shift from, “Why don’t you just know this?” to , “How do we build this together now?” and/or "how can we suspend judgement with understanding and intention when supporting one another as we learn and grow together in our relationship?"

Imagining a shared future is not simply about merging finances or choosing a neighbourhood or deciding on children. It is about renegotiating emotional fluency. About unlearning scripts neither partner consciously chose to have passed on to them.

It is about moving from performance to presence. From managing to co-creating.

And that shift can begin with curiosity and humility.

References

Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American Psychologist, 58(1), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.58.1.5

Chaplin, T. M., & Aldao, A. (2013). Gender differences in emotion expression in children: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 139(4), 735–765. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030737

Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007

Erickson, R. J. (2005). Why emotion work matters: Sex, gender, and the division of household labor. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(2), 337–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2005.00120.x

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.

Levant, R. F., & Richmond, K. (2007). A review of research on masculinity ideologies using the Male Role Norms Inventory. The Journal of Men's Studies, 15(2), 130–146.

Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. Henry Holt.

Porter, T., & Schumann, K. (2018). Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view. Self and Identity, 17(2), 139–162.

Way, N. (2011). Deep secrets: Boys’ friendships and the crisis of connection. Harvard University Press.