In our research, we explore a crucial puzzle piece in understanding men’s broader struggles: the state of their close relationships. We formed a theory about how the thinning fabric of many men’s social worlds may place added strain on the women in their life. Our work ties together several threads of evidence from psychology and sociology: men’s struggles to build socially supportive networks, women’s outsized role in sustaining men’s social support systems and inequality in the work that men and women perform in their private lives.