Hope this helps someone · Mental Load Basics

Sep 5 (edited) in Dec 🏆

Hope this helps someone

Hey all, I’m a fellow Fair Play facilitator like Zach. Thanks

for inviting me in. It’s awesome to see you build this community for men.

I wanted to share a part of my story in the hopes , that it will be helpful to someone.

I’m a dad to a 17-yr old daughter and 9-yr old boy. The story I’m about to share is about parenting, anxiety and growing up.

I became a dad overnight. I say overnight because my daughter is my stepdaughter and my wife and I dated for awhile, then agreed to buy a house together, then got married. Not the most common order of things. So, when things got serious and we committed to taking that next step in our relationship ~ 12 years ago, I became a full-time dad and homeowner in one fell swoop.

My daughter also was born with a disability: an undiagnosed neurological condition that even the best children’s neurologists could only loosely label a variation on the PUM1 gene. This disability affects her movement and speech at various times of the day, but it’s worse in the mornings.

Her biological father was involved in a small way earlier on, but he never came through for her over the years in the ways that a dad needs to for their kid, and as she grew older, she became more and more aware of his lack, and decided she didn’t want a relationship with him.

In 2017, at the age of 10, a dog bit her face so badly that she had to get rushed to the ER. It left a half dollar size scar on her cheek.

I’m providing all of this context so that you understand some of the things we have gone through as a family. And to say, my daughter has been through a lot in her 17 years of life. She is fierce and a fighter.

I also provide this context to say as my child struggled, we struggled too.

Parenting is hard.

My daughter struggles with anxiety. This gets the best of her often. For years, my wife and I struggled to know how to parent best to this. We tried everything we could think of. And we fought. With our daughter, with each other. We also got stronger together.

Unlike becoming a father, this did not happen overnight. We needed to grow up too.

We had old traumas to heal and tools that needed to be added. Admittedly, my wife added hers more swiftly than me. We’re both still healing. We go to counseling separately. We also go to counseling together. And my daughter sees a counselor too.

My wife and I have been married for 10 years (just celebrated about a week ago!).

As for mental load, my wife bore the brunt of it the first 7-8 years. Since learning about mental load, Fair Play, and getting more language, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and more tools and resources (and learning from Zach’s videos too), I am well-equipped.

But I’m still learning and growing. We all must.

If you take one thing away from this, let it be this:

Life throws us expected and unexpected challenges. You can’t always control the things life puts in front of you. But what you can control is how you show up every single day… for yourself, for your partner, and for your kids.

I am a work in progress. Taking on more of the mental and emotional load in your home isn’t just for your partner’s benefit. It’s for you. It gives you confidence. And it makes you proud of yourself.

I asked my wife the other day what she thinks our mental load split is percentage wise —recognizing it’s not about keeping score and it’s not a competition— but I was curious what her perspective was. And she said 60-40.

I was given the 60! It felt amazing. Because we’ve worked so hard as a team to learn, grow and get better together. Ultimately the # doesn’t matter —just that you are engaged in the process for the right reasons.

I hope this helped someone. Good luck in the competition 👊

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