Why Your Mental Load Is Always Invisible as a Wife — and 3 Easy Ways to Fix It | #160

Do you ever feel like the project manager of your home? The default parent? Or like your brain just never shuts off? That’s the mental load, and most of the time, it’s invisible.

In this episode of Supported Wife Society, I’m breaking down:

• What the mental load really is (hint: it’s more than chores).
• Why it stays hidden and keeps you in “roommate mode” with your husband.
• 3 super practical ways to start fixing it this week.

I’ll share my own story of stepping into Glenn’s world as a single dad, how I ended up carrying everything without even realizing it, and why invisible labor leads to resentment, exhaustion, and lost intimacy.

By the end, you’ll know how to:
 ✨ Make the mental load visible with a simple audit.
 ✨ Hand off one recurring task without hovering or redoing.
 ✨ Use the “Pause & Pass” method to create space for him to step up.

Because here’s the truth: you don’t have to carry it all. Small changes add up to big shifts, and these three quick wins are the perfect place to start.

💡 Resources & Links Mentioned

• Get the free Mental Load Audit Worksheet → lemonprice.co/audit
  
  
• Join the Supported Wife Society to go deeper with a guided Mental Load Audit, monthly Script Vault, and accountability pods → lemonprice.co
  
  
• DM me on Instagram to share your win from this week’s episode!

00:00 Introduction to the Mental Load

00:27 Personal Story: Taking on the Mental Load

01:37 The Invisible Work: Why It's Overlooked

02:21 Comparing Household Tasks: Mental vs. Physical

05:07 The Anticipation and Planning Behind the Mental Load

09:02 Making the Mental Load Visible

09:54 Delegating Tasks: Practical Steps

14:06 Conclusion and Invitation to the Supported Wife Society

Enjoy the episode, everyone!

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1. Share the podcast!
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Here are the best ways for you and me to connect and grow together!

Step 1: Subscribe to the Podcast
Step 2: Download the Mental Load Audit
Step 3: Let's Connect: https://www.lemonprice.co/coffeechat

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to the Supported Wife Society today. I'm really excited because we're gonna dive deeper into the mental load, what it is, why it's always invisible, and then I'm gonna give you three super practical ways to start fixing it like this week. So if you've ever felt like the project manager of your home. Maybe the default parent, or if you're like me and it feels like your brain never shuts off, this is going to be why. And so I wanna break this all down. So when Glenn and I actually got married, he was a single dad. The kids were, I mean, like four and six, he had, I mean, almost no help right whatsoever. And. So when I came into the picture, I was working for myself. My hours were very flexible because I worked for myself. I was making great money, and so I could pick up a lot of the mental load for him. And he had been doing this, I mean, by himself for years when Glenn and I got together, and so I. Naturally just because, especially as a woman, right? I naturally just picked up a lot of the things that he was doing because he had done it for so long. And I'm like, okay, well I'm really good at multitasking. I have a really good memory. So like I can handle a lot of these things. I can handle planning birthday parties and appointments, and I took over the finances'cause that stress has gone out. It's not a strong suit. I love math. That just made sense. And I did all the grocery shopping. I did all of those things. I made sure the house was clean. I made sure laundry was away like I did. I did all those things. And here's the thing, most of the time people don't. Notice, right? It's not because Glen didn't care or that he wasn't appreciative because he'd been doing all those things, but it's that that type of work is invisible work. Nobody sees you remembering that the trash goes out tonight. Nobody sees you planning Taco Tuesday and the fact that you remember what's in your pantry and what do we need to buy for Taco Tuesday, and then you either have to order it or you have to go pick it up. And so you have to plan your day around that activity. But you feel it because it's a constant, and I think that's why so many women feel like the CEO of their household and why they're in roommate mode with their husband. I was actually talking to somebody about this a couple weeks ago, and I always hear the argument from husbands, not mine, but from a lot of men well, I handle changing the oil, or I cut the grass. And so the work feels the same. Okay, let's just be like real fast. I'm gonna do a quick mass on this because, okay. We have two acres of land and gliding cuts the grass probably once a week and it maybe takes them two hours a week to cut the grass and we're only cutting the grass, let's say. March April time until the beginning of October-ish.'cause then the grass are dying, whatever. So I'm gonna say a solid six months, Glen's cutting the grass. So 24 let's say that's 24 weeks as he's cutting the grass, right? Six months times, four weeks. In a month, give or take 24 weeks. And then. I'm, I'm math. Well, okay, 24 weeks. So let's say it takes two hours. He spends 48 hours a year cutting the grass. If I make dinner every single day, and I usually do the dishes'cause it's just, you know, when dinner is done, like Glen and the kids throw showering, you know, like he usually gets home from work. The kids are getting ready for school the next day. So like I cook and clean. Because my schedule, again, is a little bit more flexible, and so if I make dinner, let's say, let's say even, we go out to dinner once a week, and so I'm only cooking six days a week. That and cooking and cleaning. So now we're at six hours a week times 52. That's 312 hours that I spend just making dinner and cleaning up after dinner. 312. So when I hear people say oh, well he does, you know, he cuts the grass and stuff. It is not the same. It's not the same at all. If I divide it by the amount of time that Glen spends cutting grass, I am making dinner six and a half times more than he cuts grass. Six and a half times more mental work and physical labor than Glen is cutting the grass now. Obviously what I'm saying is it's just not a good excuse and I hate that excuse. And again, I'm using that as an example. Like I know how long it takes climb to cut the grass. I know how long it takes me to make dinner. So when I hear that excuse from people, it irritates me to no end because it is just not the same. And so when I'm looking at the mental loads, like why is it invisible? Right? Not, because it's not like the doing right that's invisible. It's the thinking work, right? It's remembering that it's school picture day coming up. Our, the kids went back to school the 1st of August, so our school picture day is already coming up soon. It's remembering that. You know, our school right now has a can too drive going on. So it's remembering oh my gosh, I know that the youngest cares deeply about this canned food drive. So I need to make sure when I go to the grocery store I pick up more canned goods or like just pick up another case of something from Costco for him to do this. This is not a big deal. It's the anticipating. So like I know that this is gonna sound so unhinged when I say it, but. I am already thinking about Thanksgiving. I am already thinking about the fact that like I know my in-laws will come here, my husband and I, we we might be control freaks. We do the entirety of Thanksgiving. I don't let people bring sides or anything'cause I menu plan. So like I will start menu planning now and I will start picking up things from the grocery store now, like things like everybody really likes. Corn casserole. So like I'll make sure I have plenty of like corn in the house. We have to have green bean casserole. Like I'll start getting like yams, all those things like now. So I'm also not buying it all the week of Thanksgiving when everybody else who didn't plan is trying to do it. And then I'm like, okay, my brother-in-law just moved back down here. So chances are he'll be with us for Thanksgiving. We have a couple of friends who are single parents who just tend to be here for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. We had that happen last year. One of Glenn's friends, he's single dad. It just so happened you know, the way that the schedule worked out. So like he was here for Thanksgiving and Christmas and so I plan accordingly for extra people. These are all things I'm thinking about. And so then I'm thinking to myself, do I have, I do a very fancy holiday. Always have, so it's do I have enough napkin ring holders? Do I have enough napkins? Is my table setting big enough? Am I okay? That is the mental, that's the invisible work. That goes on. Glen absolutely spends 12, 14 hours smoking a Turkey on Thanksgiving. Uh, but, and then I make the sides actually the day before and I get them in the fridge, so that way, literally the day of Thanksgiving, I just have to pop'em in the oven and I don't have to like, take up the whole kitchen cooking. But it is. It is the anticipating stuff that's to come. It's the planning stuff, right? It's deciding what you're doing, right? A lot of the decision falls on you, and that again, is invisible mental, like work that you're doing, right? Some chores, like chores are visible, okay? The laundry is piled up. Everybody sees it. Like I said, remembering it's picture day tomorrow. That is the mental load. And no one sees you thinking and anticipating these things. And so here's what happens, right? You're carrying all the tabs open in your brain, then resentment starts to build where you're like, if I don't do it, it's not gonna get done. And so then because of that, right? That builds up over time. You start to feel like his mom, not his wife anymore. You feel like you have an extra child. Nobody wants to sleep with their child. And so naturally intimacy drops because you've been mothering your partner all day long. And then of course you don't wanna have sex with your husband at night, duh. It's not necessarily because of the making the dinner, right? It's because mentally you've been carrying things all day long. It's decision fatigue. That's what exhausts you before lunch. And then because it's invisible, it never gets shared unless we make it visible. Okay, so here's what I want you to do. I want you tomorrow, today, probably tomorrow, I want you to write down everything that you kept track of, even the little stuff. I want you to write it all down. Example, like you ordered soccer cleats, remembered snack for school. You paid the water bill, you remembered to text his mom back. Whatever it is. I want you to write down all of the things. That have nothing necessarily to do with you and have to do with the household that have to do with your marriage. Did you call the doctor? Did you worry about insurance? Did you like, what did you do? I want you to write it down, and then once you write it down, I want you then to look at it and be like, well, duh. No wonder I'm tired. Okay? So I want you to look at that thing, and I want you then to look at this list and I want you to pick one thing. Maybe it's bedtime, maybe it's the trash, maybe it's the weekend plans, whatever. It's, I want you to fully delegate it. I don't want you to hover, I don't want you to correct and I don't want you to redo it. Yes, it is going to be done differently than you would do it. Different does not mean wrong. Let me give you like prime example, okay. This morning, so I'm recording this on Wednesday. This past Monday was Labor Day, so our trash day got moved. Normally trash day is on Tuesday, but because of the holiday it always gets moved like a day, whatever the holiday is. So this morning when I, I get up before everybody else, I've always been an early riser. It's just how I am. I got up, I made myself and my husband coffee. Our coffee creamer was empty. Totally fine. We already, Glenn and I already bought some this weekend. Wasn't stressed, so I threw it in the trash, noticed the trash was full and I was like, oh, well that's perfect'cause it's trash day. Anyway, I thought about it for a quick nanosecond. I. However, the 13-year-old also knows that it's trash day. I did not have to say anything to him. He went, he threw something away this morning. He saw the trash was full, and then he double checked with me. He's Hey, isn't today trash day because of the holiday? I am like, yes it is. And he was like, cool, I got it. So he took the trash out, changed the trash can, like the trash bag, and then took the trash up to the curb. Beautiful. Perfect. My husband then says to me this morning, he was like, did you take the trash out? And I said, Nope, I sure didn't. And he is oh, he's like weird. He was like, who did it? And I told him who did it? And he was like, that's so funny. He is'cause I got up and I left this morning through the garage because I also was going to take the trash. I did not have to think about this. I know that there are three people in my house outside of me who are aware of Trash Day and they handled it. The only thing the oldest did was confirm that it was Trash Day because it's a holiday and he's in middle school, and so he is I just wanna double check before I take this out to the curb. That is what it looks like to hand off the thing. I did not have to do it. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about trash bags. I didn't think about anything other than. I knew somebody was gonna take it out who was not me because it's a responsibility I passed off. I'm like, that's a boy job. You guys are responsible. I don't have to do it. Okay, so the other thing I want you to do is something that I call the pause and pass, and I go through this more in the Supported Wife Society, but here's a quick little, this is how this kind of works. Next time that your husband says what's for dinner, instead of answering, I want you to pause and then pass it back. Well, what do you want for dinner? What do you think is for dinner? Like what, what are you cooking? Right? It's a small shift. Create space for him to eat and it's gonna feel awkward at first, but it works okay. Or you could do something like when I'm talking about recurring tasks, like Glen is phenomenal at making Mexican and smash burgers. If I say to him. Do you want Mexican for dinner? If I, I say that to him, the answer is always yes. I also know that means that I'm not cooking. Can I make Mexican? Absolutely. But he likes to make it. He loves to cook. It brings some joy to cook. I don't have to do that. All I do is say, what do you want? Make me a shopping list and then I go and get it.'cause that way it's home by the time he gets home from work. But I didn't think about the shopping list. I, all I did was go into the Walmart app, add those things to the Walmart app and hit deliver to my house. As long as it's here before 5:00 PM I don't really care. So I've delegated that to, I know that's a thing for him and I can go do other things because it is something I've passed off to him. I want you to find something that you can pass off. So quick recap here. The mental load is invisible because it's thinking work. You can make it visible with an audit and then share it by handing off something, right? We're gonna start to reset our DI dynamic this way, I promise. I know these are baby steps, but they're gonna start to change things for you. And so if you're listening, you're like, lemon, this is me. I. I need to be a part of this community. Then I wanna invite you to be a part of the Supported Wife Society. We're gonna go deeper with a full guided mental load audit. There's a script vault so you know exactly what to say. There's the accountability pods so you can actually hand things off without lowering your standards and have somebody to support you. As you start doing some of these bigger things, I want you to know you do not have to carry it all, so you can join us@lemonprice.co. Okay, it's up at the very top. It's on the homepage, it's everywhere. The supported wife society. Also in the show notes you could go to or you could just go to lemon price.co/audit and you could get a very simple, like quick, this will take you 10 minutes mental load audit. So I told you in the beginning to go and write down everything you do for the day. Go download that and it will help you write down all those things that you're doing. It's literally a Google Doc. You don't have to print anything out, literally just a file, make a copy, and just use it all day long as you're doing things. So. I wanna reset your marriage dynamic. I want you to feel in love and pursued and not like his mom anymore. And so, like I said, if you know this is for you, if you're like, okay, lemon, like I do need to do a deeper dive on this whole thing, then I wanna invite you to the Supported Wife Society. So just send me a DM on Instagram or go to lemon price.co and it is all over the homepage for you and I cannot wait to see you next week to you, to Lou Friends.