Empathy in Exhaustion

Let's be honest, the math of marriage is rarely a perfect 50/50 split. There are days when the most romantic thing you can do isn't writing a poem, but paying the bills while your spouse sleeps off a fever, or doing the dishes when they come home completely defeated.

We all go through dark valleys. Sometimes it's a crisis of faith, a chronic illness, severe burnout at work, or even depression. In those seasons, your spouse isn't withholding their effort on purpose; their tank is simply empty.

Our natural, fleshy reaction is to get offended. We see the unwashed laundry or feel their emotional distance and immediately think, 'Why are you leaving all the weight on me?'. We take their exhaustion as a personal insult when, in reality, they are just sinking.