Recently I had a perspective shift on how my entire marriage and family runs. For context we've been married close to 10 years and have two kids (3 year old girl and infant boy).
My wife used to be a stay at home wife, then mom, and now works part time. She's always been the "organized one." Like a lot of marriages, that translated to her being "in charge" of household stuff. At first it made sense. I was working full time, she was a stay at home wife. Then we had our first child.
As any woman with kids knows the difference in workload between a stay at home wife and a stay at home mother is not even in the same universe. I saw that she was doing more so I started doing more. What I didn't realize was that there was a lot of work she was now doing that I didn't ever think about (aka mental load, invisible work, etc.). I thought I was seeing 100% of the new level of work that we had to do together and doing half of it. I didn't understand why my wife was so frustrated with me. She said she felt unappreciated even though I made an effort to thank her. She certainly never thanked me for working.
In the military we used to use a phrase called "going internal" where things get difficult and you focus on yourself and how hard it is to be you without realizing that everyone is in this together and it could be worse. I think a lot of guys feel like this applies to their wife/partner, but in reality it's both of us. It's a natural human reaction to difficult situations.
In reality, what I was seeing and doing "half" of was less than 50% of what we had to do. So i ended up doing at most 25% while she's doing 75%. The problem is that due to how we were raised she had been conditioned to silently do this and build resentment instead of laying it out for me, and I had been conditioned to never once really think about all of this "invisible work."
Furthermore, because I didn't know about all of this it didn't get adjusted when she started working part time. I have a stressful and demanding job. I see people die so regularly (no longer military) that I don't even know how many it's been at this point. Her job is comparatively low stress and part-time. I still tried to start doing more around the house which equated to maybe 5-10%. So now I'm doing 1/3 of the house duties, feeling like I'm going above and beyond, while she silently struggles.
The other day she mentioned being overwhelmed with all of the things we had going on. Almost in tears. I was concerned for her but silently realized that I didn't have the faintest idea of what we had going on. This is a running joke with us, but after finally noticing the effect it was having on her I started doing more research into this mental load and had the shocking perspective shift that I'm here trying to share with as many husbands/dads as I can.
I put some links below that I found the most helpful and eye-opening. Some of them are from feminist places but understand this post is not about feminism vs the patriarchy and all that. I'm not even a feminist or a men's rights advocate (? Don't know the word). I have never before intentionally read anything to do with the Huffington Post. This is about trying to share something with other dads and husbands that I think has quietly been deeply affecting my marriage.
Please, for your sake, just read at least the first one and keep an open mind. It's hard to admit that you may not have been doing as much as you thought, but it's the only way forward.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink_b_9055288
https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/what-is-the-mental-load
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a12063822/emotional-labor-gender-equality/