This Woman Says "Passion Projects" Are Not To Be Pursued On The Back Of A Partner's "Unpaid Labor"

As parents, we’re encouraged to take time away from the kids, pursue hobbies, and find our passions outside of raising a family. This is all well and good, but what happens when these “passion projects” start to interfere with everyday life? Some of them require a significant amount of time and a lengthy commitment (Ask any spouse of a marathon runner!).

One therapist-turned-ADHD relationship coach (@mentalloadcoach) says that’s when things get messy, especially for the partner in the relationship who is picking up all the slack.

In her “extremely unpopular” opinion, she claims that these kinds of hobbies and “passion projects” should not even exist if it’s at the expense of someone else's unpaid labor.

“If one partner protects their creativity and rest and ambition or joy because the other partner is holding the system together, that joy is being heavily subsidized,” she explains. “Not by money, but by someone else's nervous system.”

She says that this kind of imbalance can actually create negative impacts on the defaulted parent’s health, and they begin to create something called “emotional debt.”

“And that debt compounds quietly until the person who's holding the mental load forces a stop. And that happens sometimes through burnout, through depression, through anxiety, autoimmune issues, loss of libido, emotional withdrawal, quiet quitting your marriage,” she explains.

“And when kids watch this all happen, they internalize that joy belongs to the powerful. Care is invisible. Self-sacrifice is love. And later, they either overgive or overtake in their relationships. A healthy family system doesn't ask one person to shrink so another can expand.”

I think we can all guess what gender typically ends up doing the overgiving versus the oversharing!

In her caption, she expands on this theory, writing, “The load owning partner doesn’t have any passion projects because they are so overwhelmed with the day to day that they don’t even have time to consider anything above and beyond what is necessary in keeping the household running. All the while, the non-load owning partner has a lot of passion projects and joy-filled adventures with their friends and an abundance of hobbies.”

“They have a lot of opportunities to experience, trying out different leisure activities, all while their partner is juggling things that might be perceived to be too “tedious,” when there is that imbalance, emotional debt grows and the emotional load holder doesn’t realize that their stress hormones are out of whack and there’s a higher chance of them developing autoimmune diseases than their non load holding partner.”

Several Instagram users commented on the OP’s video with their own thoughts on this marital imbalance when it comes to hobbies and passion projects.

“Say it louder for all the extreme marathon runners, extreme climbers and their families. If I hear of one more man running across the Sahara while he has two children at home 🤦🤦🤦,” one user wrote.

Another said, “His free time is for joy her free time is to do household chores. The imbalance is criminal.”

“I’m 59 — and I meet so many women who didn’t explore their creative side until their 50s because 1. they never had the time, and 2. hobbies were considered ‘indulgent’ and they felt selfish for doing anything that wasn’t of value to the family,” one user shared.

Another said, “Thinking of all the famous men writers whose works only became famous because their wives wrote down the words they dictated, or transcribed their messy handwriting into something legible for the editor, or edited their first drafts, and all along kept the kids fed and clothed… yet we never hear about those wives’ own inner lives😕”

Golf widows! Marathon spouses! Women married to the guy who always wanted to be in a band! Are you listening?