How Folding a Towel Wrong Became Grounds for Divorce (and Other Unpaid Therapist Crimes)
By Matt Stoltz | Church of NORMAL
1. The Towel Heard ’Round the World 🧺💔
It didn’t start with infidelity, abandonment, or fraud. It started with a bath towel—creased down the middle (apparently the wrong middle). One sloppy fold later, and my once-holy covenant was hanging by a frayed terrycloth thread.
Modern Marriage Metric #1: Precision Laundry ➡️ Emotional Security
This is the new math of relationship anxiety: if he folds the towel wrong, he’ll definitely forget your birthday, miss your trauma trigger, and ruin your self-care aesthetic. Obviously.
2. Emotional Labor Inflation 📈🧠
Remember when emotional support meant listening, apologizing, and learning? Now it’s a 24-hour concierge service:
| Task | 2010 Definition | 2025 Upgrade |
|---|---|---|
| Ask how her day was | Genuine care | Certified trauma-informed feedback loop |
| Vacuum the floor | Household chore | Proof of allyship against patriarchal dust |
| Fold a towel | Help with laundry | Character witness in Divorce Court |
Like the U.S. dollar, emotional labor keeps inflating—except we’re paying in resentment instead of cash.
3. The Rise of the “Unpaid Therapist” Accusation 🛋️
Influencer advice: “If he makes you manage his feelings, you’re his unpaid therapist.”
Real-world translation: “If he’s human and occasionally struggles, file immediately.”
The problem? Everyone eventually needs emotional triage. Turning reciprocal comfort into a billable offense leaves couples with two options:
- ⚔️ Compete for victim points.
- 🚪 Pack up and let a Roomba vacuum the pain.
4. Weaponized Self-Care & Covenant Collapse 🔪🧘♀️
Self-care used to be bubble baths and journaling. Now it’s a legal strategy:
“Your Honor, I left because the towels were aggressive and I’m protecting my inner child.”
When self-care becomes self-ish-care, anything inconvenient is labeled abuse. Spoiler: real healing still involves hard work, forgiveness, and—yes—bad towel folds.
5. The Church of NORMAL Response ✝️🧺
- Grace Audit: If towels trigger rage, the laundry isn’t the issue.
- Reciprocity Check: Emotional labor flows both ways—unless one partner shuts off the faucet.
- CPTSD Lens: Trauma brain forgets chores; it doesn’t cancel love.
- Covenant Debugging: Identify the bug (communication lag), patch it (clear expectations), re-deploy (try again).
6. Practical Re-Fold Challenge 🌀
- Grab the next poorly folded towel.
- Smooth it, refold it your way.
- Say, “This isn’t proof you don’t care; it’s proof we’re different.”
- Hug. Repeat.
7. Final Benediction 🙌
May your towels be fluffy, your grace abundant, and your marriage stronger than your linen closet anxiety.
Because love isn’t measured in perfect creases—it’s measured in imperfect perseverance.
