Your assumption that all women are looking for a relationship that aligns with traditional gender roles is antithetical to your view of women as equals. I’m not trying to be inflammatory, I’m just nudging you towards the conclusion that people that talk about traditional expectations in a relationship don’t really speak for everyone. It also seems like a lot of your evidence comes from male voices, which I don’t think is an accurate reflection of what women want in a relationship. It sounds to me like these are the conclusions of the circles that you hang around in (or the culture that you live in/grew up in) rather than a fact of life. Most of the women I know are either in the types of relationships you are describing or vocally advocate for finding that type of relationship. There are both women and men that haven’t evaluated the impact of patriarchal male expectations, and so there are both men and women out there that knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate the stereotype of men as unfeeling and uncaring. But to say that all men and all women think this way is probably inaccurate.
It sounds like you know what you want in a relationship and what activities make you happy regardless of whether they traditionally fit with a certain traditional gender expression, so do those things. I know it’s demoralising to feel like the odd one out, but even if you live in a particularly conservative country there will always be like-minded people /somewhere/ out there.
Your assumption that all women are looking for a relationship that aligns with traditional gender roles is antithetical to your view of women as equals. I’m not trying to be inflammatory, I’m just nudging you towards the conclusion that people that talk about traditional expectations in a relationship don’t really speak for everyone. It also seems like a lot of your evidence comes from male voices, which I don’t think is an accurate reflection of what women want in a relationship. It sounds to me like these are the conclusions of the circles that you hang around in (or the culture that you live in/grew up in) rather than a fact of life. Most of the women I know are either in the types of relationships you are describing or vocally advocate for finding that type of relationship. There are both women and men that haven’t evaluated the impact of patriarchal male expectations, and so there are both men and women out there that knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate the stereotype of men as unfeeling and uncaring. But to say that all men and all women think this way is probably inaccurate.
It sounds like you know what you want in a relationship and what activities make you happy regardless of whether they traditionally fit with a certain traditional gender expression, so do those things. I know it’s demoralising to feel like the odd one out, but even if you live in a particularly conservative country there will always be like-minded people /somewhere/ out there.