aquaholical

Women are expected to be “nurturing” and expend vast amounts of energy on being emotionally supportive toward men, while men are expected to ignore others’ emotional needs, fail to adress their own, and depend on women to do the emotional work in a relationship.

Emotional labour includes things like: listening to someone talk about his day and being emotionally supportive when he talks about his problems, encouraging him to go to the doctor when necessary, being the primary resolver of conflicts in the relationship, both between the two of them and with people outside the family unit, etc., etc.

When girls are very small we are taught to be quiet, to listen well, to be supportive, to put others’ needs first. This training continues into adulthood, while at the same time boys are expected to be loud, careless with each others’ feelings and not to process their own in a healthy way. Through adolesence and adulthood these pressures increase.

Girls and women who aren’t adept at or invested in emotional labour are treated as cold, heartless, and self-absorbed, while men who perform the bare minimum of emotional labour are considered very sensitive and men who perform the amount of emotional labour expected of women are considered emasculated.

This social pressure is enforced through media also. Stories featuring both men and women frequently stress the importance of women doing emotional labour while portraying men as being incapable of or uninterested in doing emotional labour. When media does portray men doing emotional labour, it’s often played for laughs, as the man is now emasculated, and therefore a target of derision.

This leaves women to see to our own emotional needs as well as to those of the men in our lives, praising women for being “nurturing” as though it’s an innate characteristic requiring no effort, and not expecting men to do it because “it doesn’t come naturally”.

when my mom gets upset and starts crying and yelling and then apologizing, we say she’s being unreasonable and acting “crazy”

it took me my whole life to A) notice this behavior and B) realize that it’s not fair. I identified as a feminist for years before I was aware of it. So, I’m certain that most people don’t notice these dynamics in their everyday lives. How easily they turn a blind eye when the men in their lives throw fits, not extending nearly the same courtesy to women.

I’m not going to argue that patriarchy doesn’t encourage men to suppress their emotions. I’m sure it does. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually successful. A lot of men just process their emotions in a shitty way, for example, hitting “Anonymous” and insulting people on the internet; intimidating and upsetting the people around them with frightening displays of anger; and in the worse case scenario, actually hitting someone.

Again, the fact that men are not encouraged to be emotional in the way women are does not mean that men do not express their emotions. Neither does it mean that women are free to express whatever emotions they wish in whatever way they choose. To the contrary, since we’re “in charge” of emotions, we’re basically expected to be emotional caretakers as well as physical caretakers for all the men in our lives. We do the work for him, we experience the emotions for him, he goes to sleep.

This is my problem with the “men need feminism too because patriarchy doesn’t let them express their emotions” argument, and in particular, the way men use it. At the end of the day, it’s self-serving. “Feminists needs to talk more about this” means they want more women doing more emotional labor, more more more. I’ve been doing it for free since I was old enough to be afraid of my dad. I’m tired.

(these imply to platonic and romantic relationships)

1. Attachment

The Emotional Abuser gives you attention: they make you feel flattered, loved and important. You start to believe that they genuinely care about you. They might even think that they do by themselves since they internally justify all their doings. Normally this kind of attachment would lead to a healthy bonding and a closer relationship. With the Emotional Abuser it leads to some levels of addiction and dependency on the victim’s part which is never their fault. Emotional Abuser’s behaviour exploits normal emotional bonding to another human being.

2. Guilt

In some point in the relationship you notice that it’s all about their needs. The Abuser might do something that hurts your feelings and bringing it up leads them to reason why it’s actually your fault and why you have to take responsibility for it. They make up convincing excuses why it’s not their job to do it, why it’s absolutely unreasonable of you to ask for it and so on. In other words: they Guilt-trip you. The Emotional Abuser believes they have no responsibility for their behaviour or feelings. If they feel uncomfortable by something in the relationship they will manipulate you to take the blame instead of trying to work things out. Guilt-tripping makes the victim submit and erodes their sense of emotional and physical boundaries since they are made to believe it’s their job to cater on Abuser’s needs.

3. Cognitive dissonance

After the idealization pace the Emotional Abuser will move to a devaluing pace. Catering to their needs is not enough anymore and you feel you can’t do anything right no matter what you do. The pace starts when the Abuser feels you are getting emotionally too close and/or you are trying to hold them accountable for something they have done. Emotional Abusers are afraid of responsibility and in some cases intimacy so they will try to push you away. They use manipulation: Gaslighting and Guilt-tripping to force you into silence and to take all the responsibility for the relationship. They give you Silent Treatment which is justified by some clever excuses. Emotional Abusers believe they are entitled to absolute emotional comfort even when it means abusing other people.

Because you remember how well they used to treat you, your mind has a hard time accepting they are not the person you thought they were. In fact you might start to make excuses for them in your head because they have manipulated you to think nothing is their fault. It is extremely difficult to get away from the Abuser’s emotional trap because they take advantage of the victim’s emotional bonding to them and give false hope that the relationship could be “fixed”. You are misled into thinking that if you just learn not to be so “needy” and “selfish”, the Abuser will reward you with the loving behaviour they demonstrated in the beginning.

Aftermath

The Emotional Abuser has no intention to take responsibility for what their abusive behaviour has caused you because they have normalized and justified it in their head. Not all of the Abusers are so sure of themselves but need a lot of internal convincing and validation from others so that they can feel good about themselves which is their goal: not having to deal with responsibility or emotional labour. After all Emotional Abusers are not Disney villains but people who are so selfish that they lack of motivation to learn how to not hurt people.

There are two ways how the trap can break: the victim quits all contact with the Abuser or the Abuser leaves the victim. The latter one occurs if the Emotional Abuser feels they have to deal with too much because of the victim. The Abuser might feel threatened by the victim if the victim is making the Abuser feel bad about themself by calling out their abusive behaviour. The Emotional Abuser thinks that they are actually the victim in the relationship because the real Victim is making them feel bad and scared. The Abuser is genuinely afraid that they would have to deal with negative emotions that taking responsibility would require.

My friend Vijay Gupta spotted this sign in Vroman’s Bookstore and said it reminded him of my reading manifesto:

The sign is from former teacher Daniel Pennac’s Better Than Life, a translation of his French bestseller, Comme un Roman, or “Like a Novel,” a reflection on books and reading. Here’s the context:

There’s another translation of Comme Un Roman called The Rights of The Reader, illustrated by Quentin Blake — the publisher put out this poster, which has a slightly different wording of the last item (I like the “quiet” sentiment, but the “right to not defend your tastes” is more specific and helpful, I think):