In my work with couples over the years, I’ve noticed a destructive pattern that touches the majority of relationships, fostering resentment, anger, and sometimes leading to the ultimate death of the relationship. That pattern is an unequal division of labor — the sense that one partner is carrying far more of the household’s chores and responsibilities than the other. This occurs in all types of relationships: heteronormative, gay and lesbian, poly, and beyond.

The Pattern: How Unequal Chores Turn Into Resentment

The pattern goes something like this:

  1. Partner A thinks that Partner B does little to help with household chores.
  2. Partner A feels reluctant to bring it up to Partner B, because when they do, Partner B becomes defensive.
  3. Partner A begins to feel resentful toward Partner B.
  4. Partner A eventually blows up at Partner B, and Partner B feels surprised.
  5. Partner B may become defensive but eventually apologizes and promises to help out more in the future.
  6. Tension in the relationship is defused and the couple enters a close, loving “honeymoon phase” during which they reconnect.
  7. Partner B helps out around the house a bit more for the next few days or even weeks, but eventually, the pattern returns to Partner A feeling like they are doing most of the household chores and resenting Partner B.

This pattern can continue indefinitely, creating tension, distrust, and feelings of contempt in the relationship, which can eventually lead to its dissolution.

Unless a couple sits down and addresses the division of labor with clear communication and commitments, it’s highly unlikely to change on its own.

How We Got Here: A Brief History of Division of Labor

If we look at this problem in a historical, heterosexual, socio-economic context, it’s easy to see how modern couples inherited this pattern. Until the mid-1800s, a woman’s legal rights were subsumed into her husband’s upon marriage. She could not own property, keep her own earnings, or enter into contracts — in other words, she had no ability to survive independently apart from her spouse. Similarly, English common law held that a husband could not be prosecuted for raping his wife — a legal exemption that persisted in the United States well into the 20th century. North Carolina, in 1993, was the last state to criminalize marital rape. Full legal recognition of a wife’s bodily autonomy within marriage, in other words, is barely a generation old.

Although women could legally work outside the home during this period, if they were married, their wages often belonged to their husbands as a matter of law. Many employers also enforced “marriage bars” that prohibited them from hiring married women at all. Reforms throughout the 20th century gradually changed this, granting women the ability to earn and keep their own wages and work outside the home, even once married.

So here we are, in the first quarter of the 21st century, with men and women both working outside the home. In fact, given the cost of living, two working parents are usually essential for a couple or family to make ends meet. Our mental models of the division of labor, however, are still based on an outdated framework handed down from our ancestors and reinforced by pop culture.

My near-two-year-old daughter makes me painfully aware of this pattern every time she picks up a mop to “be like Mommy.” There’s nothing wrong with mopping — I actually kind of enjoy it. But what happens if my child only ever sees Mommy mopping, and never Daddy? I know from experience and from my profession that what my daughter sees has far more impact than anything I could tell her. Mop in hand, I ask myself: what household chores does she see Daddy do? That’s when I become aware of how I’m participating in a pattern I reject, and how that pattern will repeat itself unless I actively step up and collaborate with my spouse to change it.

This isn’t solely a heterosexual problem, either. There’s a story in our culture — reinforced by movies, music, books, and other media — that if one partner earns the most money, the other partner should be responsible for most of the housework, regardless of how many hours they’re working outside the home. My gay and lesbian clients come to realize they’re operating under this same paradigm, and it’s eroding their relationships. I recently worked with a transgender man who, because he earned the majority of the household income, assumed he was absolved of doing housework. Here again was a relationship in trouble because no conversation had ever been had about the actual chores and responsibilities that needed to be done, and who would carry them.

What the Research Shows About Resentment Over Housework

This dynamic is borne out by research. John Gottman, whose work has followed thousands of couples across nearly five decades, found that conflict over an unequal division of labor wreaks havoc on relationships, undermining the “safe haven” that intimacy depends on. He found that men often underestimate how much housework their partner is doing relative to them, and don’t recognize the gap — so when a partner doesn’t help with housework and is asked to do more, they feel unfairly criticized rather than seeing the imbalance. He also found, in research on heterosexual couples specifically, that when men participated more in housework, their wives reported a more satisfying sex life.

The creation of a safe haven within a relationship is at the core of attachment theory, and it’s essential for our nervous systems to feel safe and secure. Without a safe haven, true intimacy becomes difficult, if not impossible. When one partner leaves more of the household burden to their spouse, that spouse is likely to internalize messages like:

  • Your time doesn’t matter as much as mine.
  • Your job is to serve.
  • I have more important things to do.
  • You don’t matter to me.

These messages can lead to anger and resentment over housework. Left unaddressed, they can also contribute to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

The Exercise: How to Split Chores Fairly With Your Partner

So what can be done? If you recognize the pattern above in your own relationship, here’s an exercise that can help you split chores fairly and rebuild trust around the division of labor.

Exercise for a Shared Home Workload

  1. Start as a team. Ask your partner if they’d be willing to read this post and do this exercise with you.
  2. Make a list. Both you and your partner each make a list of every household chore you can think of that needs to be done, regardless of who currently does it or is expected to. Include the less obvious ones: scheduling the dog’s vet appointments, keeping track of family birthdays and sending cards, writing thank-you notes, hiring a plumber, putting up and storing holiday decorations, replacing HVAC filters, remembering gifts for your kids’ friends’ birthday parties.
  3. Put it together. Combine your two lists into one.
  4. Break it down. Go through the combined list as a team and identify who currently does what.
  5. Talk about it. Have a clear, kind conversation about how balanced or imbalanced the list appears. In this conversation:
    1. Discuss unspoken expectations that may be shaping the division of labor (“My dad always took the car for an oil change, so I assumed you would too”).
    2. Consider where those unspoken expectations came from.
    3. Notice where you — not your partner — need to make changes (“I think I’m doing too much. Here’s what I’d like to take off my plate”).
    4. Ask your partner how you two, as a team, can support you in making those changes (“I’d like to take over the laundry, but I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. Would you be willing to show me how to sort it so I don’t ruin anything?”).
  6. Shine a light in the dark places. Notice any unwritten stories that surface for you about housework based on income or work outside the home (“He makes so much more than me, I should take on more of the housework,” or “I earn most of the money, I deserve to relax when I get home”).
  7. Be creative. If conflict emerges, or you simply can’t agree, think outside the box. Could you hire someone to do this task? Does the task actually need to be done at all, or is it an unrealistic expectation you can drop? Can it be modified to take less time or effort?
  8. Take a break. If the conversation gets stuck or overly heated, step away and come back to it later. If you’re unable to reach an agreement on your own, couples therapy may help.
  9. Commit, commit, commit. Once you’ve reached an agreement, write it down. Look your partner in the eye and tell them you’re committed to following through, because you want an egalitarian relationship with them — and you’re committed to building one.
  10. Follow through. Now for the hard part: actually doing it. The road to divorce is paved with broken commitments. Don’t let this be one of them. Partners feel safe when they know they can count on each other to keep agreements.

If you’re just now becoming aware of workload imbalances in your relationship, this exercise can help you head off unhealthy patterns before they take hold. If you’ve been stuck in a power struggle, or facing a wall of resentment over housework, this exercise can help you break through.

What Kids Learn From Watching Us

A word of caution for those raising children: what they see is what they’ll do. Research shows, again and again, that children interact with the world in much the same way they observe their primary caregivers doing it. If you’re raising a son who watches labor imbalance play out in the home in his father’s favor, he’s likely to subconsciously minimize his future partner’s labor — leading to resentment and conflict down the line. If you’re raising a daughter who perceives a labor imbalance favoring the male or primary breadwinner, she’s likely to take on more household labor herself, and to either become angry about it or internalize it as depression.

I realize this isn’t easy. I’ve personally faced this challenge in every romantic relationship I’ve been in. Even now, with a feminist spouse who engages with me in deep, loving conversations about the nature of our relationship and how to strengthen it, this dynamic still surfaces. Why? Because we’re all steeped in centuries of a pattern in which one partner’s identity and rights were subsumed by the other’s. It surrounds us on our screens — when was the last time you saw a man scrubbing a toilet or a floor in a commercial for cleaning supplies?

If you work through this exercise successfully, I’d love to hear about it — drop a comment below. And if you didn’t get through it, why not? Share your experience in the comments.