Because men are searching for their mothers

Men never get over being children.  

From the second they begin to enter puberty, they spend the rest of their lives acting like children. The pinnacle of this search is they are looking for their mother.

They are particularly looking for their mother in the women they date or marry. When a woman does not clean up after them, cook their dinners and tell them they have the flu when they have a cold, they will assume she doesn’t love them. They will go into intense emotional free fall, expecting the woman is supposed to fill the gap left by his mother.

Men don’t want to take responsibility for anything that their mothers used to do for them, from washing their own clothes through to going to the doctor. It never occurs to them that her job is completed. They simply look for a replacement mother when their real one doesn’t do it anymore.

This also extends to bring deeply hurt if a woman has something in her life that is more important than the care of him. Because he thinks she is his mother, he doesn’t understand how she can be so heartless as to focus on her career, or the children he has had with her. For men, the dream world of eternal childhood can’t be shattered by any facts like his mother getting on with his life, his wife or girlfriend wanting to get on with her life, or his grey hair. He is still a child, and he still needs his mother.

In romance novels, the men want the affection and warmth that a woman brings, but they don’t expect her to act like a mother with him. They will be offended if she thinks he can’t go to the doctor himself when he is sick, or get his own breakfast in the morning.