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# Don't Forget the Milk: The Heavy Weight of Modest Obligations
- URL: https://www.drjerrykennard.com/dont-forget-the-milk-the-heavy-weight-of-modest-obligations/
- Published: 2026-10-20T14:43:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-20T14:43:42.000Z
- Description: At 4.52 on a Thursday afternoon, a text arrives: "Can you grab some milk on the way home?" The request will use up eleven minutes yet it lands on the man receiving it with the weight of a court summons. This article is about why.
- Author: Jerry Kennard
- Tags: Practical Tools

The oddest thing about that text is that nobody involved thinks it's unreasonable. He doesn't, really. She doesn't. The supermarket is on the way home, the milk is needed, and he will almost certainly buy it.

And yet a faint, disproportionate flicker of *oh, for goodness' sake* arrives before the rational part of his brain has a chance to kick in.

Multiply that flicker by the office party, the family Christmas, the birthday card that must be posted by Tuesday, the school thing, the leaving drinks for a man he's met twice, and the dentist. The cumulative sensation is a low, steady drag that's hard to explain to anyone who isn't carrying it, and harder to explain to the person who is also carrying it and has noticed that he seems to be sulking.

As I write this, it's October, which means Christmas obligations are already forming on the horizon like weather. It seems like a good moment to work out what's really going on, because milk resentment isn't really a factor.

## Obligations

Self-Determination Theory states that the same activity can feel completely different depending on whether it's experienced as chosen or controlled. Buy the milk because you decided to, and it's a minor act of competence. Buy the same milk because you were told to, with an implied deadline, and it feels like you're being managed.

The psychologist Jack Brehm talks about *reactance.* We tend to push back against anything that feels like a restriction on our freedom, even when it's something we'd happily have done anyway. Anyone who has ever been asked to do the washing up at the very moment he was walking toward the sink knows the sensation precisely. The resistance is aimed at the instruction, not the task.

**High stakes.** This is the one I think men underestimate. For a lot of men, competence is close to the core of self-worth. A task that seems trivial can therefore carry a hidden audit. Come home with the wrong thing, or forget it altogether, and what felt like a minor lapse is received, by the man himself, as a small verdict: *a man who can't even remember the milk.*

So the reaction isn't really to the task. It's to the risk of failing at something so simple that failing feels embarrassing. That's the same mechanism described in the article on [anger as a secondary emotion](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/anger-as-a-secondary-emotion/): a flicker of shame converts quickly into irritation, because irritation is easier to carry. If the milk produces more snappiness than milk deserves, the shame of potentially getting it wrong may be doing some of the work.

**Nothing is ever finished.** Obligations in adult life aren't a pile to be cleared. They're a river. Pay one bill, and another arrives. Buy a present, and another birthday follows. There's no moment of "done", and for a mind that likes to fix things and move on, as the article on [why men who fix things are onto something](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/men-who-fix-things/) describes, an endless task with no visible result is a poor fit for the effort-driven rewards the brain actually craves.

> *The weight of small obligations isn't the effort. The effort may be moments. The weight is the loss of autonomy, the faint risk of failure, and the knowledge that there will be another one tomorrow.*

## Christmas, and the office do

Annual obligations deserve their own section, because they carry some extra baggage.

Christmas is the point in the year when every social duty you've been quietly deferring comes due simultaneously. The in-laws, the cards, the presents for people you can't think of anything for, the office party with its Secret Santa and its strictly enforced £10 limit, upheld by the one colleague who then spends forty. It is, by structure, a three-hour meeting with nibbles and talking about anything other than work.

**Your forecasting is probably wrong.** People consistently overestimate how bad future events will feel and how long the feeling will last, something *impact bias*. The dread in the fortnight before the office party is generally larger than anything the party itself produces. It's the same effect described in my article on [downsizing](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/downsizing-the-joy-of-having-nowhere-to-put-anything/). Most men, when asked afterwards, report that it was fine, and in some cases even mildly enjoyable, until the dancing started.

**Resentments and needs.** This is the bit that tends to arrive later. My article on [nostalgia](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/nostalgia-and-other-symptoms-of-retirement/) noted how many retired men can miss colleagues they never even particularly liked, and my article on [redundancy ](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/redundancy-its-not-the-money-that-breaks-most-men/)described how much social contact work provides without anyone noticing. None of that makes it fun but it does suggest that attending is worth more than the grumbling implies, and that a short, deliberate appearance often beats both skipping it and sulking through it.

## The other side 

A good part of what feels like a burden is the cost of being needed. The man asked to pick up the milk is someone a household relies on. The obligations are, in large measure, the sensation of being woven into other people's lives.

You can see the reverse by looking at what happens when the obligations stop. A man complaining about the demands for decades often discovers, with some surprise, that having nobody ask him for anything is much worse.

I'm not suggesting this should make you grateful for every errand or obligation, but it's worth noticing that the weight and the meaning arrive together. Nobody, to my knowledge, has found a way to have the second without at least some of the first.

## Caveats

**Sometimes it's real.** For a man who is caring for a parent, juggling a demanding job and a family, or covering for a partner who is ill, the sense of being overwhelmed isn't a perception problem. It's an accurate description. My articles on [caring for your parents ](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/caring-for-your-parents-congratulations-on-role-reversal/)and on [burnout](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/burnout-or-how-to-know-youre-running-on-fumes/) cover that territory. If the obligations genuinely exceed what one person can sustain, the answer isn't a better attitude. It's fewer obligations or more help.

**Sometimes it's a symptom.** Everything feeling like a chore, including things that used to be fine, is one of the more common early signs of low mood. If tasks that were once routine now feel disproportionately heavy, if you've lost interest in things you used to enjoy, or if the drag has lasted weeks rather than days, that's worth a conversation with your doctor. 

## What I think helps

**Own it.** Taking on an entire domain from noticing to completion: the shopping, the Christmas cards, the car, the finances, can work. Owning something outright turns an instruction into a responsibility, and, as the autonomy research suggests, responsibility feels better than being told or repeatedly asked.

**List it.** Writing down when and how you'll do something quiets the nagging in a way that simply trying to remember does not. The brain, it seems, just wants to know someone has it in hand.

**Keep the choice where you can.** You may not get to choose *whether* to go to the family Christmas, but you can often choose how long, when you arrive, and what you take on. Autonomy sometimes comes in scraps, but a few of them go a long way.So, for the office do: arrive, speak to three people you'd actually like to speak to, stay for one drink, leave. It's a contract with a start and an end, which does a great deal for the dread.

**Have the Christmas conversation now, not on the twenty-third.** October is when obligations can still be negotiated calmly: whose family, which days, what's actually necessary, what can quietly lapse. My article on [how to have difficult conversations ](https://www.drjerrykennard.com/how-to-have-difficult-conversations-for-men-whod-rather-be-anywhere-else/)covers the approach. The cost of leaving it until December is that every decision gets made in a panic and every resentment gets expressed over the sprouts.

**Decline the genuinely pointless ones.** Not everything deserves a yes. It's okay to say "leave it with me" and then decline cleanly, rather than feeling pressured to agree and then having to find an excuse to back out.

## It comes down to autonomy

The weight of small obligations is real, but it's mostly not about the tasks. It's about autonomy (choosing rather than being told, or asked, or reminded), competence (the risk of failing at something trivial), and the absence of an end point.