Is Your Understanding of Emotional Labor Helping or Harming Your Relationship?

I had a conversation the other day with one of my cousins about relationship dynamics. We appeared to have differing perspectives when it came to the expectation of nurture and emotional support between partners (I want to point out that while our conversation was focused on cis/hetero relationships and the specific role women find themselves in, I think what follows can apply to any relationship, even the platonic and non-intimate ones). I was of the mind that while it may not be our “job” to be a source of emotional support for our husbands/boyfriends/partners, why would we want to withhold that from those we (supposedly) love? I don’t have it in me to be that way, and I don’t think I’d want to be with anyone who was. My cousin’s response to this was to express that a lot of times, especially with men, moral/emotional support turns into something much deeper, and it becomes emotional labor. Suddenly you’re now their therapist, and they still aren’t doing the work on their own to unpack the lifelong baggage they’ve been carrying. It’s a fair point and one that echoes the exhausted experiences of women worldwide. <a href="https://medium.com/modern-women/is-your-understanding-of-emotional-labor-helping-or-harming-your-relationship-4cf3360e4b83">Website</a>