He asked if I wanted chocolate.

I said dark chocolate. Marshmallow, mint, peanut butter cream. All the chocolate, I said, with a little emoji to show I was being a bit ridiculous and also completely serious.

He brought home milk chocolate.

It wasn’t the end of the world. It never is. That’s the thing about this kind of exhaustion, it doesn’t arrive in the world ending or an emergency room visit. It arrives in milk chocolate. In being asked a question, giving explicit information, and being ignored. It’s a thousand tiny moments where you realize the ask was superficial.

Now sure, maybe there was no milk chocolate. Maybe he really didn’t have the capacity to manage that distinction at the time. Maybe he didn’t care. But then don’t ask! Or communicate, I’ll see what I can get, no promises. Or even, I hear you, I want chocolate too, but I can’t make that happen today. Whatever! Its better than the not being heard. Because what-the-fuck is that!?!

Now before trolls, and people who unknowingly prop up the patriarchy come for me. Yes, my partner loves me. I love him. I want to say that clearly because everything that is about to follow is true at the same time. Our mutual love for one another does not discount the other reality. And we all need to hear that! We all need to be reminded of yes, and! Of the reality that two opposite things can be true at the same time.

So I love him, and loves me, and also he doesn’t always know how to be an adult. And I’m talking the kind of adult that sees the trees and the forest. Because sure, he can bathe himself, launder his own clothes, make meals, etc. And also he can 100% make a meal that our children won’t eat and then act like it’s not his issue. Or walk by where are daughter is, AFTER I’ve told him my day has gone sideways, and not think to pick her up. Or know there’s people coming to do work on our home and we need to rearrange the home and wait until I TELL him what to do.

The morning after the chocolate, he came in while I was still groggy, we have different schedules and needs. He’s up and out the door before I am usually. I manage the kids and get them where they need to be. I struggle to get up and need more sleep than he does. This is a known thing in our house. His day was starting later, so he comes in to a groggy me and asks if he should start the casserole.

The casserole was prepped. Potatoes and sausage already cooked, ready in the fridge. It just needed to be warmed as the oven was coming to temperature, and the egg mixture added once it was warmed. So maybe 10 minutes active time, 10 minutes of inactive time. And letting me know or setting a timer on my phone. He hadn’t eaten yet, so he wasn’t leaving for work just yet. I say: if you’re leaving right this second, no. He takes that as no, and didn’t help.

Now, this is another instance that is no different than the chocolate. The casserole still got made, the kids still got fed, everyone got where they needed to go. But he could have helped. He could have just done the little bit of work, because… because he had the time, because he loves us, because its work that someone will have to do and why can’t that someone be him.

I tried to bring this up gently. He got upset. I asked you, he said. And he’s not wrong. He did ask. But the ask was part of the problem. The ask, directed at a half-asleep person before 7am, wasn’t consideration. It was outsourcing the cognitive load of thinking out his logistics against the rest of the household. There’s a difference between reading someone’s mind and reading the room. I’m not asking for the former, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of the cognitive load of their own life, and for sure the lives of those around them.

In our household, I carry the cognitive load of our lives the way you carry a too heavy purse, in a way that after a while you stop noticing the weight because you’ve forgotten what it felt like not to have it.

So I’ve been thinking about what it means to want another adult in the room. Not a helper. Not someone who asks what needs doing. An adult who sees the shape of a situation and moves toward it. Who sees the forest, or at lease large chunks of it and not just the trees that affect them. An adult who notices the casserole and knows their own schedule and that of the household and connects those things without a meeting about it.

What I’ve come to understand, slowly and with a lot of grief, is that this gap doesn’t stay in the kitchen, or in the mundane of chocolate. It follows you into every room. Every corner of our lives is touched by this issue.

I want to pause here, because I think this is where society comes into my relationship. He wasn’t taught this set of skills. The consideration, the noticing, the logging of other peoples needs, the internal knowing and shifting of household schedules, the action without being asked, and more. Society didn’t think he needed it. Society labelled it feminine, female. Because he identifies as male he was told different things, given a different set of social narratives and expectations. But let’s be real, we all live in the same world. We know that every task a man can do a woman can, and the reverse is also wholeheartedly true.

There are societies that even prove this to some degree. Those Nordic folks with their expectations that males partake in the rearing of children. That are owed leave to bond with their children. That yes, they are smart enough to see someone else’s needs and keep a human not only alive, but loved and nurtured. So why do we in the west sell our males short? 

I have a son. He’s nearly twelve, and I watch the world already starting to ask less of him. Less noticing. Less emotional literacy. Less awareness of the people around him and what they might need. Not because he’s incapable, he’s sharp and kind and funny and so capable he’s bursting at the seams. But the messages are everywhere and they are relentless. Boys will be boys. He doesn’t have to know that. That’s not his job. Let him be. Much less seeing the men in his life doing the “fun” jobs. Those men not being held accountable.

But here’s what we know when we follow that logic to its end. In Canada, the suicide rate among males is nearly three times the rate among females. Males make up roughly half the population and account for nearly 75% of suicide deaths. ¹ Canadian boys are four times more likely to be labelled with a social, emotional, or behavioural issue. They’re falling behind in school, dropping out at higher rates, and increasingly disconnecting from the people around them.² We are watching boys grow into men who don’t have the tools to name what they feel, ask for what they need, or stay present in a relationship when it gets hard. And then we’re surprised. We’re surprised when they can’t show up. When they shut down.

I’m not raising my son to be helpless in his own life and the lives of people he loves. I’m raising him to notice the casserole. To read the room. To understand that caring for the people around you isn’t feminine, it isn’t weakness, it isn’t someone else’s job. It’s just being an adult. We owe it to our children, male or female identifying, to expect more. Not more performance, not more achievement. More humanity.

Because the boy who learns to notice and listen to the people he loves, grows into the man who comes home with dark chocolate. Not because he was told to. Because he was listening.

1. Public Health Agency of Canada. (2023). Suicide in Canada: Key statistics [Infographic]. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/suicide-canada-key-statistics-infographic.html ↩︎
2. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/boys-falling-behind-in-school-9.7195214 ↩︎