Another article about “the Boy Crisis” that gives a different perspective

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"My Better Half": The Impact of Men’s Dependence on Their Partners

Two closely related terms have been recently added to colloquial vocabulary. Mankeeping refers to the work many women carry out to meet the emotional needs of their male partner. The term was coined by a researcher on male friendships who observed that women are often the central source of empathy, understanding, and intimacy in a man’s life. Because so many women experienced this burden themselves, they have welcomed the term as a means of identifying a cluster of daily, previously unrecognized interpersonal tasks.

Emotional gold digger, a term coined a few years before mankeeping, identifies the behavior of a male partner who constantly draws on the emotional life of a female partner. She soothes anxieties, strokes his ego, and empathizes with the ups and downs of workplace tensions. He may show gratitude and appreciation (‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ or, ‘You are my better half’) but does not reciprocate with comparable emotional gifts. Emotional gold digging, and the consequent burden on female partners of mankeeping, arise in a context in which many men may have no one else to turn to. Day by day, issue by issue, their problems do not seem to warrant therapy; they are simply the stuff of life. Besides, therapy is costly and risky (‘Will they really understand/be on my side/stir confusion more than comfort?’) and some men may associate therapy with weakness.

The Absence of Friendships Fuels Dependence

Friendships supply emotional support for many women, but a meager 20% of men say they reach out to friends when they want to mull over a personal issue. [1] Many commentators argue that men never learned about the blessings of emotional intimacy in friendship, but a more poignant and complex story emerges from the research of psychologist Niobe Way, who tracked boys’ friendships from mid-childhood through the teen years.[2] She observed very close and intimate friendships among boys in childhood and early adolescence, friendships in which needs were acknowledged and highly personal problems explored. However, these fell by the wayside in late adolescence as manly norms were more strictly enforced. Need for others became associated with weakness, and warm attachments to male friends raised questions about their masculinity.

This social pressure to limit the scope of male friendships ushers in what Way identified as ‘a crisis of confidence.’ As their friendship circle shrank and intimacy with friends drew suspicion, their skill for intimate discussion atrophied. A female partner, however, could offer their troubles a gentle home, prompting them to open up to their ‘better half’ who then has power to shape whatever interpersonal map suits her. Women might test their responses against a friend’s perspective (‘Am I right to be angry,’ and, ‘Should I say anything?’ and, ‘What can I do to make this better?’), but men are less likely to test and fine-tune their views outside conversations with their partner.

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