The email I send my wife every week

One dad's way to take more ownership of the mental load

Whenever I’m surprised that one seemingly isolated misunderstanding has engulfed our marital discourse in a conflagration that can be seen from space, my wife explains, again, how one domino falling at the wrong time can upset the fragile ecosystem that keeps our family running in the right direction. And I once again realize how many things she’s holding in her head that have fallen out of mine.

In the past, when we’ve talked about the mental load, it’s felt like an 800-pound gorilla in charge of a cycle we’re doomed to repeat. We fight. We repair. We promise to communicate better. And we hope it will all sort itself out.

But it doesn’t. And it won’t. So that’s why I started sending out a weekly menu each Sunday.

Something we’d talked about but could never commit to was owning certain areas of responsibilities. As someone put it when I asked moms what they wish dads knew from the start, “It’s most helpful if you take on total responsibility for some parental tasks. For example: communicating with preschool or washing clothes.” For me, planning weekly meals and then shopping and cooking was a no-brainer. It had become a real bottleneck, and I knew that taking it over would free up some much needed mental capacity for my wife.

The best part is that instead of feeling like I added more work to my plate, planning ahead actually makes the shopping and cooking easier which makes weeknights smoother for everyone. No more dead-end conversations about what we feel like having for dinner. No wasted time running out for ingredients instead of spending with our son. And, more than anything, it feels really good to be the reason your family is gathering around the table.

If you want to give it a try, I recommend starting with a couple anchor meals that everyone’s happy repeating. In our house, that’s tofu bowls and tacos. They’re easy to put together, ingredients can vary with what’s in the fridge, and they always taste good. When you’re ready to mix in something new, I find deb perelman (her tomato and sausage risotto is the first meal I made for my wife) and Caroline Chambers (her peanut chicken chop is a new entry this week) to be excellent resources.

One email hasn’t magically shifted the burden of responsibility in our marriage, but I’m finding that a little organization and initiative goes a long way, and I hope this works for any other dads out there looking for a way to take on more of the mental load at home.