A Husband Is Still Considered a Woman's Greatest Achievement.

Suhaila Atef
21 hours ago
3 min read

The other day, at 1 AM, my neighbour and I got out of two different cars at exactly the same time. We're the same age. She was holding her baby, and I was holding my vintage Isabel Marant bag.

I was in heels, a tiny top, a leather jacket, and just tipsy enough to think the night wasn't over yet. She looked exhausted. I looked like I'd just left a party. We walked to the lift together. Neither of us said much, even though our apartment doors face each other. When we reached them, we both opened them carefully. She opened hers slowly because her baby was asleep. I opened mine slowly because I was coming home late.

For a second, standing in that hallway, it felt like I was looking at an alternate version of my life. Same age. Same building. Same night.

Two completely different stories of what a woman is supposed to be. According to the traditional bullshit, one of us is ahead. One of us has become a wife and a mother. The other is still coming home tipsy at one in the morning with a leather jacket and a designer bag. But standing there, I couldn't tell who was ahead. Or whether "ahead" was even the right word.

In our generation, adulthood looks different. Or perhaps, for the first time, we're simply exposed to different versions of it. In your twenties, you can be raising a child, building a career, writing articles, travelling, dating, getting divorced, getting married, living with your parents, living alone, or some combination of all of them. Somehow, each version is viewed as wrong by someone.

Society still insists on ranking these lives as though they're all running in the same race. But what if neither woman is a cautionary tale? What if they're simply making different trades? One traded spontaneity for stability. The other traded certainty for freedom. Neither got everything. Neither escaped sacrifice.

Has marriage become outdated, yet still somehow remained society's greatest achievement?

The strange thing about marriage is that society talks about it as though nothing has changed, even though everything has. Women work now. They earn their own money, travel alone, live alone, build careers, businesses, audiences, and identities that previous generations could barely imagine.

Yet marriage continues to occupy a sacred position in the public imagination. Not because it is always the most fulfilling choice. Not because it guarantees happiness. Not because everyone wants it. But because society has never found a replacement milestone.

A woman can publish a book, buy an apartment, earn a degree, travel the world, or build a career she loves. People will congratulate her. Then they'll ask if she's seeing anyone. As if every achievement is impressive, but ultimately incomplete until it's accompanied by a husband. An unmarried woman is assumed to still be figuring things out.

We treat marriage as one life choice among many for men, but as a defining accomplishment for women. Perhaps marriage isn't outdated at all. Perhaps our obsession with it is. Men are still judged by what they become. Women are still judged by who chooses them.

That's why a 24-year-old man is seen as a promise, while a 24-year-old woman is treated like a deadline.

For generations, women were told marriage would lighten the burden of life. Today, many women look at the marriages around them and wonder why they should volunteer for a second job. The modern woman isn't afraid of commitment. She's afraid of becoming someone's wife, mother, therapist, secretary, and life manager all at once.

Nothing has damaged the image of marriage more effectively than men who expect equality in income and tradition in service. Women didn't become harder to marry. Marriage became harder to justify when women realised that being alone was easier than carrying two adults through life.

I'm here living with my bags, my friends, and my heels, and I don't want someone's incompetent son sharing any of it with me. Yet society will still blame me for rejecting half-formed men. And if I ever divorce, it'll also blame me for choosing the wrong one.

We didn't stop believing in marriage. We just stopped wanting to become full-time partners to someone who's only part-time grown up. The thing is, women discovered that the fear of ending up alone was never worse than the fear of ending up responsible for an incompetent grown man.

The real story isn't that one of us was carrying a baby and the other was carrying a handbag. The real story is that we were both carrying the consequences of our choices. And at 1 AM, in the same lift, they weighed almost exactly the same. At 24, she had a baby. I had an after-party. Society already knows which one it's supposed to respect more.