On International Women’s Day, as we celebrate the achievements and contributions of women worldwide, it’s also a time to reflect on the silent, unpaid work many women do every day—relational management. This involves managing not just their own emotions but also anticipating, soothing, and supporting their partners’ emotional needs. It’s a burden too often seen as “natural,” but it’s time to acknowledge it and work toward balancing the load.

If you’ve ever had to remind your partner to call his mom, notice his bad mood before he does, or listen to him unload about his day while silently setting your own emotions aside, congratulations, you’re familiar with relational management. It’s a job you probably didn’t apply for but inherited thanks to social norms, gender expectations, and a culture that grooms women to take on the emotional heavy lifting in relationships.

What is relational management? I coined the term to describe the work women do in heterosexual relationships to help their partners manage their emotional lives. It involves actions like checking in on his feelings, soothing his bad days, and providing the praise and validation he craves.  While men often see this as a natural part of relationships, women often feel the weight of constantly being responsible for their partner’s emotional needs.

The Burden of Relational Management

Let’s be clear: relational management isn’t about managing your own emotions. It’s about taking responsibility for someone else’s emotional well-being. It’s about noticing when they need support, even if they don’t ask for it, and they often don’t. Women have been socialized to intuit what their partners need emotionally and deliver it seamlessly, whether it’s offering a pep talk after a bad day or absorbing their partner’s frustration so he can decompress. Over time, this constant vigilance can become exhausting.

Why do women end up doing this work? Because society positions them as emotional caretakers from a young age. Little girls are praised for being nurturing and empathetic, while boys are told to toughen up and suppress their emotions. As a result of that socialization and insistence that men not express their emotions, by adulthood, many men lack the tools to process their feelings independently, and women are left to fill the gap. It’s no wonder relational management becomes an unspoken requirement in many marriages.

What Happens When Women Stop?

When women withdraw from relational management, it often causes tension in the relationship. Men may interpret this as a sign that their partner no longer cares about them, even if the withdrawal is an act of self-preservation. In my research, men frequently expressed frustration when their partners stopped checking in on their emotional well-being or offering validation. They felt unseen, undervalued, and hurt, but didn’t recognize their own role in creating that dynamic–because they expected their wives to provide relational management as part of their role of “wife.” In my research, when men felt their wives were no longer providing the emotional attention they needed, they often sought it elsewhere through affairs. They turned to outside partners to get the support, validation, and emotional connection they believed their wives had withdrawn. This outsourcing of emotional care highlights how deeply ingrained the expectation is for women to provide relational management–and how destabilizing it can be when that expectation isn’t met.

One man in my study described his primary partner as “self-absorbed” because she no longer asked about his bad days. But here’s the catch: he never told her he needed that support. Instead, he expected her to notice on her own, a common expectation rooted in traditional gender roles. Women are supposed to just know when something is wrong, right? Wrong. This expectation burdens women with the responsibility of being mind-readers, an impossible task that leads to resentment and burnout.

The Cost of Gendered Expectations

This isn’t just a personal issue. It’s rooted in systemic gender norms that dictate who should take on emotional caretaking. U.S. cultural norms have long positioned women as emotional caregivers, whether within families or romantic relationships. The result is an imbalance where women carry the weight of ensuring their partner’s emotional stability while men often take this labor for granted. Over time, this creates cycles of frustration for both partners.

For women, constantly performing relational management can lead to burnout and a sense of being undervalued. For men, the expectation that their emotional needs will be met without communication stunts their emotional growth and places their self-worth in the hands of someone else. Both outcomes can damage relationships.

How to Share the Load

1. Acknowledge the Work: Talk openly about the emotional tasks each partner is doing. Many men don’t realize how much relational management their partner handles until it’s pointed out. Men typically don’t recognize relational management as work. They simply see it as something a woman does when she cares about you.
2. Share the Responsibility: Both partners should be encouraged to take turns checking in on each other’s emotional well-being and creating a system where emotional care is not one-sided. This could include setting aside regular time to connect or alternating who initiates conversations about feelings.
3. Address the Stigma Around Mental Health Help: Encourage open discussions about mental health without shame. Men often avoid seeking help because of societal stigma, but therapy, support groups, and emotional resources should be normalized as part of maintaining well-being, just like physical health.
4. Encourage Emotional Growth: Men need space to develop their own emotional coping mechanisms. Encourage them to seek support outside the relationship, whether through friends, family, or therapy.
5. Socialize Boys and Young Men Differently: We need to start teaching boys from a young age that emotions are not a weakness and that it’s normal and healthy to express and manage them. By providing boys with tools like emotional literacy, conflict resolution, and self-awareness, we give them a foundation for healthier relationships in adulthood.

Why This Matters

Relational management isn’t just a quirk of modern relationships. It’s a reflection of deeply ingrained gender norms. As long as we continue to socialize boys to suppress their emotions and girls to nurture everyone else’s, this imbalance will persist. But change is possible. By challenging these traditional roles and fostering emotional equality, couples can create partnerships that thrive on mutual support, not one-sided labor.

Relational management reflects a larger societal issue. One that leaves women drained and men without essential emotional tools. We must empower both men and women to recognize and value relational management as a shared responsibility. By doing so, we create healthier relationships where neither partner feels overwhelmed or neglected.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: What Practitioners can teach Everyone about Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd