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Marriage Help

Do you carry the mental
Load in your family?

I need advice from other wives/moms because I’m struggling to explain something to my husband without it turning into defensiveness.

My husband helps when I ask, but I feel like I carry most of the mental load of our family and I don’t think he fully understands what that means. It’s not about careers or who works harder physically, it’s the constant planning, remembering, organizing, anticipating, and managing.

Like if I ask him to make the baby a bottle, it becomes “where are the bottles?” or “how much does she drink?” If I ask him to pack the diaper bag, he asks where everything is. If he’s cooking, he asks what’s in the freezer even though he grocery shopped too. He’s doing the task, but I still have to manage the task mentally.

I schedule appointments, keep track of the kids’ needs, planned my son’s entire birthday party, and now I’m returning to work tomorrow after maternity leave feeling anxious because I already feel maxed out mentally before adding work responsibilities back in.

The hard part is that when I try to explain this, he hears it as me saying he does nothing, which isn’t true. He does help. I just wish I didn’t have to be the project manager for our entire household all the time.

Has anyone found a good way to explain the difference between helping and sharing the mental load without it becoming an argument?