By Catherine Pearson

July 28, 2025

Updated 11:41 a.m. ET

Justin Lioi is a licensed clinical social worker in Brooklyn who specializes in therapy for men. When he sees a new client, one of the first things he asks is: Who can you talk to about what’s going on in your life?

Much of the time, Mr. Lioi said, his straight male clients tell him that they rarely open up to anyone but their girlfriends or wives. Their partners have become their unofficial therapists, he said, “doing all the emotional labor.”

That particular role now has a name: “mankeeping.” The term, coined by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has taken off online. It describes the work women do to meet the social and emotional needs of the men in their lives, from supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil, to encouraging them to meet up with their friends.

“What I have been seeing in my research is how women have been asked or expected to take on more work to be a central — if not the central — piece of a man’s social support system,” Dr. Ferrara said, taking care to note that the dynamic isn’t experienced by all couples.

The concept has taken on a bit of a life of its own, with some articles going so far as to claim that mankeeping has “ruined” dating and driven women to celibacy. We talked to Dr. Ferrara and other experts about what mankeeping is and isn’t, and how to tell if it has seeped into your relationship.

Mankeeping isn’t just emotional intimacy.

Dr. Ferrara, who researches male friendship at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and Dylan Vergara, a research assistant, published a paper on mankeeping in 2024, after investigating why some men struggle to form close bonds — a growing and well-documented issue.

In a 2021 survey, 15 percent of men said they didn’t have any close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. The same report showed that in 1990, nearly half of young men said they would reach out to friends when facing a personal issue; two decades later, just over 20 percent said the same.

Dr. Ferrara found that “women tended to have all of these nodes of support they were going to for problems, whereas men were more likely to be going to just them,” she said. She sees “mankeeping” as an important extension of the concept of “kinkeeping” — the work of keeping families together that researchers have found tends to fall disproportionately on women.

Eve Tilley-Colson, 37, was relieved to stumble upon the concept of “mankeeping” on social media.

Ms. Tilley-Colson, who lives in Los Angeles, is happy in her relationship with her boyfriend of nearly seven months, and described him as emotionally mature, funny and caring. They make a good team, but Ms. Tilley-Colson finds herself offering him a fair amount of social and emotional scaffolding, she said.

They’re both busy attorneys, but she tends to take charge of their social plans. Ms. Tilley-Colson has hung out with her boyfriend’s close friends a handful of times; he hangs out with hers several times a week.

Her role as the de facto social director of the relationship includes more serious concerns, too. “When are we going to meet each other’s parents? When are we going to go on our first vacation together?” she said. “And if all of that onus is on me to kind of plan, then I also feel all of the responsibility if something goes wrong.”

“Mankeeping” put a word to her feelings of imbalance. “I feel responsible for bringing the light to the relationship,” she said.

Her partner, Glenn, 37, who agreed to speak to The New York Times but asked to use his first name only, said his gut reaction when his girlfriend first described mankeeping to him was that it seemed consistent with what he’d seen play out in many heterosexual relationships. He wondered, “OK, but is that bad?”

“We’re in a moment where more women are speaking up about how drained they are by this dynamic,” said Justin Pere, who runs a therapy practice in Seattle that focuses on relationships and men’s issues.

Ms. Tilley-Colson, who is also a content creator, even made a post on TikTok about it.

Male social disconnection is a larger problem.

Rather than viewing “mankeeping” as an internet-approved bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men, experts said they see it as a term that can help sound the alarm about the need for men to invest emotionally in friendships.

“The reality is, no one person can meet all of another’s emotional needs,” said Tracy Dalgleish, a psychologist and couples therapist based in Ottawa. “Men need those outlets as well. Men need social connection. Men need to be vulnerable with other men.”

Mr. Pere said finding additional sources for emotional support does not require going from “zero to 60,” adding that deepening friendships “can happen in these smaller steps that are more manageable.” He might encourage a client to share something new about himself with a friend he already has, for instance. Or invite a friend he normally sees in only one context to do something new (a friendship-building concept sometimes referred to as “repotting”).

If his male clients are reluctant to put themselves out there in that way, he tells them that developing relationships is not about replacing their romantic relationship, but strengthening it by “widening the emotional foundation underneath your life by investing in friendships.”

But some of the challenges men face in making strong connections are societal, said Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, a think tank, and author of “Of Boys and Men.” Many of the institutions and spaces where men used to organically make friends have eroded, he said, like houses of worship, civic groups and even the simple workplace.

“Men used to be able to put themselves in these institutional settings and it kind of happened around them,” he added. “That’s just not happening so much anymore. Men do have to do more, be more assertive. I’m finding that even in my own life.”

For Ms. Tilley-Colson and Glenn, talking about mankeeping explicitly has helped ease her burden.

Glenn admitted that partly he thought his girlfriend just liked taking the reins socially. But when she explained how it felt to act as the default emotional manager in the relationship, he began to see how things could feel lopsided, he said.

“I’ve put more effort in to try and even things out,” he said.

Catherine Pearson is a Times reporter who writes about families and relationships.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49137971)

it is their nature

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138003)

Oh my god, these men sound like monsters! How dare they expect "support . . . through daily challenges". wtf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138094)

I notice though when the guys are really good looking (tall, fit, good facial aesthetics) their shrew mommy will do ANYTHING to please them

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138128)

But it's more insidious than just a silly martyrdom fantasy. It's true that men's social and emotional lives are suffering. But that's because libs have undertaken to purposefully destroy all male spaces and institutions.

So now having declared that all human interaction must occur on women's terms, women are "tired" of being responsible for human interaction?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138098)

The hidden feature is that the amount of "emotional gatekeeping" the woman does is next to zero.

Men wouldn't talk about this shit even if they had friends

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138133)

"WHY AREN'T CHURCHES AND WORKPLACES A SETTING FOR GOOD OL BOYS TO MAKE FRIENDS ANYMORE" the liberal female journalist earnestly exclaimed without a hint of agency or irony.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138177)

women are much more susceptible to anxiety and depression since being liberated. this is because a woman is being asked to do two jobs: be a man and a woman. luckily this stanford phd has a solution; stop being women and expect men to be men and women simultaneously too.

next on the agenda: why is there a male lonliness epidemic?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138965)

https://parkslopetherapist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/JUSTIN_DAVID_PEXTON_PHOTO_1124-.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138155)

what if we did some crazy experiment where a man worked and led the household and the woman managed its operations and had authority over social and emotional aspects. i wonder if women would miss going to stanford to get phds bloviating about "mankeeping" and reading the nyt, given that they rarely did any of that on their own volition before we started telling them men and women are exactly the same and that if they don't act like men they're inferior.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138945)

before women were liberated people believed culture was nothing more that collective human behavior that occurred naturally. fortunately brilliant jew scientists discovered it's actually top-down: culture dictates human behavior. and it was infected by the patriarchy that came from parts unknown and is completely alien to what humans would do in isolation, with men and women behaving identicially.

being that every human culture on earth was infected by the patriarchy including uncontacted tribes we can prove to a certainty had contact with others for millenia, we were never able to observe this. so we just did away with the patriarchial culture. now women are liberated and much better off. well, they are actually reporting rapidly increasing anxiety and depression, but we developed some pills to turn off their emotions in order to smooth the transition to being men.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138986)

what did they expect?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138954)

Ms. Tilley-Colson, who lives in Los Angeles, is happy in her relationship with her boyfriend of nearly seven months, and described him as emotionally mature, funny and caring. They make a good team, but Ms. Tilley-Colson finds herself offering him a fair amount of social and emotional scaffolding, she said."

Holy shit this is the same broad who offered a $5K "referral fee" for whoever would find her a husband.

https://nypost.com/2023/07/11/im-offering-a-5000-to-anyone-who-finds-me-a-husband/

She's a biglolyer and posts constant unhinged gender war/feminist shit on her instagram.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49138990)

37

corporate litigatior

it's demonic what we've done to women. this woman must have a good iq and should have beem using it to raise smart white babies and using her neurotic birdbrain to run a tight household. instead she was told she's less of a person if she did that, and she should use it for neurotic comma checking.

her window for a happy life is now closed and when her boyfriend dumps her for talking shit about him in the nyt under her real name her (no kids no husband) therapist will tell her he's a narcissist who is intimidated by strong women.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139028)

"Wow you look happier"

"Thanks, I stopped believing in timelines and that life ended at 30"

*dress with tits hanging out*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139133)

once you accept that they don't and that society was structured around sheparding women you can't blame them any more than you can blame an undisciplined child. although many men still do because they resent taking responsibility for the collective failure of men. which is the same agency denail women do.

cunts like this are insufferable tho

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139166)

"My abusive ex told me I'd never make it in LA, but he moved to Idaho and I'm still here!"

So uh well adjusted

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139143)

JD Gold

Brooklyn

July 28

I guess husbands and boyfriends should start keeping a subjective, one-sided, running list of everything we do for the women in our lives for which we receive no reward or gratitude and then give it a glib and snarky name. I’m betting those articles wouldn’t be published in this paper though. Most of these instances simply come across to those who don’t subscribe to the perpetual victim narrative as self-serving and tone deaf, especially when they originate with doctoral students who are evidence of how false that narrative is.

108 Replies2795 RecommendShare

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139499)

I am a reporter for The New York Times who writes about families and relationships.

What I Cover

I write about romantic relationships, friendship, sexual health and parenting. My reporting explores what the science says about how to build and maintain strong relationships, and why connection is such an essential part of overall health and well being.

My Background

Before joining The Times in 2022, I spent 11 years as a reporter at HuffPost, where I covered health, gender and parenting. I graduated from New York University and the Columbia School of Journalism, and live in Brooklyn with my husband and our two sons.

Journalistic Ethics

When talking to sources about sensitive health issues or personal relationships, I am careful to clearly explain the reporting process, so they understand what they are participating in. All Times journalists are committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook.

___

Note that this bitch makes sure to point out that SHE is married with children, and that the children are not bastards or the product of a single mother or divorce (“my husband and our two sons”). The loser women in this article can’t find a good man, but Catherine can!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139794)

https://images.app.goo.gl/G2e9U8XKondmJ3v47

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5755682&forum_id=2],#49139971)