Laura, my wife, is smarter than I am. She has almost double the degrees. (This bit shouldn’t be entirely surprising; the gap between college and graduate degree attainment for men and women is 4.7 percent). But even understanding that diplomas don’t equal intelligence — or, for that matter, equal pay or representation in the workforce — Laura approaches things intellectually that I can’t even wrap my head around. She can’t tell you who Coltrane’s band was on A Love Supreme or how many points Kevin Durant averaged in college, things that years ago would have been important to me, but she’s an in-demand educator. And there is likely no world in which I will ever be Laura’s financial equal.

To my generation, boys birthed into the 80s and coughed up in the early-mid 2000s as men, this narrative is familiar. We were promised that the weight of our spectacular mediocrity would attach itself to a woman far more appealing and on top of things than we are; the women in our lives reduced to an overbearing, hysterical stereotype by our inability to bring anything to the relationship other than complication. I was conditioned to think a “healthy partnership” meant a woman absorbing my failures — especially if the woman happened to be successful and respected in other areas of life.

When I was younger, I often saw myself as a guy who was “emotionally complex” and “misunderstood” by women. I made terribly sequenced mixtapes for women in order to show off my aforementioned emotional complexity, because this freed me from having to do it by showing any ACTUAL emotional complexity. I crawled out of stagnant relationships largely unscathed, having risked nothing, and blamed women for simply “not understanding me.”

Emotionally stunted men blame their romantic failures on the woman who just won’t love them “as they are.” They find themselves in relationships with stunning, successful women who have the primary function of simply surviving the mishaps of their partners. There is a long storied tradition of men burdening women with our inability to meet them half, or even a quarter of the way in relationships. Men — always the central figures — forget anniversaries, spend money on silly things, neglect the needs of their children, and are ultimately forgiven.

I spent my formative years seeing romantic partnership reflected back to me in the form of dominant men living like children due to the safety net of a woman. Being in a relationship with someone who both has their shit together and has no time for me to NOT have my shit together is a crash course. I went from attempting to coast by on half-measures in our early dating, to waking up in a reality where I was really in a battle for our shared joy. And I was expected to take it on with her, at every turn. When Laura and I got married, we decided to take on each other entirely. We both hyphenated our names, partially for the sake of pre-existing publications on both of our ends, but also as a small symbol of us standing on the same ground, each with an equal view of the horizon.

A lot of men like to talk in gym locker rooms. I have always known this, but fully realized it last year, when the regulars at my gym found out I was getting married. The advice that I most regularly received was in the form of jokes from other men, generally in their 40s and 50s, who had been married for years. They’d lightheartedly tell me how much of a burden their wives were, before breaking out into laughter; they’d gift me tips on how to build a “man cave” and the importance of getaways. All the advice revolved around escaping the presence of someone you promised to love.

The thing about undertaking any partnership — not just romantic ones, not just hetero-romantic ones — is the entire process of unlearning the selfishness that we’ve all cultivated (potentially) over decades. In my case, I’m with someone who almost certainly would be just as successful without my presence, which accelerates the process of becoming less self-involved. It’s easy to romanticize sacrifice in tandem with love, but it isn’t easy for men who have spent their lives reading the hype of their own existence. What my gym mates didn’t tell me is that the best part of any commitment, explicitly for men who are told that they have to escape, ISN’T looking for a way out. It’s also understanding that hiding from growth puts an inescapable burden on the women we love.

One day, three weeks before my wedding, an older guy who often ran on a treadmill next to me at the gym gave me the only tip I considered worthwhile. He stopped me on my way out of the locker room and said: “Look. The best and most exciting part of marriage is figuring out how to do it.”

I laughed and asked, “Well, how long does that part last?”

His reply was, “If you’re lucky, your whole life.”

Partnership is a learning process that never stops. I still make mistakes. I spend money that should be in savings on sneakers. I don’t go on a big grocery shopping trip with Laura, even though I know she needs help, so that I can play an hour of video games. I apologize lightly for these things but case the “sorry” in the accusation that my needs are being ignored.

So often, I got caught up in the idea of simply feeling the feelings of love. The mixtape as a bridge to my emotions, my writing as a bridge to my understanding. Early in our marriage, Laura told me that she believes that the key to marriage is coming to terms with the idea that loving each other is a choice we make, every day. It is either something that you decide to do, or not do. It’s not enough to just feel love. You have to do the very real work that comes with it, and constantly think of the person who exists at the other end of your desire.

I once thought myself massive and unwilling to shrink at the feet of anyone. I once thought myself a window, but never a mirror. I still do, sometimes, on days when I use the myth of “emotional complexity” that so many men hang their hats on as an excuse for not giving my partner all of myself. Yes, it is not a “man cave” or a bar where you can run to at night after your wife falls asleep — it’s worse than that. And it stops men from reaching their full potential, from being the best partner that they can be.

When men stop relying on the women who love us to do the heavy lifting of partnership, we can name these things on our own — which gives them a life, a moveable body. I am lucky to love a woman who allows me to realize my own flaws; allows me to name them and watch them grow smaller and smaller. Until there is enough room for both of us, and all we carry.