Photo by nehophoto from Shutter Stock
Photo by nehophoto from Shutter Stock
Emotional Labour in Relationships: The Invisible Grind of Soothing, Shielding, and Showing Up
Emotional labour in relationships is the work it takes to manage emotions—your own and everyone else’s. This often means doing invisible work to keep others comfortable. This piece unpacks the patterns, pressures, and emotional fuckery that come with it.
🧭 How to Use This Blog
This blog is designed a bit differently. Instead of giving you big ideas and saving the "how" for a product pitch at the end, I like to walk you through the process step-by-step—with practical tools you can actually use. Think of it like a workbook in blog form: hands-on, reflective, and designed to support real insight.
You’ll find:
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💡 Reflection prompts woven throughout, which you can sit with quietly or journal through—whatever suits your style
- 📝 Exercises to guide you through specific steps, practices, or processes
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🛠️ Tools and worksheets to help you go deeper——some are free, some are paid
- 📄 Reference sheets for quick, printable overviews of key ideas that go beyond what’s covered in the blog
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👣 Optional next steps at the end, if you'd like to work with me directly
You can dip in or dive deep. No need to “do it right”—the way you engage is the right way for right now. My goal is to make the ideas doable—not just understandable. (And if you’re overthinking that, hi. You’re among friends.)
📖 What Is Emotional Labour in Relationships?
Emotional labour is the energy and effort required to perform the task of managing your own emotions for someone else’s emotional comfort. Like performing happiness in a service environment—smiling as you serve a customer coffee like you're just so fuckin' happy to be at work.
Emotional labour in relationships takes this to another level. It’s about your capacity to:
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Notice your own emotions as they arise in real time
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Choose to display or suppress those emotions
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Choose to perform or display a different emotion
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Predict the emotions of others and manage your own behaviour accordingly
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Predict the emotions of others and suppress or create emotion in others
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Prioritise the expression of emotion based on someone else’s emotional state
Emotional labour is a measurable and teachable skill, which means those people around you not doing their own labour can abso-fucking-lutely learn how.
The 3 Types of Emotional Labour
There are three types of emotional labour:
surface acting, deep acting, and genuine expression
Surface Acting
Surface acting describes a superficial performance of an emotion that doesn't match someone's actual feelings. This could be things like:
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Smiling at someone at work even though you feel sad
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Demonstrating empathy while someone is (unreasonably) complaining
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Demonstrating interest in your partner(s) day—even though yours was awful
This kind of emotional labour often shows up in relationships when one person masks their emotional state in a 'don't rock the boat' approach to life —an example of surface acting in emotional labour in relationships.
Deep Acting
Deep acting requires more energy and effort. It's not just performing the emotion for a short period, but instead actively changing your emotional state to be more 'appropriate'. You know—pushing down how you really feel. This might include:
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Playing happy couples in public even though you're fighting
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Pretending everything is fine with your partner, even though you're sad, angry, or otherwise not okay
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Not letting anyone in your life know when you're not okay
Deep acting is a big part of emotional labour in relationships—especially when one person regularly adjusts themselves for the comfort of others.
Genuine Emotional Labour
There is also another category of spontaneous and genuine emotional labour—where you genuinely experience the emotion, but it still requires effort. Some examples:
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For those working in caring industries (therapists, aged care, child care), where there is an inevitable component of emotional labour
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Caring for a family member, friend, or partner during a difficult period
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The important emotional regulation that comes up in every single human relationship! Feeling friends' feels, sharing highs and lows, all the things.
This is the most natural version of emotional labour in relationships—but even when it’s genuine, it still takes energy.
⚠️ Gendered Fuckery in Emotional Labour
While emotional labour is performed by many people, there are gendered sociocultural expectations about the types of emotional labour in relationships.
This topic deserves a real deep dive, but in this context I'm just going to touch on those expectations.
For example, in a Western patriarchal society:
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It is okay for men to express anger, aggression, happiness.
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Men are punished socially for expressing sadness, vulnerability, curiosity, wonder... and taught that they are unable to identify or engage with their own or others emotions.
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Men are seen as 'logical' and expected to express a limited range of emotions, and learn at a very early age to do the emotional labour required to suppress unacceptable emotions, and perform acceptable emotions.
'Masculine' emotional labour is:
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The suppression of emotions
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A limited emotional palette
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Carrying the heavy burden of unprocessed stress, trauma, and experience that is not culturally permitted
Women are seen as 'emotional' and expected to:
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Experience, notice, facilitate, and manage the full spectrum of emotion for themselves and the others in their life (especially the men)
- Be 'naturally better' at emotional self-awareness (without acknowledgement that it requires work)
'Feminine' emotional labour is:
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Prioritising the feelings of others at the expense of their own
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Being expected to be responsible for the emotional wellness of all others—from partner to friends to family to colleagues
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Carrying the heavy burden of doing most or all of the emotional labour in relationships for the wellness of others
This gendered expectation of emotional labour plays out in all relationships with all people, regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation, and relationship structure.
Like, we're all fucking socialised in it, and despite our best efforts those patriarchal influences will show up in our relationships.
When Emotional Labour Is Healthy
All healthy relationships require some component of emotional labour. It isn't always desirable or appropriate to act out every emotion with everyone everywhere.
You know? Like, if your friend called you to celebrate an achievement, but you had a shit day, you might decide to put your feels to the side to focus on their happiness. Or you're celebrating but a family member is sick so you don't gush too much. Or maybe your partner's work is super stressful at the moment so you postpone an important & difficult conversation with them until they are feeling better.
All of those scenarios demonstrate appropriate emotional labour in relationships.
When Emotional Labour is Shite
Emotional labour in relationships becomes an issue when there's;
- lack of reciprocity,
- no transparency,
- no consent,
- poor boundaries
- and/or imbalanced power dynamics.
Invisible Grind #1 – Lack of Reciprocity
In a relationship where both people have good emotional intelligence there should be pretty even balance of give and take when it comes to emotional labour. You know how it goes- sometimes you're okay and they're not, and other times it's the opposite. But over time it feels like your efforts are pretty even.
There's really no way to measure this objectively since everyone has different situations and abilities. Like maybe there's a friend who's not okay a lot, or their life is a fucking roller coaster, but you still don’t feel like you're giving way more than they are, and their contributions are still meaningful.
To figure out how balanced your emotional give-and-take is, ask yourself these questions:
- Do they put their emotional responsibilities on me?
- Can I count on them for support when I need it?
- Do I spend a lot of time thinking about how and when to talk to them?
It’s totally okay if not every relationship feels perfectly reciprocal. What matters is recognising it, deciding if that matters to you, and figuring out how to handle it. I strongly suggest considering how you might share emotional labor across different relationships. Maybe one friend needs a lot of support, and you’re committed to being there for them. But then you might have another friend who helps you sort through your stuff every now and then, and their partner(s) pitch in too.
This way, from a bigger community angle, we all help each other out with our needs based on what we can manage.
Invisible Grind #2 – No Transparency
Transparency in emotional labor means being good at self-awareness.
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To share insights about something, you first have to catch yourself when you’re doing it—and when you're asking someone else to do it too.
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Sometimes you don't realize this until after the fact!
It's totally fine to lean on others every now and then, but it really sucks when that emotional labor goes:
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Unnoticed
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Unacknowledged
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Unappreciated
A simple way to address this is by:
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Talking about what you’re learning about emotional labor
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Framing it as something you both want to get a bit freer from
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Acknowledging the emotional labor of others
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Being clear about your own limits and capacity
Being open about this stuff is key to changing the existing norms that don’t recognize the effort that goes into care and community.
When we can actually name and highlight emotional labor, it shifts from being invisible to visible—which is a small but important step toward change.
Invisible Grind #3 – No Consent
Ohhhh this is a big one!
A lack of consent to emotional labour signals:
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A lack of self-awareness
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And/or a real sense of entitlement
This usually shows up in people with poor boundaries who emotionally dump on others without realising. That might look like:
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Rants about the drama in their life
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Phone calls with gales of tears and disasters
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Being short tempered when under stress
Of course that's all normal human shit, and it's not inherently a problem to do that!
But it is a problem when:
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You require emotional labour often
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You don’t realise you’re doing it
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You don’t ask for consent
For reals—are you:
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High maintenance?
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High drama?
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Spicy tempered?
It’s a super simple fix — check before you download.
Try things like:
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“Hey, I’m feeling really upset, is it okay if I vent with you or talk it out?”
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“Man, I’ve had a fucking day and I’m super short tempered, do you mind if I get it off my chest?”
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“I’m struggling, can you help me reset?”
Sometimes your friend or partner will say no—and you can be appreciative that they are so good with their boundaries, then go call one of your other support people.
Sometimes they will say yes—and you can be appreciative that you have their support.
Invisible Grind #4 – Poor Boundaries
People with poor or no boundaries often end up overperforming emotional labour.
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If you can’t say no, you’ll carry emotional burdens that don’t belong to you
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You may feel overly responsible for other people’s feelings
And yeah—part of that is patriarchal conditioning.
So let’s be real: it’s you, and them, and the system all feeding each other.
When reflecting on your emotional labour in different contexts, ask:
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Is this about my lack of boundaries?
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Their expectations?
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Our relational dynamics?
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What skills do I need to navigate this better?
Invisible Grind #5 – Power Imbalance
We’ve looked at self-awareness and skills development, but it’s important to note that sometimes you just don’t get to choose your engagement and performance of emotional labour in relationships.
When the power dynamic in an environment or relationship is heavily weighted toward someone else, there are real-world consequences that we can’t personal-development our way out of.
People who are structurally marginalized or socially oppressed are even more impacted by these power dynamics. That might include;
- Racialised and colonised groups: people of colour, First Nations and Indigenous peoples
- Gender and sexuality minorities: women, non-binary people, trans people, LGBTQIA+ folks
- Disabled and neurodivergent people: people with physical disabilities, chronic illness, or neurodivergence
- Economically disadvantaged groups: poor people, people experiencing housing or financial insecurity
- Structurally disempowered roles: migrants, refugees, survivors of trauma or abuse, unpaid or unsupported caregivers
For example:
If you are financially dependent on someone, you may find yourself doing emotional labour just to survive.
This isn’t a reflection on your skills.
It is a fucked up situation that is not your fault.
Sometimes there’s wiggle room—where you can reduce your emotional labour, discuss their behaviour, or manage the interaction. But sometimes there isn’t.
How Does This Show Up in Relationships?
Relationally, this shows up in almost all of my couple(s) therapy:
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One partner does far more than an equitable share of emotional labour
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Most often—but not always—this division falls along gendered lines
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This kind of imbalance rarely has a simple resolution
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Both individuals carry a lifetime of patterned behaviour
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Repatterning takes a lot of time and a lot of effort
Even when that work happens inside the relationship, the outside world still applies pressure for partners to conform back to cultural norms. I don’t want to be a downer, but this is the fucking truth—and anyone who tells you otherwise is naive, oblivious, or lying.
...But where there is a will, there is a way.
While the patterns remain, we can all increase our awareness, appreciation, and contribution to the emotional labour required in all of our relationships.