Why couples counseling won't solve household inequality
Why couples counseling won't solve household inequality
Don't go to couples counseling. Go to a divorce lawyer and claim the life you deserve.
It’s one of the first pieces of advice women get when they complain about household labor inequality: Go to couples counseling (along, usually, with a recommendation to read “Fair Play.").
But therapy can’t fix people who don’t want to change. And it certainly isn’t going to fix anything if the therapist believes the problem isn’t actually a problem. In a sexist society, you’re more likely to get a therapist who blames you for household inequality than one who wants to fix it.
I know a lot of couples who have been in couples counseling for years. But I can’t name a single couple who went from significant inequality to significant equality after couples therapy. I bet you can’t either.
At this point, I have one question about therapy in unequal relationships: Why bother, when you can just move the fuck on?
The fundamental assumption of couples counseling is that the two partners have a shared goal—or that if they don’t, they’re going to work together to identify and work toward a shared goal. This is why counseling doesn’t work in abusive relationships: the partners have different goals, and relinquishing power is never on an abuser’s to-do list.
Most couples counselors understand this, and urge people in abusive relationships not to go to therapy. Therapy can empower the abuser, arming them with more language to diminish the severity of their abuse, and more ammunition to justify their abuse. The same therapists who understand that people in abusive relationships should avoid joint therapy still generally advise counseling for severely unequal ones.
These therapists cannot be trusted.
That’s because unequal relationships are inherently abusive. Counselors who fail to recognize this also fail to recognize the fundamental truths of household labor inequality:
It is a deliberate choice, built upon men’s belief that women owe them more than they owe women.
Women don’t cause it. And men know what’s happening. They’re not stupid.
It robs women of years of their lives. And this matters because women’s lives matter.
A man buying his free time or sleep with his partner’s exhaustion is exploiting their partner. And unless he has a traumatic brain injury, dementia, or some other condition that renders them incapable of understanding the world around them, he knows exactly what he is doing. He sees his partner working when he doesn’t, feeding the baby when he sleeps, cleaning up after him. He knows that food comes from somewhere, that magic elves don’t clean the house, and it’s not fairies taking the kids to school each day. He presumably understands that Santa and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real, and that an actual human is buying gifts for the kids.
A therapist who sees this as anything less than a deliberate act of abuse lacks the skills necessary to intervene. At the core of the failure to acknowledge inequality as abuse is a failure to recognize the value of women’s time.
Therapists who don’t see this behavior as abusive also tend to blame the woman. And in so doing, they empower the man to persist in his abusive behavior.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when discussing household inequality is to pretend that if the woman just explains things to the man the right way, he’ll change. This approach fails to acknowledge that equality demands that men give things up.
Most men do not think they should have to give anything up for women. If you have any doubt, spend a little time on the manosphere or listening to self-described alpha bros, who are very clear that they see women’s sole role as service to men. They’re giving voice to what millions of men secretly think.
So the disincentive to change is massive. The odds of two partners facing household inequality with a shared agenda of true equality are basically zero. That’s because if your male partner really wanted equality, you would already have it. So if you don’t, he doesn’t—no matter what bullshit he tries to sell you about different standards, or how you’re never happy, or how being reminded that he’s oppressing you is actually an example of you oppressing him.
You’re entering therapy with someone whose goals are counter to your own. So all that’s going to happen in therapy is they’re going to gain more insight into your emotions, your needs, your weaknesses, so they can exploit those in the service of getting more free labor from you.
There’s another problem with going to therapy, too: The overwhelming majority of therapists are not feminists. So they’re going to share some of your partner’s shitty values. Your partner may get support for his bullshit in therapy. You’ll hear nonsense like:
“A lot of men need sex before they can offer emotional intimacy, and a lot of women need emotional intimacy before they can offer sex.” Translation: your consent to sex doesn’t matter, and your reasons for not having sex don’t matter either. You owe him your body (and he owes you nothing).
“He’s saying he feels criticized and judged over household labor. What’s that bringing up for you?” It’s bringing up the rage of a million women, because these are the bullshit excuses men use, and therapists should not credit him.
“It sounds like he wants to feel good about himself, and can’t do more until he does. How does that make you feel?” OH I DON’T KNOW LIKE MAYBE A MOTHERFUCKER WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THAT CHILDREN NEED TO EAT TO LIVE SHOULD NOT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF.
He’ll get a ton of validation. You’ll get very little. And it’s very unlikely that the therapist will tell him the truth: his selfish ass needs to change right now because he’s exploiting and abusing the person he’s supposed to love.
Therapists are people just like you and me, and they internalize the values of the patriarchy, just like the rest of us. So most therapists just don’t believe that women’s time matters, or that household labor inequality (or related issues) are serious.
If you’re going to therapy, make sure you find someone who understands the severity of these issues and is willing to confront your husband with reality.
Otherwise, just get divorced.
Marriage can be good and lovely. It can be a tool for liberation, for mutual growth, for incredible joy. So if it’s not, why bother?
You get one life. Don’t waste it on someone who doesn’t care what you do with your life. And don’t waste the money you could spend on a divorce lawyer on a therapist who will waste even more of your life.
Problem with men in therapy is they instantly size up the situation and realize a) no one in the arrangement has the threat potential / fortitude to make him change what he’s doing and b) therapy is a goldmine of emotional manipulation tools and opportunities he can take advantage of to advance his interests and maintain his superior position in the marriage hierarchy.
When men step into the therapy room they enter a world that’s inverted to what they normally experience. In a man’s daily experience, vulnerability and victimization are bad things that lower his status. Victimizing and exploiting his wife is proof that he’s really a man, that he’s superior. Other men congratulate him with envy, acceptance and recognition of his masculinity. Men will do just about anything to avoid revealing their actual vulnerabilities and victimizations. Every time women “open up” about being victimized by men and our emotional vulnerabilities, far from feeling bad for us, they feel affirmed in their superior position. “We do *that* to them, and they can’t / won’t do anything to stop us!”
But in the therapy room, victimization and vulnerability are valued and can *raise* men’s status. The therapist (9/10 the therapist is female) isn’t interested in status hierarchies and power, but in sharing feelings, which is the basis of female friendships. The man quickly realizes he can be put in the superior position in the hierarchy by revealing hurt and aggrieved feelings. The therapist sees the male revealing vulnerabilities as an attempt to bond and repair the relationship (because that’s what women do) instead of outmaneuvering the wife for dominance.
When the wife doesn’t relent in her requests, because no amount of revealing feelings can substitute for the man taking on household or childcare tasks, she (ironically) is seen as the one who is showing inappropriate domination and control. Getting out of actually doing the thing is seen as a reward the wife owes the husband in return for him “opening up.”
She’ll be supplied with various apologetic, supplicating “appropriate” ways to make her requests, not realizing the more she asks, no matter how nicely, the more she entrenches herself in the role of “nagging domineering wife.”
And even the husband doesn’t jump in revealing his ADHD, family history of alcoholism, feelings of inadequacy at work or home etc as a strategy to stay on top, he will relish in his wife revealing her own insecurities and vulnerabilities and store those to use and abuse in later status battles.
Stop telling men to go to therapy.
Wow. Thank you again for putting the thing in to words. This is my experience exactly. Thank you for reminding for of the myriad tiny ways by which my ex used to abuse me and our relationship. We started therapy 12 months into our relationship (red flag right there) at my suggestion because I was frustrated he wouldn’t do half the vacuuming. I was doing everything else but I guess in hindsight the vacuuming was the only thing I could visibly see that wasn’t equal. The inequality was exacerbated by the fact that I’d entered the relationship with a one-year old child. So I just kept doing the work, and my ex was happy to ride my coat tails. (Oh my gosh I just read that back, am crying now. What asshole would come into a new mum’s life and not help and allow her to do all the work while he played with the toddler and pretended he was dad of the year). He wouldn’t do the vacuuming because he was tired from his demanding job as a new teacher. Regardless of the fact that I was working and looking after my son, and we’d moved in together in a place that was closer to the school where he was teaching but meant an extra hour commute for me each day to get my son to his daycare so I could work. It all seems so clear now, but I was younger then and didn’t know any better. The therapy just put a band-aid on a gaping wound and extended a situation full of frustration and self-doubt. It would be five more years and another baby before I left him. But thank goodness I got out. It’s a hard grind being a single mum. But the freedom is delicious.