Season 10 Episode 4: Household Roles and Responsibilities in Couples, with Dr. Deborah Brown

Partnerships include many challenges, including how to live with each other. Silent agreements and assumptions can easily lead us down a path to resentment and a lack of generosity. Most of us fall into patterns and gender roles we don’t want but also don’t ever talk about until it all blows up. 

Psychotherapist and holistic health provider Dr. Deborah Brown joins Master Certified Coach Melissa Wiggins to talk about how to avoid going from socks on the floor to a sexless, miserable partnership. It takes effort and communication, but she shares simple, practical ways to divide and discuss household responsibilities in ways that provide a framework we can live from and build solid partnerships with equity and respect. Grab a cuppa AND your partner and listen in.

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Melissa Wiggins  00:51

Hello, lassies and lads. Welcome to another episode of Coaching and a Cup of Tea with Mummabear. I have Dr. Brown again, for episode four in this season. If you've been following along, we've been talking about so many different issues that she sees in her practice and the sort of theme of those and how we can help make happy people and happy homes, which makes today's episode super important. Okay, managing a household and partner relationships. So whether you're married or not, doesn't matter. Do you live with another person? And how can you live in a way where you feel seen and equal. So we're going to be talking about how the chores of the home impacts a relationship, whether that is a gender role piece, and also the financial piece of running a home. Hello, Lassie, welcome back.

Dr. Deborah Brown  01:51

I am thrilled to be here and to talk about something that's so important and probably in one way or another affects most of us.

Melissa Wiggins  01:59

Yeah, most of us, right? This is a thing. And so before we started recording, you know, you were giving me the, this is something you'd hear in a lot of couples, right? I always joke around, but I'm kind of serious. There's a second shift of the day. 

Find the FULL Transcript Here: Season 10 Episode 4: Household Responsibilities in Couples, with Dr. Deborah Brown

Transcript

Dr. Deborah Brown  00:04

Most of us fall into roles based on our assumptions. And we don't really ever talk about it until it blows up. The lack of generosity is one of the worst things that happens to partners, suddenly, you aren't willing to give any more, because you don't feel that they're giving to you. The way that we operate together and the way we do our laundry and the way we pick up the kids, all contributes to the way that we have sex and the way that we're connected. And all of those things contribute to the way that we live in our partnerships.

Melissa Wiggins  00:51

Hello, lassies and lads. Welcome to another episode of Coaching and a Cup of Tea with Mummabear. I have Dr. Brown again, for episode four in this season. If you've been following along, we've been talking about so many different issues that she sees in her practice and the sort of theme of those and how we can help make happy people and happy homes, which makes today's episode super important. Okay, managing a household and partner relationships. So whether you're married or not, doesn't matter. Do you live with another person? And how can you live in a way where you feel seen and equal. So we're going to be talking about how the chores of the home impacts a relationship, whether that is a gender role piece, and also the financial piece of running a home. Hello, Lassie, welcome back.

Dr. Deborah Brown  01:51

I am thrilled to be here and to talk about something that's so important and probably in one way or another affects most of us.

Melissa Wiggins  01:59

Yeah, most of us, right? This is a thing. And so before we started recording, you know, you were giving me the, this is something you'd hear in a lot of couples, right? I always joke around, but I'm kind of serious. There's a second shift of the day. And my second shift of the day usually starts about 3pm. And it's when the kids get home from school. And it goes now as they're getting older, between you know, nine and 10pm, depending on whether they're sports in the evening. And how do you manage that and share that with your husband or your partner. And what happens Dr. Brown when it doesn't feel equal?

Dr. Deborah Brown  02:39

Well, it's one of the biggest reasons that people come to me for couples counseling is that they are feeling burdened, that they are feeling it's not fair, right? And one of the worst things that we can feel is that feeling of it's not fair. And when we feel that it's not fair, we end up with resentment. Resentment is poison to relationships. And one of the biggest areas where we feel the unfairness is in our home. Think about all of the things that a lot of us balance to people with full time jobs. Sometimes there are children in the mix, a home, a financial picture, all of the things that we have to manage, and also our friends and our family and all of the things that we're constantly balancing and trying to keep juggling the balls in the air. And if one person isn't pulling their weight, or if one person perceives that someone isn't pulling their weight, it gets very, very hard. And you you become resentful. And when you operate from resentment, it will poison every part of your relationship. You're not going to want to do nice things for somebody that you resent, you're not going to want to have sex with somebody that you resent, you're not going to want to be generous in that situation. And the lack of generosity is one of the worst things that happens to partners is suddenly you aren't willing to give any more because you don't feel that they're giving to you. And boy, is that poisonous, it starts with socks on the floor. But it ends up with a sexless miserable partnership.

Melissa Wiggins  04:13

Man, wow. Yes. I was thinking, as you're talking, about the silent agreements of couples, right, and why I believe deeply in therapy and coaches and doing online courses and trying to grow because there are, for the most of us, and I'm sure you see this with your clients to these silent agreements that lead to the resentments. Righ? So how do we get people to talk Dr. Brown? How do we get these agreements not to be silent, so that like we don't silently resent employees in our relationship.

Dr. Deborah Brown  04:55

It's a great point, the silent agreements, and we have to first look at where It comes from in order to know how to stop it. And where it comes from is our own heads our own experiences. And if you think about it, no one teaches us how to live with someone else. The only example that most of us have are our parents. And for a lot of us, our parents grew up in a very different kind of time, perhaps, or in a way that we might not want to duplicate. So the place where we learned our lessons really didn't teach us much always about how to manage things. And there's no resource for this, there's the only way that we learn how to do this is by trial and error, or by being lucky enough to maybe have a partner who's willing to talk about it, or who has ideas. But most of us don't do that. Most of us fall into roles based on our assumptions. And we don't really ever talk about it until it blows up. And I've seen this with countless women who have come to me and said, I don't understand, he works. And he comes home, and I do everything else. Or a man who comes to me and says, you know, she doesn't even know how to cook. And I said, Well, why aren't you cooking? So the great genius of all of this is that I have found and it was such a brilliant thing, and I want to share it with everyone is in my work with same sex couples, I learned so much about the gender roles that we still have. Because in a lot of same sex couples, there are no pre disposed gender roles. If there are two females or two males living together, nobody has the assumption that the other person is going to do something. These are sometimes very true partnerships, because they come to the table. And they say, okay, what can I contribute? What can you contribute? Let's do this, the assumption of male and female goes away. And boy, did that inform the way that I do this work. Because all of a sudden, I really had to think about what are we walking into these relationships with? Because we're male, because we're female. And one of the assumptions we're attaching to the other person as a result, dangerous stuff, right?

Melissa Wiggins  07:13

I love that you've had the experience of that work and how it's informed the work that you do. I think that's so beautiful. One of the things that I have seen as a pattern in my clients, and I don't know, if you have this with yours, is just this deep yearning, of losses to feel equality and respect in a relationship. And when there isn't equal sharing, however, that pans out in terms of work, then that leads to that feeling of disconnection, that feeling of not being equal. And then mostly that deep, like, I'm obviously not respected because I'm not getting the help, that I feel like I need and so this person just obviously doesn't respect me.

Dr. Deborah Brown  08:06

Absolutely, you nailed it. That's one of the biggest problems is he leaves his socks on the floor. And he knows it bothers me. So he doesn't care about me. That seems like really crazy math to do. But it makes perfect sense. And think about this is a lot of the model that we look at when we look at a household. Not maybe so much now. But in the past, was the Leave It to Beaver model, right mom stayed home, she wore pearls, she looked impeccable, she cooked, she took care of the children and dad went to work and he came home and had a cocktail. And you know what it worked in its own way. It worked for people. I'm sure it didn't work for everyone. But it worked. Because the roles were pretty clear. Mom took care of the house dad took care of the money. And that was sort of our our plan back then. And it worked in in some ways and obviously didn't work and others. But we can't apply anything about that model today. But many of us still do. So I still have women that come in that automatically do the laundry automatically do the shopping automatically or the primary force with the children. Because in their minds, that's what they understand their role to be. I have men that do very manly things. They bring in the money and they do the outside work and they leave the household for the woman because she's better at that than I am. Yeah. And, you know, some of these extremes. They may work in some cases, but in other cases they don't. And I'll give you an example. I have two families that I see right now that in their case the mother has decided to stay home. It makes more sense with multiple children, for the mother to stay home. They have made this decision together as a family. Mom then takes the brunt of the house and the children and takes the brunt of making sure financially that they're Secure. In one of these cases, it's worked out brilliantly, brilliantly, because they all agreed, they all knew what the roles were. Nobody attached any shame to it. The mom was not lesser for staying home, she was valued. Because what it meant was, was they got all of the best of everything, Mom got to be there to do all the things, Dad got to work outside the home. Now this is a this is a family whose income is less than $50,000 a year. Wow. And they are making it work because they have agreed on it. They've talked about it, and nobody shames the other person for doing or not doing. Give you another example. I have another couple who's doing the same exact thing. And they are constantly fighting. Because what's happening is he's saying, Well, I make $750,000 a year. And that's my job. Everything else is yours. So how do you think that feels in the home right now, right. So it's not about how much money you make. It's about the connection that you have, and how you decide to separate what it is that you do in the home. 

Melissa Wiggins  11:11

I also feel like that this second example goes back to respect and equality. If you respect and you feel like an equal to your partner, or wife or husband, regardless of any come when you come home, the second shift is both of yours, when you're in the home, the sitting down together should roughly be the same time, right? Like if someone's sitting down watching TV at six o'clock eating dinner, and someone else is doing the bed time and the bath time, the homework and all the things and yet both are in the home, then what happens is, again, the silent agreements are leading us to this place of constantly feeling not respected and no equal.

Dr. Deborah Brown  12:01

Yes. And the problem is, is that we tend to lean very heavily on blaming men for this, because a lot of what I hear is that men are doing the man things and expecting the woman to do the woman things. And it might be true to a point. But what I actually find is that there's a role that women take in relationships very often, where they do a lot of things automatically. And I know I've done this before, I've seen plenty of other women that have done this before, that as soon as they're married, they immediately take over the House. As soon as there's a child, they immediately take responsibility for it, they start doing all the shopping, they start doing all the organizing and all of the cleaning. And of course, if you have someone in your home, who is doing all of that, and seems to be very happy doing all of that, and you're a man who's in a relationship where someone's doing all that, and you fall into a pattern where you don't have to do any of that. Whose fault is it then, right? It's everybody's fault, because we made some assumptions, and we made silent agreements. And we fell into patterns that didn't really work for anyone. But for some reason we automatically fell into is that about gender?Maybe.

Melissa Wiggins  13:12

Yes. And woman who doesn't know and I've been in this situation myself, who doesn't know where the money goes, or how much the mortgage is or how much the electricity is or how much all the things are because, like the other roles that you just mentioned, the spouse has taken on the role of I'll pay the bills, I'll take care of us financially, I'll do this piece. I'm good at it. And I just keep thinking about what you said with the two examples of the couple's, which is, for some people, if you're listening to this, and you're like, I see no problem. This makes perfect sense. Great. There's no problem. But if you are the second variety, where you don't feel respected and equal, it's time to have these difficult conversations.

Dr. Deborah Brown  14:04

And they are difficult because people will say, 'Well, gosh, we've been doing this for 10 years. Why is it suddenly a problem?' And the truth is, is that it probably was always a problem. But we have been taught to suck up things that are difficult. Well, this is just my lot. I wanted to have four children. This is why I have to be this way. And it's not a solo task. Managing a household with someone else in it is not one person's responsibility. And there are some things that absolutely must be shared. So if we look at finances, it is an absolute crime to be in a relationship and have no clue what's happening in your own life financially. That is is just an awful thing. And the idea is is yes, there's always one person that tends to be better at it and they should manage the finances, but there has to be State of the Union meeting ings, I have a couple right now who had that situation where she never knew what was going on. And he did everything. And she didn't know if she could buy a couch, you know, it was so terrible. And what they started doing was, they started having once a month state of the union meetings, that's what she called them. And what they do is once a month, they sit down with the ledger. And they talk about what's gone in and what's going out. They talk about disposable income, they talk about long term plans. And all it is is one hour, once a month. And he still does it all because he's better at it. But at least she has a voice in it. And she knows what I can spend what I can't spend, and she feels like she's participating more fairly. And he wasn't withholding it for her from her. He wasn't deliberately trying to hide anything. But it was just a pattern they fell into. And she fell into this sort of learned helplessness and powerlessness, and resented him for it. And it wasn't his fault. It was just a pattern they had fallen into.

Melissa Wiggins  15:56

But you know what I love so much about your work. I love so much the practicality of it, right? I am a lawyer a heart to heart that's how I'm skilled. And I love practical, tangible, like these are things to actually do. And that's how I coach to and I love the term learned helplessness because I teach all the time, the concept of I am responsible whenever someone comes to me, and they tell me the story. I say, Okay, I hear whatever you're saying, Now, I want you to tell me, what are you responsible for? Right? Because the point that you just illustrated so eloquently is, her husband was not holding it from her. He wasn't keeping the money from her. And yet she felt this way. And often, they don't even know you feel that way.

Dr. Deborah Brown  16:52

Right? Assumptions once again, playing a role. And we are thinking that we're powerless when actually all we have to do is ask and much of what we're talking about today is usually readily accessible to us to be able to change. But we just pattern ourselves in a way that we operate from a very automatic thought process is that if I've just always done the laundry, well, of course, that's my job. But wait, maybe it's not. And so if you like practicality, you are going to love the solution. plan for how we address this. You're gonna love it. Love it. So this is a fun little skill. And I have done this, I can't even tell you how many times with couples. And every time it's enlightening, and it works. So this is the idea of how do we reset the home? How do we enter into a new way of thinking about our home. And this can be done, whether you're just starting out or whether you're together 50 years, what you do is you take every task that's in the home, and you write down every task that's in the home, and everything that needs to be done. So we're talking about things as simple as a job. We're talking about the finances, we're talking about laundry, we're talking about running the children around grocery shopping, cleaning all of these little tasks, and we write them all on little post it notes, little index cards, it doesn't even matter. And we put them in the middle of the table. And what we do is we redistribute everything. So our goal is we start with the big stuff. Okay, money. Well, I have a job and you have a job. Okay, there we go. We've got that. Well, what's next? Okay, well, who manages the finances? Well, you know, you're better at that. I'll take that. Who's better at cooking? Who should be cooking? I'll take that. How about grocery shopping? I'll take that. And we go buy what inherently belongs to us first, inherently, we each have our income streams, that belongs to us, then we go for the big stuff. How do we take care of the children? How do we take care of the finances, then we go for the stuff that we're good at, or that we really like or that we don't like, if I hate cleaning the bathrooms, and I really hate it, then you should take that. And if you really hate mowing the lawn, then I should take that. And we redistributed not based on anything related to gender. But we've redistributed based on strengths and weaknesses and preferences. And why should I have to cook every night if I hate it? And why can't you if you like it? And if your job allows you to pick up the children then why can't you be responsible for the children? So it's about starting fresh, recognizing and then looking at the two piles we have and seeing if they're equal, and then keeping that redistribution until it is and we've agreed and we move forward without resentment.

Melissa Wiggins  19:55

I mean, where have you been my whole life? Like seriously, though, it's just, you know, a speaks to a lot of the work that I do. And I know you do too, about self awareness and moving out of autopilot and moving into conscious thinking and being praised. And if you don't see it, you can't ever change it right? But sometimes, you could feel it first, right? Sometimes it feels like I'm resentful. And I'm this and I'm not. And I don't know why. And then you start doing this work. And you look at what you just said, and you think, how freaking simple would this be, it would take not even one hour, not even one hour a day for a to do task that you just said. And yet, how many couples actually do that? I've never done that. I've never even thought about that.

Dr. Deborah Brown  20:54

And it works in a lot of situations. It works in any type of couple, any type of people even living together, I talk about people doing this when they have adult children, more and more of our adult children. 43% of 26 year olds in New Jersey still live at home with their parents. So we could do this with our adult children. I mean, the idea is that there is an inherent respect, in acknowledging someone else's efforts, and saying, I appreciate that you do this. And when we feel respected, and when we feel heard, we feel better.

Melissa Wiggins  21:25

I love the idea of doing this also with our kids, Deborah, yeah, let the couple do some of the work. And also let's bring the kids in and say, okay, trash is now your responsibility. And I know there are many families who they're probably listening to this. And they're like, 'Well, yeah, of course, yeah, the kids participate and all the things'. But there are other families where, oh, it's just easier to do it by myself. And I shouldn't do that. And I remember having this conversation with my mom, because when I moved out, Deborah, I didn't know how to do laundry. I swear to God, I had never cooked a thing in my life. I was 22 years old, I moved to go to law school, a two and a half hours away. And I didn't know how to do anything. It was kind of an ongoing joke. Like everyone used to be like, 'Oh, she's so booksmart. But she can't do anything else outside of the books.' But what had happened was my mom whose primary role was to stay home, she was a nurturer. And I love her to death. And I'm so thankful for it. But I left not knowing how to do anything. And so my mom was like, Melissa, raising these four kids, you got to make yourself like a team. And so I really have tried to raise these kids with their dad to be a team who participates in the home. But I'm just thinking out loud here. I love the idea of putting these things on posters, and then taking a thing that's there's

Dr. Deborah Brown  22:53

Absolutely, and one of the things that we're going to talk about in a future episode is raising healthy children. And this is part of that discussion is how do we include them as responsible people. And I think what we what we do and what we neglect to do when we just move in with someone and get married and start having children, and we don't acknowledge the fact that we're sharing a responsibility, and that we have to talk about it that it doesn't inherently just happen, because you wake up at 22. And you didn't have the skills and you might have been raised in a very emotionally healthy family. But this one thing kind of fell away. And the idea is, is that everybody needs personal responsibility. Everyone needs to feel like they have a fair portion of that responsibility. So we have to talk about it. And if we don't, what happens is, is we sit and we read into people's behaviors. And I had one couple that I've talked about at length about the socks on the floor, and literally the socks on the floor. Because what she says is when he does that, when he leaves his socks on the floor, he is disrespecting me, because he knows how much that upsets me, well, maybe there's a gray area who's responsible for laundry, maybe if you're responsible for laundry, then it's your job, no matter where it is, well, maybe we need to talk about this maybe, you know, we need to stop analyzing each other's behavior and use our words, because behavior is a very pure form of communication. And it's very, very dangerous because we read into people's behavior. It's it's actually one of the truest forms of communication. And we don't even realize how powerful our behavior is. So behavior can convey respect. They can convey kindness, it can convey generosity, but a lot of times we don't pay attention to the role of our behavior. And it may be showing something that we don't intend to show. But if we're not talking all we've gots behavior to analyze and that's the The insurance right?

Melissa Wiggins  25:01

So dangerous. What would you say if someone's listening in, they're like, 'Okay, I clearly know that we have some issues in our relationship, and I want to start working on them.' And a lot of couples, they struggle to get to therapy. I love that you say that there are couples that go for like, almost like I call it like paying your insurance, right? Like you go because you want to stay good, and you want to stay healthy, and you want to keep building and growing. But what do you say to the couple who's the wife or the husband is listening to this episode right now? And they're like, Yeah, I just really know that we need some of this work, but they just they don't want to go to therapy, because they have this idea that if we do you know, we end up in divorce, or we won't make it how do you get people there?

Dr. Deborah Brown  25:51

Well, it is a tricky thing, because the cost of it the time of it. But now with the advent of telehealth, it definitely is allowing more people to have access to therapy, when they didn't before because I can come into your home via video. So it's getting easier. And that's what I would say I would say, well look at what the barriers are, is the barrier money is the barrier time is the barrier that someone doesn't want to go? And these are all valid barriers. But if someone doesn't want to go, That, to me, is a huge red flag, and a very, very big concern. Because you are never going to fix a relationship with someone who isn't committed to trying whatever they have to try to make it work. Yeah. So I would say if someone doesn't want to go, not a big fan of ultimatums. But I think that we get to take up space in our relationships. And we get to say that this is really important to me that you try. And if you can't try through therapy, tell me another way that you're willing to try? Because effort is everything. Commitment to effort is everything. I've had people who say, Well, no matter what I'm not leaving, or I'm here for whatever, I'm never going anywhere. Okay, well, it's kinda lazy, because at the end of the day, you're saying that no matter what happens, I'm just going to be here. Okay? Well, I'd rather you come in and say, if things don't change, I don't know how much longer I can do that. Because that shows that you're willing to make an effort and try to change things. And you're not just going to settle for good enough, because good enough, we're getting by ends up creating really, really not stellar not connected relationships.

Melissa Wiggins  27:32

Yeah, you're definitely not getting to level three, or four, like we talked about in the last episode. And if you're about go back and listen to episode three, because you will know exactly what level three and level four means.

Dr. Deborah Brown  27:49

Absolutely, because it's all connected, you know, the way that we operate together and the way we do our laundry, and the way we pick up the kids, all contributes to the way that we have sex and the way that we're connected. And all of those things contribute to the way that we live in our partnerships. And everything is important, our household is important, our intimacy is important. And it's a lot to take care of, it's a lot to tend to. So some people say, Gosh, it shouldn't be so much work. Well, if you put in the work and set up the structures and the connection, eventually it will just flow. And a lot of us need help with setting up those structures.

Melissa Wiggins  28:27

I look at it like and I say this to my clients all the time, sometimes we just have to really slow down and go snail pace, in order to speed up. And that's kind of like the work we've talked about in the last episode. And then this episode right there setting down taking the tasks of the home. Yes, it's all time consuming, right? It's like goal setting, right? It's, it's time consuming, but like you just said, then you have a structure. Now you just saved so much time and energy and resentment and complaining right about the salt, right? Like I love this analogy of the socks, but you literally just saved so much time and energy because you're never going to argue about that. Then again, I teach my clients this concept of outsourcing our conscious brain to our unconscious brain, essentially making like habits out of things, right. So like, when you eat right when you eat everyday when you work out every day making those things at the same time at the same place by the same person. And it's kind of the same with this right? Like what you're saying is if we just say as a team who feed this dog, then we never need to ask again the question of as the dog fed. No, we know it sounds filthy and we don't have to take that time and energy anymore. And we still we created the structure and that just makes for a really nice well oiled machine of a family.

Dr. Deborah Brown  29:57

And imagine if you got to do all of the things that we have to do. And you got to come home to a house that wasn't part of your stress, or you got to come home to a person who pleased you because they held up their end of the bargain. And you didn't have to talk about it. And you didn't have to fight about it. And imagine that your partner and the person that you live with, is truly a safe place to land is truly a place where you get to escape. And they get to be your oasis, because you're so connected. And you're not fighting about dumb stuff. And you're having physical intimacy, because you're feeling connected and not resentful. Imagine that you have that in your life every day. Isn't that a beautiful thought? Isn't it? Wonderful to think we could have that.

Melissa Wiggins  30:44

So beautiful. And just then imagine Dr. Brown, what you can then do with that time and energy, right? Like the things you can do together.

Dr. Deborah Brown  30:55

Yes, absolutely. 

Melissa Wiggins  30:57

I love it. That has been amazing and so important. And I feel like everyone is going to love the idea of setting them all out. And again, maybe we can convince everybody to listen to this together as a couple as a family. Right. Like, I feel like it's such an important thing to get everybody on board with and I'm just so grateful for these weekly episodes with you. They're amazing. I love it. 

Dr. Deborah Brown  31:23

It's terrific to be here. And it's great to get a message out that can change so many things just by making the smallest little efforts.

Melissa Wiggins  31:30

I know. Thank you!