Mankeeping Is Real—and Women Are Exhausted

Your partner has three friends: a college roommate he hasn’t called in a year, his brother, and you. Guess who’s carrying the weight?

If this scenario sounds familiar, you might be “mankeeping.”

When Mankeeping Gets a Name

The term, coined last year by a pair of Stanford researchers, describes the social and emotional imbalances in many male-female relationships today.

“I expected my kids to rely on me, but not so much my husband, for emotional support, encouragement, and counsel,” one woman told me. “If he acted on my suggestions, it would be easier. Instead, it’s draining.”

And nobody’s talking about it.

We’ve had the conversation about women’s unequal, unpaid, often underappreciated roles managing childcare and keeping house. But what about the emotional cost of our role in the “male friendship recession”?

The Loneliness Epidemic

It turns out otherwise potentially healthy heterosexual relationships are one more casualty of the loneliness epidemic, and women are bearing the burden.

“It’s completely untenable and exhausting, and all the cracks in the relationship open that much wider and deeper,” said Marcus Berley, a licensed mental health counselor.

The “male friendship recession” isn’t great for men either. They’re facing “increasing isolation, stunted emotional life, more bypassing of what their needs might be, and just defaulting into either what they think they’re supposed to do or into fantasy of how they’re going to solve it all,” Berley said.

No Laughing Matter

I admit I started this article a little tongue in cheek. The term “mankeeping” made me smirk, kind of like “manscaping” or “manosphere.” Then I began hearing from friends, and I realized just how serious, widespread—and, yes, exhausting—this phenomenon is.

I sent an anonymous five-question survey to almost two dozen female friends, asking about their friend networks, social calendars, and the impact of relationship imbalances on these fronts—versus that of their male partners’.

Email and text reactions came in fast and furious. They’d just been talking about this with a friend! They’re living this! Yes, they want to discuss it! Two women told me that the burdens of mankeeping had led, at least in part, to their divorces.

Continue article here ---> https://provokedmagazine.com/mankeeping-is-real-and-women-are-exhausted/

Photo by Tim Mossholder: https://www.pexels.com/photo/male-and-female-signage-on-wall-1722196/