Hey, I’m Sven Masterson—husband, father, mentor, and coach to men who refuse to stay stuck. I work with men who are tired of frustration, conflict, and self-doubt—men who are ready to break free from patterns that keep them small and step into a life of strength, clarity, and purpose. For years, I’ve helped men navigate the toughest personal and relationship challenges—not with gimmicks or quick-fix tactics, but by guiding them to unravel emotional struggles, reclaim their power, and lead their lives with confidence. Through my writing, private community, and one-on-one mentoring, I challenge men to rise—to stop waiting, stop blaming, and start leading themselves and their relationships with unshakable presence. If you’re done with feeling stuck and you’re ready to become the man your life, marriage, and mission need you to be, let’s get to work.
New Blog Post: Mankeeping: What It Is, Why It's Real, and What's Happening on the Other Side of It
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It's been a while since I've written, and I hope things are going well for you during my long absence from email. The thing is... I loathe daily emails and SPAM, and want to reserve getting in touch for the times I feel it's important to share. It's been something on my social media feeds that has caught my attention, not just because it's about men, but because of the thousands of comments in reply, which let me know it's a topic that has struck a nerve with the populace. Maybe you've seen it too — it's the mention of "mankeeping" floating around places like Facebook, LinkedIn, and... well, I'm too old and curmudgeonly to use other social media. 😬 As I understand it, the term Mankeeping came from Stanford researchers who coined it; VICE ran with it, the NYT picked it up, and it generated a good bit of conversation, some of it quite spirited. The gist is that it describes the emotional labor women take on when the man in their lives has no one else to turn to. I know this to be real for countless women. I've heard it for as long as I can remember, and it's very common for women to reach out, often at the end of their rope and struggling between being completely over it, but also not liking the coldness toward their fella that is coming with that new emancipation. They're tired. I mean... really tired of this. Exhaustion level. I get why they are, and I think it's a pretty reasonable way to feel. But something has happened in the public square as the term went viral. It got a bit narrowed, and for many, "mankeeping" has become a pejorative shorthand for "men behaving badly." And I kept noticing that the telescope rarely gets turned around to look at what's underneath the man these women are carrying. Naturally, as I sit with those men nearly every day, I have a pretty good bead on their insides and the stuff they're battling, and I think one of the best ways to address the issue is not to add another dehumanizing label to them, but to understand them. And that's why I wrote the article linked below. It doesn't dismiss what women are experiencing, or focus on defending these behaviors in men. In this article, I'm hoping to shine some light on what's actually happening on both sides of this, and what a real way through looks like — not just for women carrying the weight, but for men who were never given the tools to carry their own. Read the full article → — Sven |
Sven Masterson - Author, Mentor, and Coach
Hey, I’m Sven Masterson—husband, father, mentor, and coach to men who refuse to stay stuck. I work with men who are tired of frustration, conflict, and self-doubt—men who are ready to break free from patterns that keep them small and step into a life of strength, clarity, and purpose. For years, I’ve helped men navigate the toughest personal and relationship challenges—not with gimmicks or quick-fix tactics, but by guiding them to unravel emotional struggles, reclaim their power, and lead their lives with confidence. Through my writing, private community, and one-on-one mentoring, I challenge men to rise—to stop waiting, stop blaming, and start leading themselves and their relationships with unshakable presence. If you’re done with feeling stuck and you’re ready to become the man your life, marriage, and mission need you to be, let’s get to work.
Every year, one or two wives of the men I work with decide I'm a quack. A scammer. A grifter running a side hustle out of his home office. (It has never happened with a woman who has actually met or spoken with me.) They generally suspect I'm fooling their naive husbands into spending ungodly sums on idiotic gimmicks that promise a rose-colored life of endless marital bliss, and they often attribute every disappointment from their husband to me somehow, as if I'm pulling invisible puppet...
Hey Reader, Zelda and I have been building and writing things, and I want to share with you what's come out of it. Here's the short version of why:Everything we share with others, we had to learn the hard way first, and we each lament that we spent a lot of years in agony from that process. Our marriage didn't start as the one we have now. To be transparent, it started out emotionally unsafe. Endless exasperating arguments, feeling like adversaries, two people who loved each other and kept...
Hey Reader, I've been talking with lots of men and women lately about emotional safety: what it looks like in relationships, how we create it, and what gets in the way. Most of the coaching conversations my wife Zelda and I have with other couples these days seem to reveal misunderstandings and misconceptions people are picking up from the invasion of therapy-speak into social media, where therapists themselves have increasingly become influencers and celebrities, competing in the same...