Ep.20: Tired of Hand Holding Every Man in Your Life?

If you've ever reminded a grown man to call his own mother, scheduled his social life, managed his mood before you could even talk about your day, or put yourself into actual debt taking care of someone who wasn't taking care of himself, congratulations. You've been man keeping.

And you're not alone. Like, at all.

What Is Man Keeping?

It's the emotional labour women do to basically be a man's entire support system. His therapist. His calendar. His life coach. His reminder system. His social coordinator. His career advisor. His everything.

And it doesn't just happen in relationships. It happens at work too. Women checking in on male coworkers, picking up slack, tiptoeing around moods, solving problems that aren't theirs because nobody else is going to do it.

Almost Every Woman We Know Is Doing This

Out of every woman in our lives, friends, family, coworkers, we could not name a single one who isn't carrying some version of this load.

95% of the women we know are their man's entire support system. The other 5% just have men who happen to have other people helping too, so the woman isn't carrying it completely alone.

That's not a personality quirk. That's a pattern.

Why Do Women Fall Into It?

A few reasons, and they're all connected:

We're conditioned to care. Women are raised to nurture, check in, manage emotions, and hold things together. Men are raised to "figure it out." Except most of them don't figure it out. They just find a woman who will.

We don't want things to look bad. A lot of us fill the void because we don't want the relationship or the household or the team to look like it's not functioning. So instead of letting things fall apart, we pick up the slack ourselves.

We don't set boundaries early enough. By the time you realize you're doing everything, it's already the norm. And changing the norm feels like starting a war.

Men are genuinely worse at this. Men without close friendships jumped from 3% to 15% since 1990. More than half of all men are unsatisfied with the size of their friend groups. They're not reaching out, they're not processing emotions, and they're not going to therapy. So all of that gets dumped on the woman closest to them.

It's Not Just Annoying. It's Costing You.

Think about all the time you've spent managing someone else's life and ask yourself what you could have done with that time instead.

School. Career moves. Your own health. Your own goals. Your own business.

Every hour you spend being someone's unpaid life manager is an hour you didn't spend building your own shit.

And here's the part that really fucks with your progress: how you operate in your personal life translates directly to work. If you're man keeping at home, you're doing the same thing in the office. Picking up slack. Solving problems that aren't yours. Taking time away from your own work to handle someone else's because they "don't know the answer."

It's the same pattern. Different setting.

Men Are Actually Better at Not Doing This

And it's not because they're smarter. It's because they're more selfish. And honestly? It works in their favour.

A man will decide he doesn't have time to handle something that isn't making him money or moving him forward, and he just won't do it. End of story. No guilt. No second guessing.

Women will put everything on the line for someone else and then wonder why they're behind on their own goals.

Being an empath is beautiful. But being an empath without boundaries is self destruction.

How to Stop

Recognize the patterns early. The minute you start seeing familiar behaviours, pay attention. You already know where this goes.

Weigh what you're getting out of it. What is this person contributing to your life? What are you contributing to theirs? Is it even close to balanced? If you have nothing to show for it, what are you doing?

Treat it like a business decision. Are your core values aligned? Is this person pulling their weight? If someone at work performed this way, would you keep them? Then why are you keeping him?

Have the conversation once. Maybe twice. But if the pattern doesn't change after that, you're not in a partnership. You're in a project. And it's time to wrap it up.

The Real Goal

You should want to be taken care of. That's not needy. That's not high maintenance. That's the bare minimum.

You should come together with someone and build something that makes both of your lives better. It should be obvious that you add value to each other. It should feel like a two way street without you having to beg for reciprocity.

And if it doesn't? Fire him. Just like you would at work.

See you next week, you hoes.