Why women need men?
This brand of shallow feminism is more than annoying and disappointing to me; it’s representative of an increasingly alarming trend I see popping up among millennial women.
Yes, the idea of not needing a man was once an empowering, necessary message in its specific context of financial autonomy. But now, it’s been generalized into an isolating directive that comes with the steep price tag of abdicating one of the most fundamental, basic human needs: The need for love.
If a woman declares her need for purposeful work, close friendships, creative pursuits, money, sex, more sleep, adventure, and so on., she can expect to receive support. It’s considered completely acceptable to honor your needs for all the aforementioned endeavors — in fact, not just acceptable, but essential to your holistic health. If you neglected one of these needs, like purposeful work, for example, it goes without saying that you’d likely be less happy and you’d probably walk around with a chronic sense that something was missing.
But if a woman declares her need for a man and says that, until she finds the right relationship, she’s likely going to be less happy and will probably walk around with a chronic feeling that something is missing from her life? She might be encouraged to take some alone time and learn how to make herself happy.
The message is clear: It’s definitely justified. to feel a void if you don’t have a job you love, but it’s not okay to feel a void if you don’t have a man you love — because healthy, successful women shouldn’t need men.
Of course, not every woman needs deep, committed intimate and romantic partnership, but for the ones who do, feeling balanced can be a tremendous (and tremendously unnecessary) struggle.
Love is natural, healthy, beautiful and, perhaps above all, liberating. The need for love is also all of these things.
How can you tell when a connection becomes toxic? Relationships built on healthy pillars of vulnerability and interdependence don’t include manipulations or exploitations of power differentials. Very simply, healthy love feels good. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you if you want to love and be loved (i.e., enjoying interdependence) with a best friend, your parents, your children, your pets and, yes, your partner who happens to be a man.
Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t extract your primary fulfillment from a romantic relationship. It’s quite okay. if travel or your work or your children or your art or your friends or your own self are the most important points of focus in your life. Often, there’s a fluidity to all these hierarchies; being an independent, empowered woman is about regularly communing with yourself in some way to check in on the ever-changing and highly personalized structure of who you are.
While superficial qualities like good looks and sexual chemistry are some of the early indicators of compatibility, there are a few more significant, must-have characteristics women look for in the man they hope to spend the rest of their lives with — characteristics that aren’t as likely to lessen with time.
In a nutshell, though being a feminist in this modern world, you can’t deny the company of men straight away. It’s your brain and your private imagination — and you can use it however it pleases you. Right? Similarly to get to know about more of these real time stories of women and men bonding and even hatred issues from different parts of the world, don’t hesitate to browse in the wonderful realm of “My Life As A Woman: World Version”
