19- Conversations on Love, Power, and the Invisible Work of Relationships

Many of us grew up with unspoken rules about relationships:

Don’t make things harder.
Don’t ask too many questions.
Don’t rock the boat.

But those rules often shape our marriages, families, and identities in ways we don’t fully understand.

On The Questions We Weren’t Supposed to Ask, therapist and relationship coach Angela Tam explores the hidden systems inside relationships—from emotional labor and mental load to gender expectations, power dynamics, and family roles.

Through storytelling, reflection, and conversations about relational healing, this podcast invites listeners to look more honestly at the patterns we’ve inherited and imagine new ways of sharing responsibility, care, and leadership in love.

Here is the substack article link: https://substack.com/home/post/p-190668831

Come follow me on instagram @MentalLoadCoach and subscribe to my newsletter here. Mental Load Owners- Dismantle gender norms in your household by applying to my group coaching program, GlassWing. GlassWing is a program where we look inside first to see what our relationship to the emotional burden of the mental load looks and feels like. Then we examine ways that we contribute to upholding the dysfunction like overfunctioning and maternal gatekeeping. Then move towards our partners and have conversations that are less charged with urgency and intensity so there's a bigger chance that collaboration in the mental load can take place. Apply for the group coaching program and let's dismantle gender norms together so we can collectively create a more equitable future for our kids. 

Transcript

1:14

Hey, welcome back to the So Now What? Podcast. I want to share with you this shocking piece of information that I just came across. According to Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement for Women, they said that we will not achieve gender equality for 164 years. Men care.com says We will achieve gender equality for 75 years, but they're more optimistic. And I sat with that for a moment. I just thought, oh my gosh, I don't think we will see gender equality in my lifetime, which I've come to accept. But I think what bothered me was that. I was sad to hear that we possibly wouldn't see gender equality in my kids' lives too. At the most optimistic level it would be when my youngest child is in their most elderly stages of their life, which I was not happy with. The global timeline to close the gender equality gap is 164 years, which basically means not in my lifetime, not in my kids' lifetime, and maybe not in my kids' kids' lifetime either. That doesn't sit right with me. A big piece of that inequality isn't only happening in our workplaces. It's not only happening with the pay app, it's happening inside our homes. It's happening in the invisible labor, the cognitive load, the emotional work, the planning, the anticipating, all that stuff. And when the labor is uneven, it doesn't just affect the relationship, affects careers, it affects income. It affects who has time to grow professionally. Who has time to rest, who has time to think? Really creatively about their future. So I wanna share with you part of the mission of my consulting organization is helping people see that connection. Yes, we're helping dyads build stronger relationships. And I say dyads because not every co-parenting partner is married. Not every co-parenting partner are even romantically connect connected or previously romantically connected. It could be two friends building co-parenting relationships. It could be your grandparent and you co-parenting your kids. And it doesn't have to be like two romantically connected married partners that are cis heterosexual. We're helping redistribute the mental load in families. We're also doing something bigger than that. We're trying to shift the culture around partnership. What I really do care about is impact, and we're helping to redefine masculinity. So that leadership in a family doesn't just mean that masculinity comes from providing financially for the family or physically for the family, and it's not limited to femininity being defined as physical, emotional, mental caregiving of the family. We're helping dyads move towards shared leadership at home. Which actually makes equity outside the home more possible too, because when labor is shared in the household, suddenly more people, especially people who are assigned women at birth, have that capacity to earn, create, lead, and contribute in the world in the way that they want to. If enough families are making these shifts, then maybe that 164 year timeline will shrink. Maybe gender equality becomes something our kids actually can see in their lifetime, and that's the bigger vision behind this work, that the pay gap will decrease To just get to exist in this world and that we would see more voices of creativity, more voices of career contributions, more voices in the boardroom, more voices in the CEO round tables, more equitable homes, stronger partnerships, and a world where care leadership and responsibility are shared. Our homes. That have more intimacy and children see that, and that would be the role modeling that we would be playing. And I'm hoping that my podcast would have a small part in that, moving that needle a little bit further towards, a little bit closer towards gender equity. That is why I'm doing the work that I'm doing here on the podcast. That's what drives me every day to see my family, potentially people in my family and my future generational descendants experience something that I get a tiny taste of. And for me, that has been amazing to be in a marriage. Where we do get to share in the responsibilities of caregiving, Definitely not. And so I wanted to tell you a little bit about my story, and if you read my Substack article re the title is a kid who asked too many questions or something like that. This is where I draw my inspiration from. I'm not reading the article, but I'm gonna draw from that and hopefully you can refer to that as part of your reference to this podcast too, and I'll include it in the show notes. I have not always been this curious. This is something that might surprise you because I am a therapist and I'm literally paid to ask questions. Actually, I'm not really paid to ask questions more than I'm paid to really listen and reflect deeply about, reflect back what's going on. So that is a funny thing that therapists are maybe not as known for, is we're known to ask questions, but we're also really paid to listen. And so growing up in a household, where kids were absolutely not allowed to ask questions. Help me to be a therapist'cause I am a good listener and I've always been a good listener. But the ironic thing is that my job, if I'm doing my job really well, it's that I'm a critical thinker and I'm a truth teller and I just get to ask people a challenging questions but also. apparently I grew up asking too many questions and I remember it irritating my mom and I didn't realize until much later that curiosity itself is was not allowed in my house. And honestly, when I look back at it, it makes a lot of sense that I became a therapist. So let me set the scene for you. My family culture had a lot of strong rules, but nobody ever said them out loud. So the rule is basically that you spoke when an authority figure asked you something, and the other rule is we didn't talk about feelings unless they've been bottled up enough to explode. And the explosion rule is that you fight, you get angry about something, you suppress your anger until you can't suppress it anymore. And then you let out this unbridled, unhinged kind of monologue about how much you've been suffering, and then you word vomit and anger vomit over the other person and you just pretend it never happened. And as a kid, that was incredibly confusing because my parents did not really display a lot of. Like blatant direct communication with each other. It was very indirect, and as a result, I became really good at reading the room, anticipating conf conflict and comforting my mom. I was very good at reading the emotional weather in the house, and I knew when things were about to explode. I was minding my own business in my room, which I did a lot of, and honestly, that skill is probably the reason why I became a therapist and why I am actually a really good therapist. I was basically doing unpaid emotional labor training since I was probably four years old, and I learned very early that my job was to sit down, shut up, and. Keep the peace at all costs. And that, looking back now, these are the four lessons I think I absorbed without ever saying them directly. Curiosity is dangerous. Feelings should be suppressed. You should always intellectualize your feelings and share your feelings in terms of thoughts rather than be vulnerable and share your feelings.'cause if you share your feelings. They will be dismissed or seen as something unimportant and inconvenience. The other thing is, the third lesson that I learned was don't expect people to connect with you on anything other than a superficial level, and your existence is to serve others and center other people's comfort because you as a child or you as a woman, a girl, have a low status. In the family hierarchy, and I think a lot of therapists actually come from environments like this. Your nervous system gets really good at tracking people, but I lost track of myself. It was something that I knew I needed to do because I only had limited bandwidth and limited capacity to show up. So my capacity and my bandwidth was focus. This is what I thought marriage would look like. When I got older, I had one clear goal in relationships. I didn't want a marriage like my parents, like that was number one, like the only thing I thought of. So I had, I know I wanna get married. I am too much of an extrovert to not be married. And I, at that time, I didn't know at that time. But I was way too uncomfortable being by myself. Being alone. And so I knew I wanted to get married and I became a Christian, an evangelical Christian in middle school. So I was basically indoctrinated that it was my duty as a human being to get married and appropriate, and I already bought into it because. I, even though I grew up in a really dysfunctional family, I just knew that, I think it was'cause of my conditioning that like my existence was to care for other people and I didn't know how to do it outside of getting married and having kids. So I really, I, but I knew, this is one thing that I knew is I knew that I did not want a marriage partnership, co-parenting relationship like my parents had. And I wanted an egalitarian partnership. I want a collaboration. I wanted someone to like mutually value each other's careers as well as being co-parents. And I always knew that, and I owe it to my mom for, she had a career outside the home. She worked at a bank. And I think for me that was a really good template. Telling me that there was a possibility that I could do something outside the home. And so I met Herman, my husband, I met him in Shanghai, and we met as Christian missionary workers. I know it's interesting'cause a lot of people know me for who I am right now in this version of myself as a therapist and a mom of three. Who's queer and neurodivergent and talks about all the social justice stuff and really roots for feminism and tries to embody feminism and international feminism and that where we really see the how. Race class, geo Sec. So that version of me is the present version that people see, but people don't know that I come from. I became a conservative Christian at in middle school, and I was in heavily conditioned indoctrinated to really prioritize a biblical framework of living. And I felt, and it's my personality because I am very much I do everything 100% to the 100% degree. And I, being a missionary is like basically how you proclaim your love to Jesus is what I learned. So I did, I went and became a missionary sharing the good news to all Christian students, all college students across this big city. And I really value that stage of my life. I don't feel regretful in what happened because I know that we can't go back in time, but I do sit with a lot of the things that I learned from that time and reflect about that impact that it had on me. But I met Herman through some really good friends that I consider one of my closest friends now that live in Boston and they introduced me to Herman. My friend Tim did introduced me to Herman, and I was very struck because I knew that his sense of humor was so charming. And I am very attracted to people who have a very good sense of humor and that make me laugh. And they don't necessarily need to be the center of the party, but center of attention. But I really like people who are quiet and mysterious, but also really funny. And so he is someone who embodies that. He's very charming, but not in a mainstream, charming kind of way. But he's like a low key, charming kind of way. Like a lot of people like him, and it's really because he's so subtly winsome. Yeah, and that was a huge attractive element to me. It still is. He's very kind and funny, and I thought one of my most favorite things about him was his clean apartment. I know that sounds so ridiculous to hear, but his apartment being clean was a huge green flag to me, and the reason why was. Because my parents always argued over hoarding things. My mom nagged my dad about buying stuff, and my dad was a collector. He loves buying clothes, jackets, shoes, books, and we lived in a New York City sized apartment. So then the conflicts arose about my mom telling my dad to not buy stuff and my dad fighting back after my mom's attempt to declutter. Anyways, that loop happened and so that loop plays in my background. So I just thought, I'm gonna marry someone. I'm gonna, I'm gonna find someone really attractive if they have their shit together. If they have their apartment clean. And that's one way to let me know that they have their shit together. And I thought maybe I had found someone who already knew how to share responsibility if they had their apartment so clean. And you know what it's like to carry the mental load of being clean. And at that time I didn't have that kind of vocabulary, but I think that's what I was thinking. So this is a part that like for me, it felt really difficult to accept, which was in premarital counseling. That we did.'cause a lot of Christian couples do that. We talk about spiritual intimacy, the husband being the leader about financial decisions or styles, sexual intimacy in-laws building community, church community. This is what we miss, is we miss conversations about parenting labor, emotional load collaboration. Chores compromising and actually compromising was talked about, but like at the end of the day, the encouragement is if you compromise whatever your husband thinks or prefers will trump whatever you decide, because compromising is not really possible when you have a complementarian marriage. Structural, complementary marriage structure basically means like you and your partner are equal, but if you disagree on something, he always hold, always holds the Trump card. And as it turns out, chores, parenting, labor, emotional load collaboration are the biggest creators of tension in relationships. It's like spiritual intimacy. Finances, sex, all that stuff is like very important. But a lot of what is not talked about in premarital counseling is how do you do the day-to-day stuff? Who and what gender norms have influenced your worldview about who carries a responsibility in your home. So I think part of me always wanted an egalitarian marriage, even though that was pushed out when I joined the Evangelical Church, but the culture I was in didn't really give me language or tools for that. But not just about therapists.'cause a lot of therapists are not really disruptors of the status quo. They're maintainers of the status quo, and this is not what I am. That's not part of what I value. My value in my work is to disrupt and dismantle inequities in our system. Racial, gender, class-based inequities, questioning systems, questioning norms, and being curious about power imbalances. And also not being afraid to question people who are above me. So this podcast will probably be a lot like this episode, storytelling, curiosity, reflections on relationships and family systems, and maybe asking some of the questions that weren't allowed to be asked growing up in my household, as well as in your household. So if you made it this far, I thank you for listening. Please tune in again. Thank you.