Gatekeeping Kindness
If you’re new to Some Men, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
This newsletter is a space for thinking about relationships. More than just how to fix them, we’ll push to understand the dynamics at play within them, such as power, responsibility, repair, and care.
I write bi-weekly from my experience as a husband, father, and licensed psychologist specializing in couples and relationships. My aim isn’t to offer quick answers, but to help readers build the clarity, emotional capacity, and ethical grounding that make real change possible.
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The Story
I recently watched a video of a woman offering advice to women who go grocery shopping on their own. She told the story of how a woman approached her husband, not her, while they were shopping, and asked him to help her reach something from the top shelf. The original poster of the video cautioned women against approaching men who were accompanied first. She argued that these women should know to ask for permission and approval before requesting help. Failing to do so risks placing these men in an “awkward situation.” She doesn’t clearly spell out what that means exactly, but the implication is that it places a man in a position of being disloyal to his partner in favor of another woman. Instead of defaulting to helping, her husband asked her what she would like him to do in this situation. She was elated to have a husband who understood the boundary and met her expectations.
The Relational Pattern
While this is an interesting take on primacy — activities we keep exclusive to our romantic relationships — that’s not what drew me to this story. Instead, I was fascinated by how this couple has taken the idea of romantic exclusivity and extended it beyond intimacy to include non-intimate interactions with others as well. Often, when we think about primacy, we think of the aspects of physical, emotional, and sexual intimacy reserved for our primary relationship (hence the name — primacy) and prohibited in secondary relationships.
This couple shrinks the moral circle of “us” even further to include benign aid.
That’s what stood out to me most about them. Their sense of loyalty is defined, at least in part, by a withdrawal from others. To remain true to each other, even an ask for help is treated as a potential threat to their monogamy when not approached in the “right” way.
The Ethical Tension
I’ve reminded many partners that their relationship only needs to work for them. Usually, I offer this reminder when they feel pressure from family, friends, or society to conform to an ideal that doesn’t work for them. I don’t question the validity of this couple’s grocery store rule, even if it is a bit idiosyncratic. The rule seems to work for both of them.
Their story does push me to reflect on the reminder I offer partners, though.
What happens when the rules of a relationship affect the broader social fabric? Do we owe something to one another as members of a community? If so, what? Earlier today, I read an interview with the organizer, Mariame Kaba, and she described how her father, also an organizer, taught her that she is “interconnected to everyone, because the world doesn’t work without everyone.”
It’s impossible to separate my thinking on this from our current political moment. We can see firsthand the vital nature of community support in Minneapolis and other cities across the country in the struggle against the current regime. As the list of institutions and corporations actively working against our individual and collective well-being continues to grow, all we have left to rely on is each other.
And yet, partners get to define their own rules. We’re not obligated to sacrifice our relational values in the service of others. This is how they show their devotion to one another. There are times when devotion requires indifference. Or, at least, there are times when we would accept a level of indifference in service of demonstrated devotion.
An Invitation to Reflect
This isn’t about whether men should help women or about prescribing a healthy boundary that all romantic relationships should aspire to. The questions I’m wrestling with are:
What parts of your kindness are conditional, and when?
Who falls outside of your circle of care and why?
What do your relationship rules communicate beyond your relationship, and does that message match your communal values?
Reader questions sometimes shape future issues. Submissions are anonymous and always optional.