Courtship shows you how someone loves you, but does it reveal how you’ll share the mental load when real life begins?

Courtship can feel like a fairy tale until you start sharing everyday life together. That’s when the invisible mental load of marriage can begin to surface.

‘What’s your favourite food?’ ‘Where do you want to go on your honeymoon?’ ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ Courtship is often full of such fairy tale questions that they hardly reveal what marriage will actually look like once two people begin sharing a life, responsibilities and the mental load of everyday living. Once the wedding is over, that’s when the mental load of marriage begins to reveal itself, from remembering and planning to managing the countless invisible tasks that keep a household running. In an interview with HT Lifestyle, counselling psychologist, author and life coach Damini Grover decodes why mental load can become a relationship problem.

The invisible mental load

Before getting married, couples talk about how they’ll divide up the chores. Who's cooking? Are both partners working? Where do they live? How will you handle money? But we don’t hear as much about the work that can’t be easily captured on a chore chart: the mental load of managing a shared life.

“Mental load isn’t just about doing things. It’s about seeing, remembering, anticipating and planning what needs to be done,” said Damini.

Difference between mental load and responsibility

Most people often get confused between mental load and sharing responsibility. Damini highlighted that it’s the difference between taking a parent to the doctor and remembering to make the appointment for them. It’s buying food vs. seeing what’s being used up. It’s going to the family function versus remembering the birthday, buying the gift, coordinating plans, and keeping up with the relationship.

Marriage is a point when this invisible work becomes visible in ways that courtship cannot. (Pexel)

And marriage is a point when this invisible work becomes visible in ways that courtship cannot. According to Damini, when you're dating, you're mainly running two separate lives. Marriage carries with it the gradual sharing of households, money, families, social obligations and, for many couples, children. Suddenly, a person is not just doing work; they may become the person whose job it is to remember that the work exists.

Here is where resentment can start to quietly build.

One partner may genuinely think, "But I help when you ask me." The problem is that having to constantly ask is work in itself. If one person has to notice everything, delegate it, follow up and remind the other person, they haven't really shared the responsibility; they have become its manager.

According to Damini, the mental load can be emotional too. Who sees that something's been wrong between you? Who starts difficult conversations? Who is there to remember what is happening to both families? Who expects trouble, smooths over conflicts or keeps track of everyone’s emotional needs?

Eventually, the person with this invisible responsibility may not only be tired. They may feel alone in the relationship.

How to avoid mental load?

According to Damini, that’s why premarital conversations need to be deeper than, “Will you help with the house?

Instead, couples can ask: What does shared responsibility mean to us? Who controls your everyday life today? What responsibilities have you never had to think about because someone else always took care of them? How will we share the tasks, but also the responsibility of noticing and planning them?

Partnership is more than two people dividing up responsibilities to help each other out. (Pexel)

This is especially the case if one moves from a parental home where parents took care of many things to a marriage. We cannot assume that an adult is self-sufficient. Marriage does not require a perfect 50-50 split every day. There are going to be times when one of you is carrying more because the other one can’t.

The problem is that the temporary imbalance becomes the permanent architecture of the relationship. “Partnership is more than two people dividing up responsibilities to help each other out. It is two people realising that the life they have created together is theirs – and so is the responsibility of carrying it,” explained Damini.

Note for the readers: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional advice. Please consult a qualified expert for personalised guidance.