Couples fighting about chores is exceedingly common, relationship and family therapists say, and frequently comes up in sessions, especially at the beginning of counselling. An imbalance in housework between married men and women is well documented, even when they earn similar amounts of money. When it comes to running a home, today’s couples are reckoning with old gender norms, childhood baggage and the pressures of modern parenting (plus the age-old issue of well-meaning outsiders opining). Between all that and the logistical necessity of clean dishes and clean clothes, conflict over household labour can torpedo an entire relationship.

But, for the most part, it isn’t really about the laundry or the cleanliness of the floors or whatever the chore du jour is.

“It feels a lot safer to say ‘You didn’t take out the trash’ than ‘I’m feeling unseen’ or ‘I’m feeling rejected, abandoned, hurt.’ Whatever it might be, that’s incredibly vulnerable,” says Channing Harris, a marriage and family therapist with Ethredge Counseling Group in Charleston, South Carolina. And you might not even be fully aware which emotion is behind your trash tirade.

Five mental health care professionals spoke to the Washington Post about what they’ve observed in hundreds of sessions and what they’ve tried to impart to the couples who come to them for help.

Equal isn’t always fair

What fairness actually looks like depends on the couple. For some people, it might be as close to a 50/50 split as they can get. Towanda Jackson, a psychotherapist, says sometimes couples become hung up on the idea of a perfectly equal division of labour.

“Because it’s not a business relationship, it’s not ever going to be 50/50,” she says. In a dual-income household, partners might have different work demands, like varying hours. Jackson works with military families, where one member’s job might require the couple to move frequently. The question couples have to ask is, “How do we manage to maintain a household when these factors are present?” she says.

LaNail Plummer, the CEO of Onyx Therapy Group and the department chair of counselling at Trinity Washington University, observes that couples aren’t always doling out responsibilities based on the amount of time available to each individual, though, which can lead to issues.

“Some couples are still quite traditional, in that the person who makes the most money should be doing less chores in the house,” she says. She adds that this can create issues especially in heterosexual couples, due to the gender wage gap. She recommends that couples consider the amount of energy and time it takes to do a job, rather than the dollar amount they’re paid for it, when dividing up chores.

There’s no one right answer as long as both parties feel reasonably good about it and can help the other one out if need be.

Play to your strengths

When apportioning domestic labour, among the biggest questions is which tasks go to whom. Jackson always brings this up when she works with couples during premarital counselling.

“We talk about what they feel their strengths are, and that helps a lot because there are some who have preferences,” she says. If one person enjoys cooking or doesn’t mind doing the laundry, then they can take on those tasks. Or, if someone simply cannot stand trash duty, the other can handle garbage night. That way, fewer chores are absolute drudgery.”

(This is also a good time to get everyone on the same page about what it actually means to “do” that chore. Does cleaning the floors mean sweeping them with a broom, or does it also require mopping? Must one clean the dishes right after eating? Spelling out those expectations can help couples avoid accusations of laziness, ineptitude or shirking duties.)

Keep talking

Just because you agreed to take on cooking doesn’t mean you’re stuck with the task forever. Relationships ought to allow for flexibility. Plummer says that, at minimum, couples need to touch base seasonally about the way they’re handling chores.

“Each season of our life, we are experiencing something different. And when it comes to household responsibility, we see changes, too,” she says.

Jackson advises weekly chats to go over schedules and day-to-day responsibilities that might emerge. If couples don’t carve out that time, they might never discuss them, leading to disappointment and fights. “What you’re doing is probably, you’re filling up a trash bin that is eventually going to overflow with issues that could have been avoided, that could have been addressed properly, but you just didn’t make time to do it,” she says.

But there are also times when you really need to stop talking. Let’s say you skipped the check-in, and now you find yourself about to explode at your partner about unloading the dishwasher. You can still avoid a blow up. “If it seems that tempers are coming up, not necessarily between you but within you, then voice that,” says John Karabees, a counsellor at Deeply Well in Charleston, South Carolina. “Say, ‘I’m getting worked up here, give me a moment.’ Take a point to breathe. … Allow that spike of emotion to pass so that you can reengage in the conversation.” That way, you can avoid an escalation where you’re feeding one another’s anger.

This (hopefully) shall pass

Some phases of coupledom are particularly vulnerable to chore-related disputes. Marina Kovarsky, a psychotherapist in Boston, sees it most acutely among partners in the middle of raising kids – in large part because there are simply so many tasks associated with child rearing, adding more domestic work to the pile and lessening the time people have to perform it.

Karabees says chores can also become a bigger issue for couples during moments of transition, including moving in together, getting married, births, deaths, divorces and changes in employment. When “there’s a shift in the family, then that would require a shift in responsibility as well”.

You might have to think about your early years

As therapists are wont to do, many noted that our childhoods play a large role in shaping our expectations for these chores and the role we expect our partners to play in the household. “That’s my model as a wife or a partner,” Jackson says. “I’m probably going to exhibit some of those behaviours or have similar expectations.”

Some people look at the homes they were raised in as blueprints of what they’re trying to avoid in their own lives and partnerships, Kovarsky notes. For example, if you grew up watching one parent take on all the responsibilities, you might strive for a different kind of relationship or even feel worried that you’re becoming that parent.

Couples have to learn how to meld these different perspectives. “We each learn this dance when we’re growing up and then when we separate from our family and we partner with someone else, we’re bringing two vastly different choreographies together,” Harris says. “There’s a little bit of a learning curve there. And then eventually we find, you know, your own dance.”

But when the song changes, the couple needs to change their footwork to match. And there can be struggles there. “What ends up happening is they get stuck and there’s a lack of flexibility and openness to hearing the other person wanting a change,” says Karabees, who also uses the dance metaphor. “If one person really doesn’t want to change the way things are going, it becomes incredibly uncomfortable for the other person.”

Red flags

Even if it’s possible to sidestep most arguments over chores with two emotionally mature adults, well, couples don’t necessarily comprise two emotionally mature adults. Over time, therapists have observed some red flags that make them question whether the duo will be able to solve their disagreements.

For Kovarsky, it’s entitlement: a person who comes into the session with the “fundamental belief” that their partner needs to cater to them in some way and refuses to empathise with anything their partner says to the contrary. “There has to be a willingness to acknowledge that we have blind spots or we have areas of emotional reactivity and to basically be willing to look at those,” she says. “Because without that, it’s very difficult to shift anything.”

It’s not always a death knell for a relationship, though. People can change, especially if they want to do the work. Harris says sometimes couples’ work stalls when someone lacks the personal insight to be able to share their feelings. “If you don’t know, it’s hard to then communicate that to someone else,” says Harris, who will suggest individual work before couples counselling. “I usually kind of describe it as, ‘Let’s give you the foundation to really succeed here because my hopes are never to put you in a situation where you don’t have the tools or skills, and it’s really not your fault no one ever gave them to you.’”

Don’t believe everything you hear (or see or read)

Jackson has seen people allow forces beyond their partnership to have outsize influence on splitting up chores, especially when that person doesn’t support the couple. “It’s not a good sign,” she says. In-laws. Friends. Podcast hosts. There’s an endless wave of opinions that partners need to learn how to surf, or at least avoid drowning in. (Tons of sitcom plots depend on a member of a couple listening to a confident yet clueless pal’s advice about their division of labour – it’s funnier to watch on TV than it is to experience firsthand.)

It’s not just other people. Kovarsky says that the overall expectations for families have got out of hand. “What we all are trying to do, which is show up in ways that we’re expected to show up in our careers and show up in ways contemporary parenting requires us to show up, almost can’t be done right. Something’s going to give – either your health or the health of the relationship,” she says.

“It’s just, it’s kind of too much. But people have this notion that somebody somewhere, often on Instagram, has this figured it out.”