When Did Loving a Man Become a Feminist Failure?

What does it mean to be an independent woman? I am seriously asking. Actually, I am begging for a clear answer. I am inundated with messaging, both subliminal and direct, that seems determined to convince me I should isolate myself, and I’m sick of it.

Every movie I see showcases a strong career woman either walking away from love or participating in a relationship with one foot in it and the other in a high heel, click-clacking down the hallway of an office. I scroll through social media and become convinced that all men are out to hurt me, that it’s better not to even try. I notice how traditional gender roles in modern relationships are dissipating, yet somehow men don’t seem to feel responsible for anything.

I’m no stranger to the patriarchy or the ways in which the modern infrastructure of our society is arranged to keep women one step behind men, and I hate it. In this season of my life, I mostly hate it because it’s making me feel guilty for falling in love.

This past spring, I met a man. The kind of man you don’t feel hesitant to say you hate men in front of. He understands the societal power play that starts at the top and trickles all the way down to how it feels when you’re walking down the street. And you don’t have to explain that when you say you hate men, you’re not saying you hate him. Ladies, you know the type of man I’m describing.

I fell hard. I fell fast. And I feel incredibly guilty and conflicted about it.

Growing up, I thought love was everything you should strive to have in your life. That it would be the greatest thing I had ever done. I am 27 years old, and there has not been a single day in my remembered life when I haven’t thought about my wedding in some way. I have been told by family members, bosses and ex-boyfriends that getting married will be the biggest accomplishment of my life.

As a kid, I dressed up as a princess and longed for the prince who would come and save me from my loneliness. As a teenager, I did anything to keep a boy’s attention for fear that I would be seen as undesirable should no boy want me.

But as an adult, I’m told that I can’t be a strong, independent woman if I want a man?

The whiplash has me unbalanced in the heels I’m trying to change the world in. I have been solo travelling across the world since I was 19. I got a job at 22 that everyone I knew bragged about. I paid for my entire Master’s degree myself, out of pocket. I have taken big risks to follow my big dreams with no one’s permission but my own.

And still, my new partner gets acknowledged first, if I get acknowledged at all, at restaurants or in stores. The beer I ordered gets placed in front of him while his cocktail is assumed to be mine. Strangers we speak to won’t look at me and instead apologise to me for taking up his time.

Then I scroll through social media and am told that the weight of this societal neglect means falling in love isn’t worth it. That my energy would be better spent furthering my own career, finances or whatever else might qualify me as an independent woman.

When I look up from my phone, I see him offering me a space to exist completely and authentically. It’s what I wanted, prayed for, visualised, manifested, longed for. Now I have it, and the parts of me that were told this is the best thing I will ever do are over the moon.

And I am scared and conflicted.

I like how it feels to fall in love with him. My future feels full and safe when he’s on the vision board. I want to follow this feeling and see where it takes me.

Why does it feel so embarrassing to admit that?

Thinking back to the viral article titled Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?, its argument looks so true through my eyes and feels so wrong in my heart. The world around me celebrates when I balance everything on my own and looks the other way when I’m doing the very thing I was told for so long would mean I had succeeded.

It seems like women find themselves in situation after situation where they’re forced to choose between themselves and what they want, while carrying the pressure of holding the infrastructure of society in place.

As if me giggling and kicking my feet could damage anything except my shoes.

I love my independence. I wouldn’t be in a relationship that didn’t grant me that. It’s just that women have been operating in a man’s world for as long as history allows us to remember, jumping over hurdles to run the same race in which men get a full minute’s head start and a clear path.

In a war, you have to pick your battles.

I really want to fight this one.

I want to rewrite the narrative one more time, because I am still something with a man. I am actually more capable of achieving my dreams as I soften with him rather than push against him. Somehow, strength in numbers gets forgotten when we discuss what benefits women.

I want to fall into the softness of loving him and fight against the hardness of what it means, in the eyes of society, to love him.

I wish this were simply about caring how other people view me in a relationship versus when I’m single. It would be easy to snap myself out of that.

But this is about believing, for myself, that I am complete. And believing that I can still be complete with him, after so many years of being told that I am somehow incomplete both with and without a man.

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Photo © Zendaya at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards via Getty Images