The Value of a Wife – Part II

<p>You know the feeling when you come home, and it’s like you just clocked into your second job?</p><p><br></p><p>So many women feel the crushing weight of taking care of everything at home without asking for help from their partners or getting outside assistance. </p><p><br></p><p>Why? </p><p><br></p><p>Because that help is associated with guilt.</p><p><br></p><p>And because they find it difficult to delegate or leave space for other members of the home to contribute, they cultivate a constant feeling of resentment and irritability towards the unpaid domestic and emotional labor that they’re putting in.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>But the truth is that these expectations are self-imposed</em></strong><strong>. </strong></p><p><br></p><p>And they’re yet another direct and unfair consequence of internalized patriarchy.</p><p><br></p><p>Today, we’re revisiting a conversation that we began about three years ago when we published episode 126: <a href="https://www.andshe.co/episodes/the-value-of-a-wife">The Value Of A Wife</a>. And in this one, we discuss Jeni’s recent step back from trying to take care of her home alone. We get into how opening a dialogue about the situation with her loved ones has made a difference and what she did when she realized that she just <strong>couldn’t</strong> fold everybody’s socks anymore. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Here’s what you can expect from this one:</strong></p><ul> <li>An <strong>honest recap</strong> of Jenni’s thought process when she decided that something needed to change</li> <li>Why <strong>asking for help feels so wrong </strong>(and why we need to stop thinking that way)</li> <li>How<strong> treating your home like a second workplace </strong>can affect your mental health</li> <li>Why + how we <strong>internalize patriarchal expectations</strong> </li> <li>The domestic<strong> labor of decision making</strong> </li> <li>The importance of <strong>being intentional with your time, energy, and money</strong> </li> </ul><p><br></p><p>If these feelings resonate wit