I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how dividing up tasks using “domains” works in practice. Specifically, what happens when something is in one partner’s domain, but the other person has a strong point-of-view?
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Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the most important career decision a woman can make is whether she has a life partner and who that partner is. I took this advice to heart. I had trouble putting it into practice, though: how do you figure out - early - if a someone you’re dating will be a supportive partner? In Lean In, Sheryl mentions a trick one of her friends used - she’d cancel a date at the last minute for work-related reasons and see how the guy reacted. But my need for assessment went deeper than that - I didn’t just want someone who would be cool with my unpredictable work schedule. I wanted a guy would make career and life sacrifices of his own for my career, learn about the challenges women face at home at in the workplace, and work to fight those challenges.
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There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the “mental load” or “emotional labor” in a relationship and how that work disproportionately falls onto one partner, often the woman. That partner is the “manager” of the household who delegates work to the other partner. For example, both people decide to go on vacation, but one partner is “managing” the process (making sure hotels and flights are booked, planning an itinerary, ensuring everyone’s visas and passports are in order) while the other partner cruises along and only does the work he/she is asked to do. It’s exhausting for the first partner and can cause a frustrating dynamic. We wanted to be proactive and avoid defaulting the mental load to one person.
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