Game of Thrones answered this question in the first five minutes of the first episode, and almost everyone forgot.
The series opens with three rangers beyond the Wall. The White Walkers butcher two of them and deliberately let the third go. Will rides south, tells everyone what he saw, and gets beheaded by Ned Stark for desertion. That is the show's opening act.
A season and a half later, they do the exact same thing to Sam. A Walker on horseback looks directly at him, screeches, and moves the army along.
This is a real military doctrine, older than the books. Genghis Khan's armies deliberately released survivors from cities that resisted. The refugees ran ahead spreading stories of what they saw, and the next city surrendered without a siege. Fear traveled faster than the horde and cost nothing to feed.
For the Walkers the economics are even better. Every man who flees south eventually dies somewhere, and every death is a future recruit. Killing Sam gains one corpse now. Sparing him spreads panic through the entire Night's Watch, and they collect the body later regardless.
An army that raises the dead loses nothing by letting you run. You're inventory either way.
The darkest part is what the living did with their messenger. The first man the Walkers ever spared to deliver a warning was executed for delivering it, by the most honorable man in Westeros.
Why did he flipped Chidi Mokeme's face into the short story, who else observed something in his social experiment, the only people who found the confidence to approach him and seize the opportunity he was offering, were mostly many from a specific sociological cascade, a lot of people were only passing by even though they could partook in the free for all, it also explains reasons many wouldn't be successful because the confidence and brevity needed to attain success is lacking except they found it by fortune of some luck that requires less of their push.
Man: "Paid all her bills and raised the kids"
Woman: "Holding things down"
Notice the difference?
What the man did is stated explicitly because it is concrete and measurable. What the woman is supposedly doing in return is hidden in vague, feel good language.
But the vagueness in the language is not unintentional.
Because if she was actually doing something for the man comparable to what he did for her, the OP would say what it is. Instead, she's given us a deliberately ambiguous phrase because she knows we will interpret it as an equivalent contribution.
Why? Because the contributions aren't remotely equivalent.
It's the classic attempt to present a mac for spaghetti exchange as a fair transaction
If a chick falls in love with you, it’s because you’re lovable.
She’s not doing you a favor. She’s just smart enough to see you’re awesome. If she doesn’t think you’re awesome, she just doesn’t get it, it’s her loss.
That is your mentality going forward.