Until recent Sandra, 42 years, married and with two children; He believed that what was happening in his house was simply “normal.” It was she who organized the meetings with friends, who listened to her husband’s concerns, Daniel, who remembered dates, projects, slopes. The emotional balance of the relationship seemed to always fall on his shoulders. The revelation came when a couple of weeks ago he ran into an article by The New York Times. There he discovered that all that had a name: “Mankeeping.” Also, that his was not an isolated problem, but a common dynamic in many couples.
The term, coined by researcher Angelica Puzio Ferraradefine the work that women do by becoming the main emotional and social support of men: improvised therapists, organizers, confidants. A silent task that, according to psychologists and specialists, explains a good part of female exhaustion in life as a couple. Next, a pano for the phenomenon, investigating how it operates in everyday intimacy and why its identification opens a necessary debate.
In a local key
When a phenomenon is born abroad, the first thing that can be asked is whether it also applies to local logic. For the degree in Psychology and Master in Verónica Buchanan psychoanalysis, in the case of “Mankeeping” the answer is clear: “It reaches it to be called to corroborate that one might ask yourself, how did it exist before being named?” The category, he says, comes to illuminate a discomfort that was already present in many couples, although he lacked his own name.
In Argentina, the land is conducive. The cultural tradition of placing the family over the individual caused this dynamic to have a long history. Within heterosexual couples, The psychic and affective intimacy of a man is rarely indifferent to his partner. Some women suffer because they do not speak, because they fail to access what they think or feel; Others, on the other hand, overwhelm because they never stop doing so. “Be a recipient of a man’s words, like every gift, ‘it’s a gift and a cure’,” summarizes Buchanan, referring to the fact that it can be both a gift and a curse.
The specialist differentiates between the man who finds in the conversation with his partner an authentic way of realization, and the one who, by inhibition or insecurity, delegates in her all his social and emotional life. In the first case, trust builds link; In the second, avoid it and make women a reproach agent. “The important thing is to understand that it does not happen to him or her, but ‘in’ and ‘a’ a link,” he warns, a look that allows to get guilty diagnoses and think about dynamics as a shared symptom.
The effects are not minor. For many women, the load translates into the need to control or suffering the unequivocal word. For men, resistance appears when they are invited to assume more emotional responsibility: they prefer to rely on their partner as a support and oracle, rather than to cross the vulnerability of building their own ties. There, according to Buchanan, a deeper root: “For a man is the work of a life to stop being a child.”
Of mandates and beliefs
If for Buchanan the “mankeeping” should be thought of as a symptom shared in the link, the counselor specialized in emotional ties and intelligence Laura Moyano focuses on how these dynamics are culturally transmitted and what could be done to start changing them. “There are still very strong mandates, even in couples under 40,” he says. And cites the case of a male consultant who wins a little less than his wife: For him, not being the main supplier is lived as a problem in itselfreflex of the belief that the man “must” sustain the home economically.
For Moyano, those mandates not only weigh on men, but also reinforce the historical division of roles, where they are in charge of the house and emotional life and they dedicated them to provide. While that organization has been modified in recent decades, the inheritance continues to operate deeply. Therefore, he says, the work begins with questioning these beliefs: “It is important to do the exercise of asking where they come from, who said them, if I still choose them,” he recommends.
At the same time, he proposes paths to move towards a more equitable cast. The first is to recover the notion of couple as a couple: “Work as a team, understand that we are pairs, that we are both emotional beings. When you start distinguishing your emotions you can manage them, know what you can ask for and what not.” From that base, it opens The possibility of distributing the mental and emotional burden with greater balancealso recognizing that in the life of a couple there are cycles and that the balance can vary according to the moments.
The specialist sees in the new generations signals of change, although still incipient. Cultural mandates continue to weigh and, in practice, the transition advances slower than many speeches suppose. “We are probably changing, but we are still far from that,” he summarizes.
More than husbands, children
In his office, Alejandro Schujman frequently listens to a complaint that summarizes the discomfort of many women (and who continues Buchanan’s idea): “I don’t have a husband, I have one more child.” Behind that phrase, explains the specialist psychologist in family and adolescence, an extended pattern is hidden: men with little emotional management capacity, difficulties in resolving conflicts and a lower frustration thresholdsustained by pairs who assume the containment work almost alone.
“Historically, women have developed that capacity much more,” says Schujman, and what appears then is a strong “maternal”: a permanent emotional support that, over time, unbalanced the link. Faced with this, he warns about the risk of overcompensation: “It is like when one leg is weaker and the other supports all the weight. It is about strengthening the weak part and becoming aware that the ‘strong’ part cannot carry everything spontaneously.”
For him, the first step is to verbalize these tensions and put them on the table, without naturalizing or minimizing them. Cultural mandates are still present and reinforce inertia: many men take it with a passive, almost smiling look, as if it were inevitable that “things are so.” But Schujman insists that change is possible and must translate into concrete actions. Because balancing the emotional burden in the couple not only frees women, it also enriches the link and makes it more adult.
As Canadian psychologist Tracy Dalgyish recalls in The Note of The New York Times“No person can meet all the emotional needs of another.” The challenge, then, is not that men stop sharing with their partners what they feel, but that they expand their networks and learn to sustain themselves in other links: friendships, colleagues, family. Putting name to “Mankeeping” allows to make inequality visible, while opening the possibility of moving from a unilateral support to a more equitable plot, where care is shared and the couple can be deployed with greater freedom.
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