Working late to avoid the nag at home? Your boss thanks you for it.
The ways emotional avoidance fuels capitalism.
You stay late at work. You answer one more email. You tell yourself you’re “just trying to stay ahead,” “doing it for the family,” or “taking one for the team.”
But sometimes, beneath all that, is avoidance. Avoidance of tension at home. Of resentment. Of the unspoken expectations that feel too heavy to face. Maybe you're trying to dodge a fight. Or the dishes. Or the disappointment.
And when you do that, your boss wins.
CEOs in the U.S. make nearly 300 times what the average worker earns. Every extra hour you give, especially the unpaid, emotionally charged ones, feeds a system designed to keep you exhausted, disconnected, and overextended. The more you pour yourself into work, the more you're told you're "valuable." But only as long as you produce.
When you over-invest at work, you divert the energy that could be used to maintain or grow your relationship and give it over to the systems. When you rise and grind to avoid working through conflicts, you put your precious energy toward the machine that grinds us up. The machine where billionaires get richer and the cost of living becomes increasingly unsustainable.
Billionaires love it when we avoid home. These f*ckers get richer when we bury ourselves in work. They coerce us into giving up the hours and energy we could be spending with each other instead. They demand our efforts. Out of fear. They steal the skills we could be using with one another, to truly be present at home. To navigate conflict. To nurture. To grow. The billionaires win when we don’t see value in the work —emotional, mental and physical— that creates and maintains our lives.
We uphold the status quo when we avoid working through conflicts and practicing communication skills at home. We uphold the status quo when we refuse to see the value in maintaining our home lifes and relationships.
We’re coerced in so many ways.
We are tricked into believing our worth is defined by what we produce.
We are guilted into working harder—then shamed when we burn out.
We are convinced that satisfaction is around the next corner, just one raise, one promotion, one vacation away.
We are forced to trade every ounce of time and energy we have in the face of a collapsing safety net:
Skyrocketing cost of living. A brutal job market. No universal healthcare. Services ripped out from under us.
This system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. One of its most effective tricks is convincing us that home is a problem.
Home is not the enemy.
If home feels like an obligation factory where resentment bubbles under the surface and everything depends on one “default” partner, it’s not surprising we try to escape.
Avoiding conflict doesn’t solve it.
Throwing yourself into work won’t create intimacy.
You can’t hustle your way into connection.
The Radical Act of Staying
What if the most revolutionary thing you could do… is come home?
Not just physically, but emotionally. To really be there.
To learn how to tolerate conflict—not just survive discomfort, but work through it.
To practice nurturing connection instead of controlling outcomes.
To build secure attachments instead of avoiding emotional labor.
This is soft work. Soft like tender. Like courageous.
It asks us to feel deeply. To stay in the room when things get hard.
To listen. To repair. To choose care, again and again.
That softness is power.
It’s the foundation of trust, intimacy, and liberation.
And it’s how we reclaim what capitalism tries to take from us.
Want a place to start? Read these:
These books offer frameworks, tools, and language to help us navigate conflict, restore connection, and build real community, starting at home:
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
A super practical, no-nonsense guide to setting and keeping boundaries. If you’ve ever struggled with saying no or felt overwhelmed by other people’s needs, this book will help.All About Love by bell hooks
A powerful, personal look at what love really means—and how our culture teaches us all the wrong things about it. It’s eye-opening, grounding, and full of hope.We Do This ’Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
A collection of essays and conversations about care, accountability, and imagining a world without punishment. It’s about justice, but also about how we show up for each other when things get hard.How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong
This one is all about community—how to find it, build it, and be part of it in real, connected ways. It’s an invitation to stop trying to do life alone.Love in a F*cked Up World by Dean Spade
A short but powerful book about practicing love as something active, not just a feeling. It’s about how to keep showing up for care and connection even when the world feels like it’s falling apart.
You can’t outwork a broken system.
You can’t buy your way into belonging.
And you can’t build intimacy by avoiding it.
But you can start learning. You can practice showing up.
You can build something at home that feels safe, equitable, and whole.
And that kind of care?
It’s contagious. It ripples outward.
It challenges power. It changes lives.
It’s how we build the world we actually want to live in.
If this resonated, consider sharing it with someone who might need a nudge toward softness. Or leave a comment and let me know what you’re learning about showing up at home.