Here’s why so many men rely on women for emotional support

There's a historical reason why so many men are struggling to nurture friendships and so many women are burned out from caring for men.

I can feel it right this second—especially in the middle of a busy work week. It’s the urge to ignore calls and texts from friends. I’d rather focus on work and use my scarce free time to Netflix and chill with my partner. Part of me is like, I don’t really need to talk to anyone else but her. I’m so busy with work, I don’t have time to set up hangouts with my friends. At least I’ve got her.

I’ve found these sorts of thoughts to be relatively common with my guy friends and therapy clients, especially (but not exclusively) those in heterosexual, monogamous relationships. It’s so common that Saturday Night Live made a hilarious skit a few years ago called “Man Park,” where women take their male partners to a dog park, but for men.

“When I walk in the door, my husband sort of rockets information at me for 25 minutes straight,” says one of the fictional women. “And all the words come out fast and in the wrong order, because he hasn’t spoken to anyone else that day.”

Men rely on their partner more than women do

The skit highlights a real problem backed by data. Men are more reliant on their partner for support, while women tend to prefer family and friends. Only five percent of men seek outpatient mental health services. And we hide our pain and illness at much higher rates than women.

The question I’m obsessed with figuring out—and, really, the whole point of this newsletter—is, why? Why are men socialized to be the way we are?

We’ve all heard of “toxic masculinity” by now. Men are taught at a young age to act tough, be aggressive, turn everything into a competition, and hide our emotions. As the therapist and writer Terry Real says:

“The way you turn a boy into a man in this culture … is disconnect them from their hearts, from their feelings … disconnect them from others. The essence of traditional masculinity is invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are. The more vulnerable you are, the more girly you are.”

But why does this culture teach men to be that way? Or better put, whose interests does it serve?

Thankfully, feminists have given us a glimpse of the answer. Particularly socialist feminists who’ve studied how the economic system of capitalism—which dominates the world at this point—has shaped what it means to be a woman.

What it means to be a man has been distorted

I saw this glimpse the other day while reading an essay written in 1975 by the Italian feminist Silvia Federici. She wrote:

“[Women’s] minds, our bodies, and emotions have all been distorted for a specific function ... and then have been thrown back at us as a model to which we should all conform if we want to be accepted as women in this society.”

At the time, Federici was part of a political campaign called “Wages for Housework,” launched by herself and other feminists in Europe and the U.S. in the early 1970s. The campaign demanded that people who do housework deserve to be paid for it. It was a feminist campaign because most of those people were (and continue to still be) women—mothers, housewives, domestic partners. Today, it’s estimated that on average, women spend twice as much time on housework as men and four times as much time on childcare. 

Despite the name, the campaign’s point wasn’t only about money. It also highlighted how unpaid work done in the home (most often by women) keeps the economy afloat. Capitalism needs workers—lots of them. And for workers to show up to work each day fed, rested, and cared for, someone has to cook, clean the home, care for the children, and so on. Without this unpaid work (or if the rich and powerful were forced to pay for it), capitalism would grind to a halt.

Federici was talking about how this economic role forced on to women by capitalism has dramatically shaped (or “distorted”) what it means to be a woman. Capitalism needs workers so they can be exploited by rich and powerful people with enough wealth (or capital) to put those workers to work. Workers (who, in the early days of capitalism, were mostly men) need someone at home to care for them and raise their children.

And so, the qualities that make someone good at being a housewife became the qualities of being a woman. Rather than paying women what they deserve to do this work—and it is definitely work—being a “real woman” became being “naturally” more emotional and better at loving and taking care of others. Because if it’s natural, then women must simply love to do it. And if they love to do it, they don’t need to be paid for it.

Why are men more reliant on our partner?

So... what is the equivalent for men? How have men’s minds, bodies, and emotions been shaped (“distorted”) by capitalism? We know the model that this society has forced on to us—hiding emotions, avoiding vulnerability, being aggressive, acting tough. How does this model serve the rich and powerful in capitalism?

Federici hints at an answer later in the same essay:

“It is not an accident, then, if most men start thinking of getting married as soon as they get their first job. This is not only because now they can afford it but also because having somebody at home who takes care of you is the only condition of not going crazy after a day spent on an assembly line or at a desk.”

Remember, that was written in 1975. Today, as marriage rates drop and people get married later in life, men don’t seem to be as in a rush. (A big reason people are getting married later is, go figure, an economic one: stagnant wages for most workers and an increased cost of living.) But Federici’s insistence of looking at how capitalism influences how men relate to women is super helpful for thinking about why so many men, for example, rely on women for emotional support.

For the first few hundred years of capitalism, the typical man had to work long, often grueling hours to support his family. This wasn’t the case for all men, particularly black men and immigrant men of color, who had a different, even more difficult set of circumstances. But many generations of men lived in what economists call the “family wage” era—when a family could be supported by one worker. And that one worker had to work and be away from home a lot.

The economic situation has since changed, as the rich and powerful have gotten richer and everyday, working people are struggling more and more to pay the bills. Many families now need two workers to make ends meet—with both workers away from home (or working from home and super busy). But the modern idea of what it means to be a man was dramatically shaped (“distorted”) by the family wage era.

In other words, men tend to struggle with things that seem to come naturally to women, like nurturing friendships, caring for children, and reaching out for emotional help, because our fathers and grandfathers never learned how to. They were so busy with work—so exploited and dominated by their bosses—that “having somebody at home who takes care of you [was] the only condition of not going crazy.” And women tend to not struggle with those things because the women in the past who lived during the family wage era were forced to get really good at them (for no pay!).

That’s my hunch, anyway. And I’m stoked to keep exploring how capitalism has shaped what it means to be a man today.

Here’s a prompt for the comment section below (you can email me too, at jeremy@jeremymohler.blog): How do you feel about doing housework? If you’re in a relationship, how do you feel about the balance of cleaning the house, cooking, caring for kids, etc.?