I've never liked cooking. My husband does. For years, we still split the task evenly anyway.
We planned meals for the week, shopped, and prepped together. We traded cooking nights and did our best to split the mental load and keep it fair as best we could.
Even so, it felt like the same mammoth problem showing up every single week. Like I'd never solved it the week before. I tried different systems: assigning meal types by day, planning a month at a time, letting apps plan for us. Nothing ever stuck or made the task feel easier.
One realization changed everything
I don't know where the meal planning overwhelm came from, or why this task has always felt so hard for me. But over time, I came to a realization: maybe this just wasn't a task I should own at all. Maybe we didn't need to split everything evenly. Maybe instead, we needed to each own what we were actually good at.
A few years ago, I read Eve Rodsky's book, "Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution." It changed how I thought about the invisible workload in marriage — not just who does which task, but who's carrying the mental weight of remembering, planning, and making sure it all gets done.
Rodsky's research found something that...