The Invisible Load

How Emotional Labor Exhausts Women

In February I visited the San Francisco to do some research for the novel I’m writing and to visit friends and old stomping grounds from the twenty years I lived in the Bay Area. On my last night in the city, I had dinner with one of my college roommates. This is a woman who has never in our nearly thirty years of knowing one another missed sending me a card for my birthday.

My college roommate and me in San Francisco

This year was no exception. Not only did she send me a card, but she included with it a small gift.

I sat down with her at a Peruvian restaurant in SoMa and apologized. “I didn’t do Christmas cards this year. I just didn’t have it in me.”

She looked at me and smiled. “Me neither!” That’s when I realized, in fact, I hadn’t received a holiday card from her despite her birthday card and gift.

“What?! Who are you and what have you done with my roommate?” I asked.

She explained that she just didn’t have the energy.

Most of our dinner conversation, apart from catching up on what was going on in our lives, revolved around how exhausted we both felt and how we constantly felt pulled in a hundred different directions.

As we finished our ceviche and ordered dessert, she told me that this year it dawned on her that she didn’t need to send holiday cards. “Who’s making me?” she asked.

Huh. I took a few bites of my tres leches cake and considered her question.

No one explicitly says we must send holiday cards or remember birthdays or make sure that our mother-in-law has updated photos of the grandchildren. No one tells us we have to reach out to our friend when their dog dies or bring cookies to the people who just moved in down the street or be the room parent for our child’s class. No one holds a gun to our head and makes us donate to their child’s read-a-thon or check in on them when they don’t show up to a gathering.

We just do it.

Not all women do this, of course, and some men do, but overwhelmingly women assume these responsibilities.

And there are so many.

Over years and years, countless acts of relational maintenance quietly fall to women until we feel an innate duty to uphold these practices.

“I don’t know why it was the holiday cards that I couldn’t do this year,” my roommate said. “I’m usually so on top of things.”

This is true. She is one of the most on-top-of-things people I know. I, too, am an on-top-of-things person, but she has always taken it to the next level.

Imagine my surprise—and relief—when she, like me, just couldn’t send out holiday cards this year.

Each year, I dread holiday cards. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate receiving them, but sending them has always felt like a chore. Never mind that the holidays are overwhelming in general. Never mind that both of my boys’ birthdays also fall in December. Never mind that holiday cards and stamps cost a lot. Never mind that tracking down where friends and family have moved to throughout the year is a pain. A million hurdles stand in the way of getting holiday cards out.

And yet for my entire adult life, I met my obligation to get them out.

Until this year.

At first, I worried that people would get mad or feel hurt that I hadn’t sent them a card. But the more I thought about it, would they really? Or was I just assuming that in my head?

Talking with my roommate, I realized I hadn’t even noticed that she hadn’t sent her annual holiday card. Would I have been upset or mad that she didn’t? No. I would have assumed that life happened or she wanted to save money. I would not have taken it personally.

The waiter cleared our empty dessert plates, and it rained outside. We decided to chat a little longer until the rain stopped before walking back to the BART station.

“When did we become the managers of everyone’s feelings?” my roommate asked.

Perhaps she and I have had such a deep friendship over the years because we are both emotional managers. She gets it.

I have always felt responsible for making people feel comfortable and welcome. I don’t know if it comes from my mother’s southern upbringing or from the fact that I grew up in a volatile household, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve assumed the responsibility for those around me, often to the neglect of myself.

My roommate and I concluded that this is invisible labor, and it falls predominantly on women’s shoulders.

Society conditions us, subtly but consistently, to carry out this invisible labor, which is disguised as care, responsibility, concern, love.

This holiday season, unbeknownst to either of us and from opposite sides of the country, both my roommate and I said, enough.

We just couldn’t do it.

Our bill came, and as we wrapped up our two-hour meal, we agreed that even opting out of such traditions and responsibilities still required effort. We felt the need to explain, the need to justify not sending holiday cards.

My roommate is the type of friend who, no matter how much time has passed, we can pick up where we left off. Our experience with finally saying enough to holiday cards was just another aspect of our friendship that bonds us now.

We decided to give each other—and ourselves—permission to opt out.

And not just for holiday cards.

The rain finally let up, and I walked her to the Montgomery BART station before continuing on to my hotel in Union Square. I looked up to see the Salesforce Tower illuminated for Chinese New Year. This is the year of the horse, and at the top of the building, images of red horses galloped around the tower’s crown.

This picture isn’t the greatest, but you get the idea. The horses galloped around, and it struck me that on the tallest building in San Francisco, this was surely a sign.

The horse is powerful, energetic, and always in motion, much like my roommate and me—always on top of things.

But the horse is also inherently independent and free.

I returned to my hotel and thought about those horses and the upcoming year. Horses can carry a great many things, but they can also run free.

This year, I choose to run free.