CONTENT WARNING: This opinion piece contains potentially triggering topics and language. Please use discretion when proceeding.
Throughout history, women have faced countless struggles in relationships. It can often feel like we are accessories rather than human beings in an equal partnership. Much of this seems to stem from deeply ingrained societal expectations about our “roles” as women. Although we are straying from these beliefs, the fact that marital rape was not a crime in all 50 states until 1993 is a stark reminder of how slow-moving this progress actually is. There are still many ways that women continue to struggle, which often go unnoticed or dismissed.
In most heterosexual relationships, women often take on the majority of emotional and domestic labor.
From a young age, women are taught to be empathetic, nurturing and patient. These qualities then become exploited as we grow older.
Women are often responsible for the emotional well-being of their male partners. We are expected to be there constantly, but are also blamed for issues outside of our control. If a man is having issues at work, it can become his partner’s fault because she is too distracting. If his favorite football team has not been performing well, his partner is a bad luck charm. So then women are left feeling like they are the problem in the relationship, because all of the issues somehow stem back to us.
When a woman needs support from her partner, he is “emotionally unavailable” and has enough on his plate to deal with. If that is not the case, then he probably isn’t ready for a relationship anyway, so it’s not his responsibility. It’s okay though, we just need to be patient and stay delusional. “I can fix him. No, really! I can.”
Domestically, women are still more likely to take care of the kids, cook and clean. For example women are mainly responsible for laundry, cleaning and cooking in over 50% of households, despite both partners being employed full-time. That does not mean that in other households men are wholly responsible, just that these chores are shared equally. In fact men are responsible for cleaning in only 9% of households.
Men can also often utilize weaponized incompetence to avoid household and childcare responsibilities. A husband or boyfriend claims he “doesn’t know how to do the laundry” or purposefully burns the food so his wife will cook instead.
This all adds to the mental load women carry of remembering every birthday, scheduling every appointment, managing all of the household responsibilities, the list goes on. Then their male partners get praised for taking their kids to the playground for an hour.
Women in same-sex relationships face an entirely different set of struggles. Women in relationships with each other have been sexualized by men to a disgusting extent. Instead of being recognized as legitimate relationships, many men reduce sapphic women to fantasies meant for their entertainment.
Women are constantly reduced to existing for men’s pleasure. Incel culture is the most egregious example. Standing for “involuntary celibate,” men who take part in this ideology believe that they are entitled to women’s bodies and are owed sex, love and attention from us.
The online forums incels take to encourage each other to blame women for preventing them from having relationships. They often advocate for violence against women, sometimes even taking action. Still, society struggles to take this threat seriously.
The scariest issue women face in relationships is intimate partner violence. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the U.S. have reported they were victims of severe violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. College-aged women (18 to 24) are at the highest risk of experiencing violence in their relationships as well. 13.8% of men experience intimate partner violence as well. Although it is important to acknowledge that men can be victims of abuse too, the threat of violence in relationships is much more deadly for women.
Biologically, men are typically physically stronger than women. That is not to say a woman can’t ever be stronger than a man, but it is important to note in terms of the threat that intimate partner violence poses to women’s lives compared to men. In fact, 34% of all women murdered in 2021 were killed by a partner compared to 6% of men.
Even during pregnancy, the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. is homicide. It is not hemorrhage, sepsis or any of the other numerous fatal consequences that could come with childbirth. It is homicide.
It is a struggle to leave abusive relationships too. When women choose to leave and speak up, they are often met with skepticism and barely any protection from law enforcement, despite the danger leaving an abusive relationship brings. Women are 70 times more likely to be killed in the two weeks after leaving a relationship than any other time by an abusive partner. Even if a woman is able to obtain a restraining order, in many ways it is just a piece of paper that does not offer physical protection.
On the other side, if a woman stays, she is blamed for “allowing” herself to be harmed.
“Why didn’t you just leave?” A question asked so often that it has basically lost all meaning. If people really wanted an answer to that question, they would take a moment to consider the financial, emotional and physical dangers women face when attempting to get out.
Even in abusive relationships that are not physically violent, women still face a barrage of issues. Many abusers isolate their partners, drain their bank accounts and make them feel worthless. Manipulation, gaslighting, isolation and coercion are all forms of abuse that can leave lasting damage without a visible bruise.
Still, this type of abuse is downplayed as “relationship problems.” Then the blame is put onto us for choosing “bad men.” What if instead of women being forced to choose better men, men were just that? Better.
At the end of the day, all of the struggles women face in relationships come down to one thing: a lack of respect for women as human beings. We deserve to feel safe in our relationships and we deserve equal partnerships. These are systemic issues that are deeply rooted in gender inequality and that is not a problem for women to fix. The solution is for men to do better and for society to stop enabling them.
