More and more women are opting out of dating altogether, and a growing body of research is revealing why. It’s not that women have given up on love, but many have had enough of the emotional labor that comes with maintaining relationships with men.
According to researchers, this new wave of relationship fatigue is tied to something now being called “mankeeping.” The term was coined by Stanford University researchers to describe the invisible, unpaid work women often take on in relationships, essentially managing the emotional and social lives of the men around them.
Over the past 30 years, men’s social networks have noticeably shrunk. Where they may have once leaned on male friends or community circles for support, many now turn almost exclusively to their female partners, friends, or relatives for emotional care. This shift has created an imbalance where women are frequently the only source of support, and they’re getting exhausted.
Dr. Angelica Ferrara, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research and lead author of the study, explains that women are spending a significant amount of time each week “mankeeping.” That includes everything from listening and offering emotional support, to planning social activities, to coaching men on basic interpersonal skills like expressing empathy or asking thoughtful questions.
This kind of emotional labor often goes unseen and unappreciated, but its impact is very real. It’s not just the hours spent; it’s the emotional weight of carrying a relationship’s social and emotional health almost entirely alone.
The result? A growing number of women are quietly stepping away. Some remain in relationships physically, but they begin to mentally check out, a trend researchers are calling “quiet quitting” relationships. Others are opting out altogether.
And the data backs it up. One recent study found that women are now 23% less likely to pursue romantic relationships than men. But this isn’t about losing interest in love or companionship, it’s about refusing to continue one-sided emotional work.
For many, staying single has become a form of self-preservation. Until emotional labor is recognized and more equally shared, more women may continue choosing themselves, and walking away from relationships that feel more like work than partnership.
