Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
Relieving Mental Load
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The Mental Load is the running to do list that we carry around in our minds. Although it is often invisible, it has a big impact on our relationship, our sexual desire and our stress level.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip joins me for a discussion about what the Mental Load looks like in our everyday lives and how couples can manage it together. You’ll hear lots of communication starters and very practical tips to help you ‘off-load’ and free up mental space for a healthier relationship and a healthier YOU!
www.cindyscharkey.com
Morgan Cutlip, Ph.D., is a wife, mom, and life-long lover of all things relationships. She develops online relationship courses and resources at Love Thinks and manages the blog at www.mylovethinks.com.
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This is Permission for Pleasure. And I'm your host, Sandy Sharkey. As a registered nurse and educator for over 30 years, I've seen the real need to break the silence surrounding sex, especially for women. This podcast is about opening the doors to healthy conversations about sex. What I found is that when women have comprehensive education about sex, their self-confidence soars. And when that happens, women can truly express, experience, and enjoy their sexuality. They give themselves permission for pleasure. Welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharke, your host. Thank you for listening and being part of our community here. This episode is about mental load or invisible labor, so to speak. And we carry this around in our heads. And if you're thinking, what does that have to do with a sex podcast? It actually has a lot to do. A lot to do with it. And you've heard me and my guests talk about mindfulness, about uh staying present in the moment during sex to enjoy the pleasures and to quiet our busy minds, be present in our bodies, all these good things. Well, the truth is for a lot of women, a lot of people in general, but a lot of women, the chatter in their brains is often what holds us back from being able to do this. And I think a lot of that has to do with mental load. So it's a burden, and I and the research, my friends, is very clear about mental load and its effects on desire. Desire for anything, really, but especially for desire for sex. So today, my guest is Dr. Morgan Cutlip, and she is a relationship consultant and an advisor. She directs research development at Love Thinks. She has an entire course called The Mother Load all about this topic, and she just seemed like the perfect guest to share with us on this topic. So, Morgan, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you so much for having me. I value what you do, and you were on my Instagram recently and just gave so much quality content and information. So I'm excited to sit with you today and talk about this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_00I love how you kind of introduced the concept too, because I've done a lot of uh podcasts on this particular topic, but approaching the mental load from the standpoint of it affects your sex life, that is a new way to get into it. And I love that because I think that's such a big missing piece when couples talk about the mental load. It almost is like this compartmentalized issue. You know, if you know, I just need my partner to help me more with responsibilities, to do more around the home, to do these, but but it's not compartmentalized because that's not how relationships work. When you have somebody in the relationship who feels like things are really unfair, that that's gonna affect um feelings of resentment and frustration and bitterness towards your partner and who wants to have sex when you resent your partner, and then the other piece is what you're talking about too, which is the mental load is it's or the invisible labor, it's called a number of things, but it's like a running to-do list of all of the things that we're just carrying around in our minds, and it takes up space and it causes stress. Those two pieces, as I'm sure you've talked about many times, just how desire works, those two pieces slam on the brakes like no other. And so I I just really like how you got into the topic. It's a completely new, new way into it, and it's an important one.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Let's backtrack a little bit more again and just give us more about what this is, what it looks like tangibly, some examples.
SPEAKER_00Totally. So so I'll just define it again and I'll get specific. So the mental load is this invisible like list of to-dos that we carry around in our mind, and it involves many different categories of things. So things like researching topics as a moms, especially, we know how much time do we spend Googling the toxins in our children's body wash or things like that, right? Which researching preschools or daycares or bottles, and you know, it's just nonstop. So the researching um the emotional labor, I think, is something that mostly women are the ones who take care of. This is something like, oh, you know, our son is at school and he's uh says he's getting bullied. And so this kind of worry work that we do, um, thinking about uh the people we're in a relationship with and then figuring out how do we want to manage that. That's a whole nother piece of it. Um, you know, the organizing of life of the home, you know, we play like a stalker, right? What we're running out of toilet paper, of uh olive oil, of all the, you know, we're kind of keeping these things in our minds that takes up a lot of space. And one of the defining features of the mental load is that it's usually invisible. Uh a lot of what we do is behind the scenes. And so what becomes really tricky for couples, especially for women, is when they are kind of reach their max, they are like, How do I even convey what this is to my partner? Because they don't get it. I even think of dumb things like um we have blankets on our couch, okay, and pillows. And I cannot tell you how many times a day I walk past that couch and I straighten those pillows and I fold those blankets. It's like all these magical things that just happen in a home that usually research shows this, so I'm not trying to just stereotype here, but usually it's us women who are the ones making these magical things happen and keeping track of them in our minds.
SPEAKER_01Wow, okay. This this could not this could be anybody, you know, it could be either person in the relationship, certainly, but I think the research is and the studies like that I've looked at and you've mentioned like on your website is it's overwhelmingly women and especially moms. But I'm even thinking for myself, like I'm an empty nester, right? But I still, I still am the one who does a lot of vacation plan. Like if we're gonna have our whole family on vacation, like I'm I plan the food, I plan the, you know, because this that's the designation of of of time that we've chosen, you know, my husband and I. But it's interesting because I'm thinking back to the days when I was more your age, Morgan, or listeners, you all younger women, not really recognizing all of that invisible load that was in my mind, and not and and not really even being able to articulate it all.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I mean, I discovered the term a few years ago. It's been around a little while, and I think that like there was something that just clicked for me when I heard the term, because it's just what you're saying. I think that the mental load is something that a lot of us feel. We're like, gosh, why do we feel like you can almost like think of it like a spinning, like a spinning or like a I my father-in-law used to say, There goes his my mother-in-law's name is Cindy, there goes Cindy swirling around the house. She doesn't sit down, and I'm like, it's the mental load, man. You don't get it. But it's like we feel it, this like spinning feeling of like you're hustling from one thing to the next, take ticking off these to-dos in your mind. And so for me, when I heard the term, I was like, oh my gosh, just that term was helpful. It defined uh, I think of almost a universal experience for a lot of women and especially for moms. We can talk about what changes after you become a mom, but um, and there was something that felt like a relief about having a definition around this like really intense experience that can make you feel really frustrated sometimes and really overwhelmed. And so, quite honestly, I sucked at managing the mental load in my relationship, especially after kids. I was terrible at it.
SPEAKER_01I'm raising my hand, I'm with you, you know.
SPEAKER_00I was terrible when our kids were um, I think our daughter was maybe five, and our son was, I guess, two and a half, was one of the first times I really said to my husband, just take them. Like, just I need a minute. And it was the first time I didn't pack the bag, you know, the diaper bag, didn't pack the snacks, I didn't, you know, I didn't do everything for him. And I have a husband who's willing to jump in anytime I want. He's a there's no resistance there. Um, but I just was prof a professional at doing it all myself, and I just reached my limit. And so when I heard that term, I was like, oh, I want to learn everything I can about this, and I want to try to work on coming up with practical things women especially can do to help themselves in this area because I felt it so intensely, and it it was major for me.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think it's major for many people, and I'm just I'm thinking back to the early days when I had my first baby. I mean, we're talking 30 years ago now. So one of the pieces of advice I got was let your husband take care of the baby the way he takes care of the baby. It's not gonna look like the way you take care of the baby, and granted, I'm a nurse too, so I have all the all that going, right? Uh, I just tried to always remember that because he did a great job taking care of the baby, but it wasn't the way I did, right? But the baby was safe and taken care of. It just didn't look like the way I did it. And I have always remembered that and tried to pass that along. And I think some of that comes into play here. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I have a lot of things I think about that. So I think number one, you got great advice. So a lot of women find themselves kind of really far into this, and then they're like, great, I need to kind of backtrack to try to undo some of this stuff. So part of the undoing is really taking that message to heart. And so we can talk more about the specifics on this one, but when you start to hand over parts of the mental load, when you're redistributing responsibilities and who does what in the home, there are things that you as an individual have to manage so that you allow space for your partner to step up. I'll just tell you. I have five behaviors that backfire that I talk about. One is the micromanaging, right? It's like, hey, will you pack the kids' lunches? And you're like, what are you don't do it like that. Cut them like this. Do this. You too much sugar, too much fruit, right? We're kind of getting in their business. Keeping score is another one. They finally step up, and the response is thanks, but you know, that's kind of like a drop in the bucket compared to what I do. Criticizing is a third, which looks like, hey, will you get the kids dressed? What the heck are the kids wearing? It's another one. Four is um personalization. Now, this is a big one. This is um when our partner maybe doesn't follow through on a particular thing and we make it very much about us. Um, you don't respect me. You don't care about how I try to keep the house clean. Right? We make it this kind of big personal thing. When usually it's usually it's not. Sometimes it is, usually it's not. And then the last one is impatience. I hear this all the time. Will you take the trash out? Ugh, I'll do it myself. Recently, I did um uh it's like called a pod on this app called Peanut, which is just for moms, and somebody told a story where they handed off the trash, taking out of the trash to their partner, and their partner wasn't doing it. And so she said, and she goes, one day he walks in and there is a pile of garbage, and he's like, It stinks in here. And she goes, Yeah, because you said you were gonna take out the trash, so I've trusted you to do that. There was no hostility, no nastiness. But she sort of um refused to give in to her own impatience. And so these are some of the things that I think can get in the way when we're trying to hand off part of the mental load. And so the the antidote is what you were saying, which is give your partner some space, right, to find their own way and to figure it out. Um sometimes they do things better than we do, and it t it can take us by surprise. But we gotta give them the opportunity. I think another way to think about it is like if it's packing lunches, you know, how many days is are there in the school year? If you multiply that by how many kids you have, if you just quantify it, it's a lot of times. And so when you ask your partner to step in there that very first time, you have had way more practice than them. So give them a minute. So then there's a second piece, which you know, the it's been labeled what maternal gatekeeping. But I I I think it's beyond maternal gatekeeping, but that's one which is m is basically when kids are born and enter the picture, moms kind of like to do it their own way. And so what it ends up doing is sort of blocking their partners from being able to get involved as much as they um should uh and as much as the moms actually need. And this can really set you up for failure down the road. I know there's been studies that have found that um when moms make space for their partners to get involved from the very beginning, they have a much better adjustment to motherhood. I think it actually happens though before motherhood. So you were saying thinking about it now as an empty nester. So I think if it happens before, we'll say it happens after, right? But I talk about it as something that I've labeled, I haven't come up with a better term, so maybe there's a better one, but I call it piling on precedence. And I think this is how the mental load gets full. Early on in our relationships, we do things for our partner and our loved ones just because we love them. Like we just want to take care of them, we want to love them, and we're just being nice. Uh, I think about early on in our relationship, I don't know why I did this, but I would make dinner, I would grocery shop, and then I'd be like, you relax, I'll do the dishes. What? What was I thinking? But I was just, you know, I was just being nice, and probably, you know, we can talk, you know, some of the things I picked up on my own family background, right? It's coming out, coming out after marriage. But um so before you know it, my husband wasn't getting up to do the dishes anymore. He used to, but now he wasn't. So what did I do there? I set a precedent that I would do all of those things, and I essentially let him off the hook when he saw that I would take care of it after a few times of trying to jump in, and I was like, I got it, I got it. He decided that I got it. And so he stopped asking and he totally took it off his plate. And I think this happens hundreds, thousands of times, potentially in our relationships. Think about um shopping for holidays is a big one. How did that how are we sh how am I buying presents from my mother-in-law, right? Like, how do we do these things? Just add up. I think that we do them one thing at a time, and when we take care of it, our partner is like, awesome, I'm not gonna think about that anymore. And we don't really say out loud, I'm gonna do this once, but I'm not doing this forever. So we take on these tasks permanently until we pile on one thing at a time, until our plate is really full. Then you bring kids into the picture, and overnight the amount of responsibilities is overwhelming. We go from a full plate to an overwhelmed plate, and that's when we start to lose it.
SPEAKER_01And I'm thinking wow, okay, I I'm thinking a lot of things. I'm thinking so many females are uh raised up and brought up in a this conditioned idea of being the giver and nurturer. So, and those things are not necessarily a bad or negative thing. It's just that I would say a lot of us have seen that modeled, right? Or been conditioned in a way to think everything is our responsibility and it isn't, right? And then it's we don't have a lot of tools, I don't think, Morgan, to renegotiate this in our own relationships based on what we've seen growing up or seen in the media. And so then here we are, and we only have seen one way, and we just start into it, like you're saying. Sometimes I think we don't even realize what we're doing, the way in which we're doing it. And then just your partner's response is not unusual. I mean, if we're gonna you're gonna continue to cook, shop, and and do the dishes, then they're like, oh well, that I guess that that's not my that's not on my plate, right? So your your plate gets fuller and theirs gets less. It's just it's just fascinating to think about that, you know. I hope the listeners will kind of you know pause a little bit and contemplate some of these tangible examples. And I want to circle back to what you said, which is the side effects of that heavy mental load are not good for the relationship. Like you mentioned, resentment. Resentment is a huge desire killer, I'll tell you that. And also just that stress and overwhelm and anxiety, and stress, overwhelm, and anxiety are also big desire killers, right? I've heard you talk about equal versus fair. Can you can you talk to that a little bit to kind of circle out this, you know, flesh out this piece?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, can I say one thing before I say that? What you were saying reminded me of something because you're saying this sort of giver tendency that we have, but then also this piece about what we bring from our growing up experiences into our relationship. And I think it's just worth like a little bit of a l a line right here, which is, you know, a lot of us, we are absorbing what it looks like. We're creating whatever you want to call it, people call it different things, scripts, templates, um, uh narratives about what it looks like to be a partner, what it looks like to be a parent. We're just kind of absorbing these things from a young age. I mean, watch a child take care of play with like a little baby doll, right? This is them um already having absorbed, you know, what caregivers do. And so we're learning this our entire life, but we don't really tap into what these look like. Uh sometimes we're not even that aware of them for a long time, but they're sort of like planting seeds within us, all of these kinds of early experiences. And then there are different things in our life that provide the water and the sunshine that help these seeds to blossom. And one of them is marriage or a long-term committed partnership, you know. If you're in a heterosexual relationship, you you become husband and wife, not just girlfriend and boyfriend. Okay, and and there are different scripts that click in at that moment that didn't exist completely when you were dating. And so you start to kind of fall into these roles, and you're like, How did we end up here? And it's just these sort of seeds have started to blossom. The other thing is introducing kids. Now you have these scripts about what it means to be a parent. And so I think a lot of people are like, Well, we had a pretty equal distribution of things, and then kids came and it got weird, like it got crazy, and now all of a sudden I'm doing everything. Part of it is you kind of fall into these roles that you don't always explicitly talk about. And so, um I think that you know, it's just one of normalize that that's a common experience in in relationships, but also you've got to be able to explicitly talk about it. Okay. I mean, I think people get really nervous talking about this sort of thing, but in your whole relationship, have you ever discussed your roles and your responsibilities? Who's I mean, maybe if you did premarital stuff, maybe.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's is I'm laughing over here because I'm thinking it's kind of like sex. Like people don't want to communicate and talk about sex, and it's the harder things. Roles and responsibilities is a difficult topic to navigate.
SPEAKER_00It's hard. But it's like you want to sit down and you want to talk about, you know, okay, we're we're deep into this, but let's back up and say, what are your expectations of me as a as a partner to you? What are your expectations of me as a parent? Like just have a broader conversation because that can sort of help to get all the cards on the table, right? Um, you can kind of talk about then just some issues that where you might not be meeting each other's expectations, or maybe you're having expectation that you never even talked about before that's getting in the way of things. So I think that um that's an important important discussion to have. And I just would urge people, I mean, if this is the first time and you're five, six, seven years, ten years into your relationship, then you know, you're due.
SPEAKER_01So overdue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're not nagging this topic. You know, maybe you're we can talk about that too. Maybe you're not bringing it up in the best way um in other times, but sit down and have a real conversation about your roles and responsibilities. It's probably the first one you're you've ever had. Equal versus fair. Let's talk about this. One is big. So this kind of gets into the solutions for the mental load, kind of what you start to do about it. And I and I always like to highlight this because I see a lot of stuff out there. I mean, I'm on social media, so a lot of what I see is there, but about you know, equality, equality, equality. Equality is fantastic, it's an Ideal, but the reality of life is that um it's not always gonna work for things to be distributed equally. Like my husband, he travels, like he'll be gone for weeks at a time. Um, we're not gonna have the same mental load, it's just not gonna work out. And so, but what is important is that I feel and he feels that the way that we handle our responsibilities in our family is fair because when it feels unfair, that's when you start to develop resentment and frustration and anger, and that can trickle into your relationship and lead to disconnection. And so I think a lot of times we gotta just adjust like the goal. The goal isn't for the same amount of each partner does 20 things, you know. That's that's crazy. It it has to feel good. And I think it's important to remember too that while you might have different situations, you and your partner, that affect how you kind of handle responsibilities, also there are different seasons of life and also just different things that show up, you know, throughout the year. Your mental load is gonna be more intense around the holidays or birthday party, or right, or somebody gets sick. And so we have to have some flexibility there and talking about it with our partner and how it's distributed.
SPEAKER_01I think another piece to that is is kind of a mantra on this podcast about all things is that, like you said, you're gonna go through different seasons and stages and phases and crisis, and this sounds like another one of those conversations that needs to be revisited often. Um, you know, not it's not a gonna be a one-time deal.
SPEAKER_00I feel like a lot of times when I talk about relationship stuff, it does come back to that point, which is gosh, you really need to have a regular conversation about stuff. And so um, this is no different. And for a couple of reasons that are specific. Well, one specific to the mental load is that you know, if you can schedule on your calendars, both of you, a time to come together and sit down and be like, okay, these are the things we've got coming up in the next month or two. I can do this, can you take care of that, or what can you do? However, you want to have that conversation. It normalizes talking about these things. A lot of people are like, I don't want to I don't we only talk about our relationship when it sucks. Like, and so that makes these conversations really scary and we avoid things that feel scary. And so it normalizes that you talk about your relationship, you talk about responsibilities and roles. This is just part of being in it. Um you manage it just like you sit down at work and have meetings, right? Have a meeting. Number two, when you schedule it, it takes it off the woman's plate. A big part of the mental load is that we manage our relationships. And we're the ones usually who are saying, Gosh, I feel like we need a date night. Gosh, I feel like we need to talk about this. And so if you can put it on the calendars, that's one thing immediately you can take off your plate. It just happens then. And talk about sex during that talk too.
SPEAKER_01Maybe one thing at a time, but it sounds like it it sounds like setting up a time to talk about it, right? And and then you know, following up uh uh whenever appropriate to talk about it again and again and again, right? Because that what will happen then is then sometimes w maybe something you've taken on or something you've designated and your partner's taken on, you might have to r renegotiate that uh in a different season, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. So it's gonna change the intensity of it, the seasons of life, um, based on your circumstances. I mean, maybe you could handle picking up the kids from school, but then all of a sudden you have this work project that keeps you later. Okay, you gotta revisit that. Doesn't mean suddenly it's not, you know, working. It's just this is a part of life. Life has this way of just interrupting equilibrium and disrupting it. And so we have to keep coming back together to talk about these things, and that's totally okay.
SPEAKER_01And totally normal. Well, and I think sometimes, Morgan, you know, we say I maybe I'm speaking for myself, but it's like, you know, it's just easier for me to do it by my it's just easier for me to do it, you know, than to to ask one of the kids to do it or ask my partner to do it. Or I mean, back in the day when my kids were in my home, and I'm just thinking of these young moms. Like, I know that's often what I said. It's like it's just easier for me. It's more work to delegate than it is to do it myself. Do you hear that theme?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I hear that all the time. That's not just you. And I think, I mean, I even struggle with that sometimes. So I have to be almost very mindful of these moments where I'm like, am I like lately? I've been very mindful of how much I'm doing for my children. So I've been asking them to do more, which takes a hundred times as long. Um, but I'm preparing them for taking on responsibilities later in life, so it's worth it to me. But the way that I talk about asking, because oh, people get so mad when you say just ask, or when their partner says, just tell me what you want me to do. Oh, they get so mad because they feel like my partner should just know. They should just know. Or, like you're saying, asking is harder, it takes more time and it takes more of my energy. So I suggest we rebrand asking as involving. So remember when I was talking about that piling on of precedents? If we can get on board with that concept and say, okay, okay, I see myself having done that, okay? And now we've reached a boiling point where we really can't keep continue doing everything. And and our and our re our like conclusion is my partner should just step in and take care of, don't they see what needs done? Whoa, whoa, whoa. If we have taken all this on invisibly and silently and without any discussion, then no, they don't see what needs done. And we gotta backtrack a little bit. And it's nobody's fault. I know I don't want to like stir up like some defensiveness around so we did this to ourselves, but it was just out of love and care, right? That we did these things without talking about. So we have to backtrack and say when we are asking or we are instructing, we are kind of reteaching the things that need done and how we like it to be done. And the goal is that maybe you do that a few times or maybe more than a few, I don't know, depends on your partner. You are then teaching them how to take initiative in the future. You know that every time we leave the house, we take the kids' water bottles. So instead of me going around the house and hunting them down and refilling them, I'm gonna say, Hey, we get the kids water bottles and get them ready, right? That's one little thing. Um, but it starts to set kind of this expectation that this is part of our natural routine. And you can even eventually have that conversation or from the beginning, I'm gonna put you in charge of this moving forward.
SPEAKER_01And this is this is something we can do. I mean, we can make these kinds of changes, we can have these kinds of conversations, even if we're you know knee deep into the the load being high. We can still you know make the invisible visible, like you say, and so we can recognize what's causing us to feel this overwhelm and resentment and you know discontent in the relationship, and then take some of these steps you're talking about, and maybe not all at once, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So in my course I talk about kind of like the small sort of things that you can do. Um, and then there are like the big things. The big thing is that conversation where you write things out, you actually sit down, you schedule a time, you go over it. The little things is it's the asking. The asking is a little thing. That's a small change that you can make right now. You can just start kind of pushing yourself past your discomfort with asking and do a little bit more of that. The other is don't pile on more precedence. I don't take on anything really anymore without talking about it. Or even I this it might sound kind of annoying, but sometimes I narrate things that I'm doing. Okay, it's time for bed, and everybody has to do like I'm I am using this to instruct my children on what we do when we get ready for bed, but also involve my partner. Okay, it's time to do this. You know, we're way past that, our kids are older, but in the beginning, right? Get them involved, participate in these things. And I will not like I don't buy Mother's Day gifts anymore. I don't buy my mother-in-law's birthday present. She just had her birthday. He took care of that. Why? I've talked about it enough. Huh. I'm shopping for your mother-in-law. I don't understand this. Have you shopped for my mother-in-law? My mom, my mom before? No. And he's finally he said, I've got this from now on. Don't even worry about it. And so there are things with piling on precedence, part of it is that when we did it, we did it silently. And so I don't do things silently anymore, and I don't do them in a rude or jerky way, but I talk about what I do. I am not the only one who's a part of this family and the functioning of it. And so I talk about what I do, and so my partner is part of that world. It's I don't want to be alone in that world. I want him to jump in and do things, and it has made a big difference.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I hear you. So let me circle back around here because she's giving you so many tips here, listeners. So talking out loud about what needs to be done or what is being done helps the family see and hear and recognize all of these usually invisible things, right? And then I love the anticipation asking or whatever you called it, because I almost want to encourage women to say, even though you may think I can do that, I've done it, I it's fine. You know, I'm doing the tone, like in like I I've always done it. Almost pick something every day or every day, other day to start with that you could give up. Maybe not even recognizing if it would really lower the load or not, but it would get you in the practice. Like I wish I'd done this more when I was younger. In the practice of saying, you know, tomorrow, this or that, would you can you do this and that? Because I I have, or not even because, just would you be willing, you know, can you do this and that tomorrow? And and then let it go. Like take your hands off, right? Let it go. Even if you're in our heads, we're thinking, it's just easier for I don't want to just they should, you know, all these mantras in our heads. They should just know, I don't want to ask, I can just do it, I do it better, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00So you're hitting on something I also talk about, these mantras. I call them stories that sabotage, and I think they show up in a number of ways. I think one is that just like you're saying, um, I've done this a million times. Why am I why am I gonna create any tension by asking my partner? And then if they don't respond well, it's gonna bother me. I'm gonna get more upset. Like I'll just do it. Uh, I don't want to inconvenience them. That's one type of narrative that we tell ourselves, and the and we'll never know if we're wrong if we don't ask. Because usually our narratives are not always accurate. And then the second kind of way we do this is we, I think, especially as as women and moms, we create these sort of impossible standards for ourselves and then these stories around them. So things like, well, a good mom doesn't need to ask for help. A good mom takes care, or I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I don't deserve a break. This is my job. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That sort of story is going to completely sabotage you asking for help, you having these conversations with your partner. Even when you do, if you do kind of push past that and you still ask for help, then you're gonna be left with guilt. And so it's important that when we talk about mental load, we're talking about what do you and your partner do, but then also what are the things you might need to challenge it within yourself that are getting in the way of you asking for what you need and asserting yourself.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's so good, Morgan. That's that's like what are the stories we're telling ourselves? And can we sit with ourselves and recognize what some of those stories or mantras or scripts are that we play out over and over? And can we challenge them? I'm thinking even if you feel so knee deep, if you're listening and you're like, I am so knee deep, I don't even know how to unravel. I mean, this is what a trained therapist can help you do, too, or a coach like Morgan, where you where you're just really kind of unraveling a little bit to get started. So that might be an idea, idea for you, because you may be listening and going, I don't even know where to start. But change is possible, and usually it's in increments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. This is a process, and I it it was a process getting to this point of overwhelm, and it's a process getting out of it. I mean, I think so. Let's say somebody's kind of in that space that you're talking about where they're super overwhelmed and they feel like they're drowning. Um step one can be a number of things to kind of ease that relief. Step one can be sitting down with their partner and just saying, like maybe you're not ready to have the big conversation, right? Redelegate, but sitting down and saying, there are a few things I need to get some help with. So having that kind of conversation, just almost like a critical care conversation, right? Where it's like, I I I'm gonna lose it. And the the second is if you can't even have that conversation, just start writing some things down, I think, and getting them out of your head. If you're like, oh, my partner is not here, or my partner's not gonna do anything right now, or it's just not a good time for them to jump in. Sometimes writing things down, getting them out of your head, getting them on paper frees up a little bit of space to catch your breath.
SPEAKER_01I always say, you know, things in the dark tend to cause guilt and shame, right? And then when we get them into the light and recognize, you know, what they are exactly, it's not easy to to barf it all up, right? Or even to ask for help, right? However, this is a healthy, these are healthy steps to take for you, your own self, your own person, and then for your relationship.
SPEAKER_00I was saying is what you can define, you can dominate. I think that there's I mean, this is the whole idea behind insight and therapy, right? How is insight helpful? Because when you can define an experience, then you can do something about it.
SPEAKER_01I love it. And giving language to that, I I just think it's it's it's beautiful. I would love the listeners to hear a little bit about how they could find you and your work in the world. Would you share that before we wrap up with our pleasure practice?
SPEAKER_00You can find me on Instagram, that's where I show up most often. I do series on different relationship topics, so they last anywhere from a week to two weeks. Um, and my handle is my love thinks. And then we have a blog, mylovethinks.com. Um, so there's lots of free content and resources on there. And then I actually have worked with my dad, who's in the same profession for over 13 years. He has a company called Love Thinks, and we have lots of online courses, mental load, a course for couples, for dating, if you're single and dating, and how to be intentional around that. So all of that can be found through mylovethinks.com.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. On this podcast, we have a pleasure practice where we are trying to really stop and notice and pay attention to what delights us day to day, what just brings us pleasure day to day. Do you have something that you might share that just delights you?
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of things. Um, yesterday uh we went, my kids and I went to the park, and I this has never happened in my entire time as a mother. Um, but I got to sit in a chair and watch them play in this like little fake river, and I got to read a book, and that brought me so much pleasure because I was like, did I just arrive at a new place in mothering? I don't think it will last, but that was my pleasure yesterday.
SPEAKER_01And it's wonderful to recognize that and acknowledge that to yourself and say, I really enjoyed that. Oh, I love hearing that because I want to encourage you, you know, as a older woman, to seek to replicate that kind of thing in your life because young moms have busy, busy lives. So oh, thank you so much for being with us, Morgan. I hope you all will check her out. She gives such practical tips and conversation starters on her IG. And um, I I think you'll enjoy following along with her. She's prompting you if you are on social media. So thanks for being with us, Morgan.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me. Such a fun time talking with you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01And community, this is a big piece of the mental puzzle of learning to recognize the things that weigh into our brains and our minds and steps to move forward to really increasing our desire and pleasure in general, not just in our sexual health, it's learning how to manage our minds. When we manage our minds, we do really learn to give ourselves more permission for pleasure.
