A brief breakdown:

• event: I broke your vase.
• event: I bought you a gift but then left it at home
• event: I want to go to a (privately valuable event) on our (relationship important day)

Options:

1. I wanted to save you the effort of thinking about the thing and so I decided not to tell/ask you before it was resolved.
2. I wanted to not have to withhold a thing from you so I told you as soon as it was bothering me so that I didn't have to lie/cheat/withhold/deceive you even if I thought it was in your best interest

Discussion:

what is a better plan of action?

1 would be doing emotional labour in the form of:

I thought about the event and how you would feel about it and modelled how I thought you would feel and then acted according to what I thought was best for you feeling better.

2 would be to put an emotional burden on the other person but carries with it more honesty, more expectation that the other person is autonomous and able to make choices for themselves.

I didn't want to withhold anything, but instead burdened you with making the choice about what to do about the matter by telling you about my conundrum.

I used to do 1, but now I do 2. The relationship books tend to suggest 2.

All of the things my brain ever conjured up used to tell me 1.  

Brain: Make the martyr choice for people.  Don't tell them, suffer in secret.

I made a lot of relationship mistakes doing 1's in various situations and now I do 2s.  I don't know why this works but it lines up with everything I ever read - NVC, Daring greatly, Gottman institute research. I don't have much to add other than - I wonder if you do 1's or 2's.  

I would prefer people do 2's not 1's around me. (A little more on emotional labour)

Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/emotional-labour/