In this monologue, the speaker extends the workplace concept of "quiet quitting" to marriage, using a recent viral story of a woman who announced she would become a "mediocre wife"—doing only what is explicitly asked of her. The speaker critiques the "mediocre" label, arguing the woman is exhausted after years of shouldering the physical, mental, and emotional household load, especially when combined with full‑time work. She explains that "quiet quitting" in a marriage is not merely about reducing chores; it is a symptom of long‑standing overload, societal conditioning, and an internal nervous‑system alarm signaling that something is out of balance. Using a volcano metaphor, she describes the rumbling (the gradual withdrawal) that precedes an eruption (a crisis or divorce). The speaker notes two common public reactions—empowerment praise and red‑flag alarm—and argues both miss the core issue: the need for honest self‑assessment and a broader conversation about needs, conditioning, and choices. While quiet quitting can be a warning sign for divorce, it is also valuable information that can prompt change. The talk concludes with a call to action, inviting listeners to consider the Awakened Heroine Journey program as a way to honor their own needs and reshape their relational patterns.
Chapters
Have you heard the term quiet quitting? I know you have in the workplace, but have you heard about it in the context of marriage and in the context of divorce? If not and you're curious, hang in there, we're gonna go over that right now. So a woman went viral on social media this week and she announced that she had decided she was going to become a mediocre wife, right? She wasn't going to run the household from memory anymore. She wasn't going to be everybody's safety net, and that she was only going to do things when either somebody asked her to do something, reminded her of something, or asked for something again. And there were thousands of comments in the forums, but the most interesting thing was that the overwhelming response was that she wasn't being unreasonable. Now, I don't personally like the mediocre framing simply because it implies that she's failing at something, when in fact she's been juggling so many things, she's been really great at so many things, that she's tired, right? She wants that recognition, she wants to not have to carry it all herself. So What's happening? Well, it's pretty easy. We've talked about in the workplace, right, about a new phenomenon that's been coming up over the course of the last 2 or 3 years called quiet quitting. And that's exactly what she's doing. She is quiet quitting her marriage. How does that sound when I say that? How does it make you feel? Does it feel like it's hitting a little too close to home? Does it feel like something that you've been going through for the past few months and maybe even years, where you're not saying anything to anyone about what you're doing. You haven't announced it on social media, none of those things. But you know inside of you that you've kind of taken your foot off the gas a little bit, right? You're kind of taking a step back so that you can see how things shake out and how things develop within the household. You're quietly doing less to see if anybody in that house is gonna rise to the occasion and take some of that load off of you. So what's the next logical step? Because it sounds like it's a logistics issue, right? So what do you do? You sit down, you redistribute the chores, maybe you get a family calendar, you end up hiring a cleaner. And all of those things are a good place to start, but the thing is that this goes much, much deeper than that. Because the quiet quitting phase isn't really about the tasks. That might be the first visible sign that something isn't quite right and that an old pattern is being shed a light on. I like to think of it this way. Think of a volcano. Volcano erupts, right? Big surprise, all of a sudden, big to-do. But what's been going on before that? It's been rumbling, it's been spewing ashes, it goes a little bit active and then it goes dormant, and then things act up again and then they go dormant again. And then all of a sudden you have this massive eruption. That quiet quitting is those rumbling and those ashes. Because for her, it's been years, if not decades, of carrying the physical load, the mental load, the emotional load for the household. And if you're working full-time, it's even worse because you're working your 8, 10, 12, however many hours you work And then you come home and you're still expected to keep the household afloat. You're still expected to remember things for everyone, to make dinner, to keep the house clean, to do all of these things. It's no wonder you're freaking exhausted. And the worst part is no one stops to think, even you, whether or not this is actually what you want. We do these things because that's what society expects, because that's what we've been taught, that's what we've learned, and we've seen the women in our families do. So by the time you get to the point where you want out of group chats and you start to forget to fill out the school forms, you've already made kind of that decision which is really the tail end of a problem that's been building for years. So let's talk about what's really going on. A lot of the commentary centered around two different things. One, hey, good for you, empowering, you, you do you kind of commentary. And the other one was alarming in terms of, whoa, this is a major red flag for the marriage. Both of which I feel are true. But I also feel that both of them miss the core of what's happening, and that is that your internal nervous system has finally gone, hello, there's something here that's been out of whack for a long time, and it's time to talk about it and figure out what it is. Because you don't just go from capable, competent, driven to becoming somehow defiantly mediocre. Like I said, you're used to doing what needs to get done. You're used to showing up for people more even than you show up for yourself. You're there spinning all the plates, and you're not just spinning your plates, but you're spinning everybody else's plates. And now you're trying to figure out what is it that was inherited, what you learned, what you were conditioned to believe, and what actually was a conscious choice. And that's a completely different conversation from "let's get help with the chores." This is not about handing out a life sentence for doing the, doing the bare minimum and staying stuck in that quiet resentment. And it's also not necessarily a sign that your marriage is over, though for some women being able to name that, being able to recognize that, it what actually finally makes it clear. What it is is information. What you do with that information, it really needs to be part of a much, much bigger conversation. It starts by you becoming honest with yourself about what's going on, how you feel, and deciding whether or not you want to continue moving forward in that way, or if something has to change drastically. So I want to ask you a question: does it sound like the years before your marriage ended? If it does, I'm going to caution you to be careful, because this pattern, it doesn't end with the divorce. Now that you're aware, you've named it, you must be wondering, how do I do this differently? So if you're ready to stop overriding your own needs for everybody else's needs, if you're ready to start honoring yourself in the same way that you honor other people's desires, in whatever chapter you're in, the Awakened Heroine Journey program might be exactly what you need. The founding group cohort starts in August. Is it time maybe for you to start exploring whether or not that might be just what you need? If you think it is, if you get an inkling, if you get a pull, let's hop on a call. I'd love to answer any questions you might have to see whether or not this is right for you. Until next time.
