Day 15 - Poor Attempts Edition · Mental Load Basics

Day 15 - Poor Attempts Edition

Today wasn't a good day from a mental load standpoint. We had a potluck picnic to go to today and I had told my fiancee on Thursday that I would take care of preparing something for us to take to the picnic. I made that declaration knowing that 99% of the time this is not invisible labor that I carry, and I wanted to take it off her plate. However, despite having all day to myself yesterday and doing plenty of tasks for our household, this was not one of them. She asked me about it last night and I admitted that I didn't prepare anything yet but would make a salad from vegetables we had on hand and chop up a bunch of apples we had too many of. So this morning I set about my task but fumbled the execution in a couple ways which caused her to be frustrated and we had a bit of an argument.

I felt upset that she wouldn't let me do things my way and make my own mistakes, and I was also upset at myself for not executing on a well planned attempt to take mental load off her plate. She was frustrated that she has to either teach me to do things (a mental load she carries for a lot of topics) or watch me make mistakes that will look poorly on us both when we show up to the picnic with something not right.

After some heightened feelings we were able to talk it through a bit and I did finish making our food and the picnic was fine, but it still put a damper on the day, drained us both, and showed her another example of a way she can't trust me.

On the bright side, I understand more and I am resolved to do better, but need to stop learning lessons at the expense of her feelings. (I know this is a lot more emotional burden than we're looking for for this but had to share)

0 comments