More and more women are deciding that "mankeeping" is a step too far and are opting to just not get into relationships with men. Ava, 27, seemed unbothered by her partner’s inability to communicate his emotions. “We have enough to think about,” she told me as she slid her laptop out of her tote bag, still dressed in her tweed blazer from work. It wasn’t serious, anyway.She’d been dating Max for a few months when it struck her — mid-conversation with a friend — that she had no idea what he felt about her or their future.So she stopped asking.There was a time, she said, when she would’ve tried harder. Sara, 21, recalled sitting on her bed while her boyfriend begged her to hear him out. He wasn’t remorseful for cheating, he just no longer wanted to sit with his shame.“I was done,” she said. And yet, he expected her to comfort him. “I had to help him find the words for his feelings, not his actions,” — long silences, teasing through shame and self-hatred. “He didn’t know what he wanted to say,” she said. “And then I made him feel OK about it”.These stories reflect a shift among young women in which more and more of them are