“Talk to me!”: It’s not just the household that can become a contentious issue in relationships. A couples therapist explains the phenomenon of “emotional work”.
Anyone who repeatedly tries to reflect the other person's feelings and thoughts or to have conversations about feelings in their own relationship is doing “emotional work”. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined this term in the 1990s. She wanted to describe how professionals have to use emotions in their jobs. For example, when they as hairdressers keep their customers happy.
“So far, women in heterosexual relationships have often taken on the emotional work,” says Yvonne Beuckens
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. She is a qualified psychologist and has been working as a couples therapist in Bad Nauheim (Hesse) for 16 years. The phenomenon is not new, but has only come to a head in the last three decades.
“Marriage used to be a community of care and a couple was defined by it when they did business together successfully,” says Beuckens. Today things are different. Relationships take up more space, also because there are hardly any village communities like there used to be.
“Today’s men are in a sense poor because both genders are now responsible for bringing home money and the new distribution of tasks is still unclear.” Women are still more likely to be responsible for emotional work and housework. A condition that burns out some in the long term and overwhelms others.
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What can women do to prevent emotional labor from burning them out?
The psychologist sees the reason for this inequality in the fact that men aged 30 to 60 today were socialized differently than women of the same age. “Recent studies also show that boys are taught less about the vocabulary they use to express their feelings and how to correctly interpret the emotions of their counterparts,” says Beuckens.
Scientists argue about whether this difference is also biologically based. “Many believe that the differences are mainly sociological. On the other hand, estrogen is the care hormone and testosterone is the blinker hormone,” says the couples therapist. “That’s why women may find it more difficult to just take care of themselves due to hormonal reasons.”
What can women do to prevent emotional labor from burning them out? “I have to think about: Do I feel responsible or am I responsible,” says Beuckens, explaining that we all have a “favorite reaction to challenge.” For women, this can often mean caring and showing empathy. But that is not the only way to deal with problems. “I can also react with distance or by waiting,” says the psychologist.
She always recommends the rule of three to her couples: "If something strikes me emotionally, the first time it's a coincidence, the second time I'll mentally dog-ear it and only the third time I mention it."
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Emotional work: “We are currently experiencing a paradigm shift”
In order for men and women to both do emotional work in the future, today's parents would have to be role models. “Children also have to perceive their father as the person responsible for their feelings,” says the psychologist. “We are currently experiencing a paradigm shift.” She also notices this in the fact that the topic of mental load (i.e. invisible work) is increasing in her consultations.
Today's couples, especially with children, find themselves in a “field of tension” between what they have learned and what they think is right. “At the same time, young people are becoming more conservative again and simply want structures back,” she says. For example, the Trad Wives who only care about the household and family.
Problematic? The psychologist says no. “We have to get away from this problem thinking: the fact that one partner is more involved in emotional issues and one has a more balancing effect can be very valuable,” she says. As in other areas, both bring their different skills to the relationship. The only thing that can be debated is whether it always has to be the woman who reads emotions.