How to Balance Emotional Labor and Mental Load in a Marriage: Holiday Edition
- Brian Page
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Table of Contents
The holiday season is the time of year when joy and stress collide. For many couples, especially dual career couples, December brings a surge in emotional and mental labor. Research consistently shows that women shoulder a disproportionate share of this invisible workload. During the holidays, that imbalance often grows even heavier.
This is also the time of year when money pressures intensify. How much to spend, who to buy for, how to fit holiday plans into a budget, and how to manage the emotional meaning attached to gift giving all influence the season.
Our beliefs about money, known as money scripts, shape how comfortable or uncomfortable we feel spending. A money avoidance script, for example, can make even small purchases feel stressful and guilt provoking. These internal narratives influence not only our budget but also how we experience the emotional landscape of the holidays.
This post explains what emotional and mental labor really are, why they are amplified in December, the role money plays during the holiday season, and how couples can share the load in ways that strengthen their partnership.
I have also embedded the full Modern Husbands Podcast interview with Dr. Julie Wayne, whose award winning research on mental and emotional labor offers an evidence based foundation for the strategies below.
Understanding Emotional and Mental Labor During the Holidays
Dr. Wayne defines the mental load as all the planning, deciding, remembering, anticipating, and worrying that keeps a household running. She compares it to backstage work in a theatre production. The audience sees the polished performance, but someone behind the scenes has spent weeks preparing costumes, organizing rehearsals, building sets, and managing details the audience will never notice.
The emotional load is different from the mental load.
The emotional load includes managing conflict, absorbing stress from others, being the primary emotional support for the family, and carrying worry about children, relationships, and finances. It is deeply personal work and, according to Dr. Wayne, the most draining dimension of family labor. Her research shows that emotional labor is strongly linked to burnout, lower life satisfaction, relationship strain, and even workplace exhaustion, independent of a person’s general tendency to worry.
During the holidays, both loads intensify at the same time that work expectations often increase. Families juggle gift planning, travel logistics, school performances, meal coordination, emotional expectations, and financial decisions. It makes perfect sense that many couples feel overwhelmed, especially women who statistically carry much more of the unseen work.
Why Money Scripts Shape Holiday Stress
Money is emotional, and never more so than during gift giving season. Our money scripts influence whether holiday spending feels joyful, guilt ridden, anxiety producing, or effortless.
Money avoidance can make someone uncomfortable spending even when the budget allows.
Money worship may lead someone to believe that a meaningful holiday requires generous gifts.
Money vigilance can create pressure to justify every purchase.
Money status may push someone to buy gifts that reflect a sense of identity or approval.
When one partner leans toward generosity and the other toward restraint, conflict is likely. Understanding these patterns together reduces tension and helps couples approach spending decisions as teammates.
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Dr. Julie Wayne’s Framework for Sharing the Load
Dr. Wayne offers a simple model couples can use: Awareness, Ownership, and Appreciation. Below is a holiday focused version of her research based advice.
Awareness
Most partners are not avoiding responsibility. They simply cannot see the invisible work that the other is doing. Holiday examples include:
Who is coordinating family schedules
Who is tracking school events
Who is remembering gifts for teachers and relatives
Who is worrying about spending too much
Who is carrying the emotional energy of extended family dynamics
Dr. Wayne recommends making the invisible visible by listing the mental and emotional labor tasks for the week. She suggests placing them on index cards so you can literally see the distribution of responsibilities. This helps couples understand the imbalance and adjust accordingly.
Ownership
Dr. Wayne emphasizes that saying “Tell me what to do” is not the same as taking responsibility. True ownership means stepping in, taking initiative, and managing a task from start to finish. This includes conception, planning, and execution.
Holiday examples of ownership include:
Researching gift ideas and presenting a short list of options for your partner to choose from
Managing travel arrangements
Taking responsibility for communications with extended family
Creating a simple budget or spending plan and presenting it for discussion
Anticipating emotional challenges with children or relatives and agreeing on who will handle what
In the interview, I shared an example of planning leisure activities for an upcoming trip by narrowing choices into a simple multiple choice format. Dr. Wayne highlighted that approach as an example of decision narrowing, initiative, and emotional consideration for a partner who is managing heavy demands at work.
Appreciation
Dr. Wayne’s research shows that emotional labor becomes especially harmful when it goes unnoticed. The holidays are filled with unseen emotional work. Appreciation acknowledges the weight of that labor and reduces resentment.
Expressions of appreciation can be simple:
I see how much you are managing. Thank you for all of it.
I did not realize how heavy that work is until I took it on.
I appreciate the emotional load you are carrying for the kids this season.
Recognition alone can transform a couple’s dynamic.
Practical Strategies Couples Can Use Right Now
Here are easy and realistic steps couples can take this month to reduce stress and strengthen teamwork.
Weekly Holiday Check In
Spend fifteen minutes discussing schedules, worries, money decisions, and emotional stressors. Identify the week’s responsibilities and decide who will take ownership of each one.
Divide Tasks Using a Full Responsibility Model
Borrowing from Fair Play principles, whoever owns a task owns all three stages. This prevents one partner from carrying the thinking and planning while the other performs only the execution.
Use Budget Guardrails
Instead of rigid spending rules, set shared principles such as staying within a holiday savings amount or prioritizing experiences over physical gifts. This approach reduces conflict and encourages collaboration.
Name Your Money Scripts Together
Understanding your financial wiring helps you interpret your partner’s behavior with compassion instead of frustration. There are a number of assessments available, including this one.
Rotate Emotional Labor Where Possible
If children or extended family tend to turn to one partner for emotional support, trade off. Agree on who is “on deck” for emotional calls or conversations during busy days.
Protect Real Leisure Time
Leisure time counts only when the load is off. A walk filled with mental planning is not restful. Protect space for each partner to do activities that genuinely restore energy.
Use Tools to Reduce Cognitive Fatigue
Shared calendars, labeled task lists, reminders, decision narrowing, and checklists reduce mental clutter and help couples stay aligned. Two of my favorites are Persist and Agenda Hero (which I am posting about next week).
Have the First Conversation Dr. Wayne Recommends
Her parting advice in our interview was to begin small. Start with a single moment of awareness and a single act of ownership. Opening the door to that conversation can change the trajectory of the season and the relationship.
Modern Husbands Podcast Episode with Dr. Wayne
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Using Fair Play for the Holidays
Full disclaimer: I am a Fair Play Facilitator and a big fan of what Eve Rodsky is doing to create equity in our homes, and an even bigger fan of who she is as a human. I've spoken with Eve, listened to or read her work countless times, and what she makes clear is that no time of year exposes the invisible labor gap quite like the holidays.
Eve Rodsky often describes this season as the annual moment when many women transform themselves into the chief operating officers of holiday magic. Suddenly, the ordinary workload doubles. There are gifts to research, buy, wrap, and ship. Holiday cards to address and send. School events to coordinate. Cookie swaps, teacher gifts, travel, decorating, hosting, memory making, managing extended family dynamics, and holding all the emotional weight required to create meaning for everyone.
You do not have to do it all. Before jumping into action, pause and ask yourself what you actually want this holiday season to feel like. Sit down with your partner and make intentional choices about how you want to spend your time, money, and energy. Thoughtfully creating your holiday experience is the antidote to burnout.
Rodsky also encourages couples to customize their own Holiday Hand from the Fair Play system. Holiday tasks include everything from childcare helpers to travel planning, gift giving, home decor, spiritual traditions, managing school breaks, handling extended family, and capturing memories. The list is long, and that is precisely the point. Once you see every task clearly, you can identify which ones matter most to your family and which ones can be released entirely.
From there, take an honest inventory of what you value. Why are you doing what you are doing? Is it family tradition, peer pressure, social expectation, or genuine joy? If a tradition brings stress but not meaning, permission is granted to set it aside. Fair Play is ultimately about choosing your values, not performing for others.
Finally, once you have selected the tasks that matter most, deal the cards. Clarify who is responsible for each task from start to finish, identifying the conception, planning, and execution stages. Without clearly defining responsibilities, couples risk doubling up or letting tasks fall through the cracks. When responsibility is shared intentionally and transparently, couples protect their peace, support each other more effectively, and experience a more joyful season.
Why Sharing the Load Strengthens Your Marriage
When couples distribute emotional and mental labor more equitably, they fight less, feel more connected, make better financial decisions, and enjoy more genuine leisure time. Their careers benefit, their children see a healthier relationship model, and the holiday season becomes less about survival and more about shared joy.
With awareness, ownership, and appreciation, couples can approach the holiday season as a united team. No one has to silently carry the weight. The season becomes an opportunity to grow closer, not farther apart.
Professional Support
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I'm the only Accredited Financial Counselor® and Fair Play Facilitator®, empowering high-achieving couples with systems to manage money and the home as a team — drawn from decades of national leadership and lived experience.
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