Link: Emotional labor, defined

[torquill]

I'm reading this collation of comments about emotional labor and thinking. One of the segments is titled "Bonsai human"; it brought to mind the moment when the bloom finally came off the rose in my relationship with Greg. We were biking together in Black Rock City at night, going out to a party before finding out what was happening in the rest of the city. He had paused on an empty street to fiddle with his phone -- he was trying to get a wifi signal. I looked around, a little bored, and my eye lit on a camp off to the right.

"Ah, that's where Animal Control is this year," I said, cheerfully.

"What?" He looked up irritably and removed his headphones, which I hadn't realized he was wearing.

"I said that I found the Animal Control camp," I repeated patiently, and pointed.

He looked like I had just said that Martians have three heads. After a moment, he said, "Can I just... not listen to you unless you say something important?"

I couldn't think of a reply, and he went back to his phone. Still speechless, I left him to it and took off to find my own entertainment. I doubt he missed me.

Every time I think about it, I'm just flabbergasted that any caring human could say something like that to someone close to them. But he was so wrapped up in himself, he saw no reason to accommodate me. I would listen to him rattle on about whatever amused or entertained him, even if it was stale or uninteresting to me, because I wanted to show that I cared about what he had to say. Even if it was unimportant in my eyes.

Emotional labor is always extending yourself to listen and empathize. It's a slap in the face when it's not just overlooked, but they make it very clear that they will not do the same for you.

Comments

[akienm]

I see this very slightly differently. Very slightly. This would be one of those things where you extended the gift of empathy because that's what your secret rulebook for relating said you should do... But without finding out if he would also do the same. And then when you found he didn't, it was a surprise. Everybody has a secret rulebook for relating, and the trick, as I have painfully found, is to validate your rules with the other person as soon as you're aware of them. And if necessary, to adjust the closeness you have accordingly. It took me 15 years to figure that out.

[digitalsidhe]

I dunno... maybe there are some conversations being referenced here that I'm not in on, so take this all with the appropriate level of salt. That said:

I consider "empathy", a.k.a. "trying to understand and care about someone", a fundamental part of relating to them. It's not part of a "secret rulebook for relating"; it's part of what relating is. Especially in the context of a romantic relationship.

If someone else's rules for "relating" involve "don't bother me with anything that isn't important", then the level of closeness I'd want to have with them is far, far less than "romantic or sexual partner", or even "friend" (or FWB), honestly. And I don't think I'm at all idiosyncratic or unusual in that.

[akienm]

I didn't say anything about idiosyncratic or unusual. Everything about how we relate is a mental habit. Especially our most deeply held assumptions. Habits we start to learn even before we're born, if some of the most recent research I've read is true.

There's an author named Mark Michael Lewis. He's got a couple of books out that I think are out of print now, but which I was lucky enough to have him give me audio book copies of. Happy to loan to you. Anyway, secret rulebook for relating is his concept. But really, it's just a way to encapsulate these habits we have about relating.

For you, it's assumed that empathy should be part of a relationship. Well and good, me too. Fundamentalists in many religions don't see it that way at all. Your assumptions call them wrong, as do mine. But it's down to these mental habits we all have. Culture. Theirs say women are property, and must be treated that way. Mine say women are divine, and must be treated that way. (Which I give myself a B- on for the most part.)

Lewis identifies the places where our habit sets do not match as a place for either growth of the relationship with the other, or growth of relationship with the self. By beginning to distance yourself from him when you did, you were taking the second path. Which I find eminently reasonable. It's certainly what I eventually learned to do in my marriage. As is often the case, you got the learning more quickly than I did.

To say my way of relating is right is to say my culture is right. It's both true, and not true. Within the self, or within the culture, it's certainly true. Viewed more objectively, they're just different.

[torquill]

My biggest problem was that either his rulebook changed, or he was trying to play by mine up to that point, or (most likely) his mental image of the type of relationship changed -- thus shifting his ruleset -- after five or six years of an established relationship. I didn't detect that his rulebook around empathy in relationships was different because up to that point, I had zero indication that it didn't match mine. That's a lot of what made it so hurtful; if it had been somebody I'd only been dating for two weeks, I could have blown him off and just figured we weren't compatible.

So the "secret rulebook" approach is fine to a point, but it doesn't address this situation: where you have poured a lot of emotional labor into a relationship with at least appreciation in return, and then something happens -- you don't really know what -- and suddenly you're getting dropped on the floor. I've been in relationships where it became a runaway condition, too, because I was operating on the previous guidelines and suddenly not getting feedback, and amping up my attempts to connect and communicate (just to try to establish the rulebooks) to a ridiculous level until I'd simply burn out. People don't always tell you when you become old news. I guess I was lucky in that he gave me a very clear indication of where I stood in his universe at that point.