I Divorced My Husband Because I Got Tired of “Man-Keeping”

This newly coined term is actually an age-old problem.

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During the final years of my first marriage, I did all the housework. I washed the dishes, cleaned the clothes, and straightened the house.

I swept, mopped, and vacuumed the floors. I dusted the furniture.

And, of course, I did everything regarding the children, too.

I was responsible for getting our two sons to school and back. I also volunteered in their classrooms, then made sure their homework got done in the evening.

I prepared all their meals and got them to bed on time. Then, I started it all over again the next day.

Did their father ever help with any of this? No.

He didn’t help while he did have a job or after he lost his business and was unemployed for years. Instead, I took care of my husband like he was another one of the children.

I waited on him. I looked after him. Sometimes, I thought of him as a man I kept — a “kept man.”

I guess that made me a “man-keeper.”

The term “man-keeping”

I first learned about the term man-keeping in a recently published study by Dr. Angelica…