why women are tired of carrying men | musing no. 53
how women ended up doing the emotional labor men refuse to learn.
one piece of housekeeping. the podcast is finally launched (also on spotify). listen to it. sit in it. stay close. don’t forget to send your questions, comments, and concerns for episode 3 dropping this sunday.
a couple of subscribers asked me my thoughts on “mankeeping.”
here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud:
women aren’t exhausted because men are emotional.
they’re exhausted because too many men never finished becoming adults…
and then handed that unfinished work to their partner to carry.
that’s all “mankeeping” really is.
women doing the emotional, social, and relational labor men were supposed to do for themselves.
i don’t buy
the capitalism take.
i don’t buy the “gender roles” debate.
i don’t buy the idea that this is some grand historical conspiracy.
it’s simpler than that.
and more uncomfortable.
most men were never taught how to build a life outside the woman they date.
no male friendships with depth.
no internal grounding.
no resilience.
no emotional structure.
nothing steady inside them.
so the moment they get into a relationship, they lean.
they depend.
they cling.
and they disguise that dependence as intimacy.
but women feel it immediately.
because women always feel it first.
she becomes his social world.
his emotional world.
his therapist.
his motivator.
his mother figure.
his everything.
and he calls it love.
but it isn’t love.
it’s emotional dependency in a romantic costume.
and it drains her.
quietly. steadily. relentlessly.
i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again:
a woman doesn’t want to raise the man she’s supposed to trust.
she doesn’t want to be his stability.
she wants to be met by it.
when a man can’t regulate himself, he becomes a burden.
when he can’t sit with his own thoughts, he becomes clingy.
when he can’t build friendships, he makes her his entire world.
when he avoids emotional honesty, she becomes the one doing all the work.
so she plans everything.
she organizes everything.
she absorbs everything.
and he calls it partnership.
but she feels like she’s parenting.
that’s why so many women walk.
not because they want “more,”
but because they’re tired of carrying what he refuses to hold.
here’s the part nobody says:
a man should be emotionally competent before he ever asks a woman to trust him.
he should have a life, a center, a discipline, a structure, and a spine.
he should be able to stand on his own two feet —
and bring that stability to her.
not the other way around.
the men who don’t do this end up resenting women for “nagging”…
when really she’s begging him to grow.
the men who avoid vulnerability rely on her as their emotional anchor…
and then blame her when she collapses under the weight.
the men who never learned how to build themselves end up requiring a woman to finish the job.
that’s “mankeeping.”
not a trend.
not a meme.
not a joke.
a symptom of men who were never taught to hold themselves.
and the cure isn’t women doing less.
it’s men doing more.
— author
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Now for the podcast fill in: how do they start creating what they don’t have and maybe never had modeled for them (other than from women)?
I know that’s maybe months of tutelage, so I’m curious to know the 1,2,3 first steps.
Knowing it’s true/applies is maybe step 0 … so what comes next for them when they realize “hi, it’s them, they’re the problem, it’s them.”