What a wonderful response, Storm Rise. This pattern played out in my relationships exactly once, in my last relationship, in part because I wanted to be a different partner, and in part because my former partner expected, maybe even demanded it. It rarely felt diminishing to me: I wanted to support and listen and learn. I thought it deepened our connection.

But there were times that I wanted to be heard, too--really heard--and that did not always happen. I was not ignored or dismissed, but I was "understood." That is, my partner might listen to an experience I related and respond, without asking questions, "I understand." But that was unlikely: she had no parallel experience to compare with mine. From the start, she insisted that I could never understand her experience as a woman, and I believed her. That's what led me to listen and ask. Why wasn't that openness and epistemological humility reciprocated? I don't know. I didn't need it all that often, but when I did, I did.

My parents have been married for 62 years (I'm 59) and that kind of reciprocity is not their dynamic now, nor ever has been. It was not how I related to my wife of 16 years, either. But I'm not incapable of it, and I don't think the capacity for it is gendered, just ingrained, as you perfectly describe it, by convention and social traditions.

I certainly agree that women do most of the emotional work in relationships. I wasn't disputing that. More than anything, I hoped to offer the author another way of thinking about her article, in which the potential difficulties of imbalances in emotional and hermeneutical labor are the primary focus, and the observation that women disproportionately bear the costs of those imbalances is secondary.

Great talking to you!