Each generation has its own set of priorities when it comes to finding a partner, yet there are common themes that transcend any particular age range. Most people want romantic relationships based on mutual trust and respect, prioritizing communication and openly shared love.
The social and cultural values that people hold directly affect how they appear in relationships. Millennials looked to their boomer parents’ marriages as blueprints for what to do and what not to do in their own relationships. They seek a sense of balance and fairness in their marriages, yet many women born in the 80s and 90s want something from their marriages that they are currently not getting. However, these wives are not silent. They are expressing their concerns, which is the first step in changing the course of their marriage.
Women born in the 80s and 90s desperately crave these missing things from the men in their lives:
1. Deeper emotional intimacy
Women born in the 80s and 90s want a deeper level of emotional intimacy from their marriages than what they are getting now. They want the emotional labor in their relationship to be more evenly divided.
The term “emotional labor” was first used by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in his 1983 book “The Managed Heart”. Hochschild defined emotional labor as “the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and physical display” that service workers had to do. Now, its use has expanded to include how people manage their feelings, as well as their partners, in a relationship.
It takes a high level of emotional intelligence to define, process and retain how we feel. Women have been socially conditioned to suppress their emotions while tending to other people’s feelings, which inevitably leads to emotional instability and dissatisfaction in relationships.
Often, women hold their partner’s emotions, in turn. Wives are tired of being the emotional caretakers of their husbands. They crave a deeper connection, which can only be accessed by being vulnerable. They’re not getting the emotional intimacy they deserve, but it’s not their job to shoulder the emotional labor involved in relationships with their partners. Their spouses must choose to be active participants in their relationship in order to meet their spouse’s emotional needs.
2. Relief from carrying emotional burdens
Carrying emotional burdens is a task that never ends, as it is directly linked to the life and well-being of loved ones. It has no defined boundaries, existing as an ongoing loop of tasks to tend to women’s minds. Carrying an emotional burden means lying awake at night, wondering if your kids need new shoes. That means remembering their teacher’s email responses and deciding which gifts to buy for the hundreds of birthday parties they’ve been invited to.
Although husbands may offer to pick up groceries on the way home, wives are responsible for noticing what is needed. They are the ones writing grocery lists and fielding questions about which brand of yogurt to buy. Most likely, they are the ones who perform practical labor under stress. They cook dinner, the kids eat their vegetables and clean the kitchen.
Often, women carrying emotional burdens hit a breaking point because they are so depleted. Yet they still have to ask their husbands for help and outline what they need to do to help, which means they are still carrying the emotional burden, even when they reach out for support.
Women born in the 80s and 90s want help from their husbands without asking them, which they are currently not getting in their marriages.
3. A more equal share of family responsibilities
Women born in the 80s and 90s want a more equitable division of labor around the home. Although more women than previous generations have jobs outside the home, they are still responsible for most of the family and parental labor.
They were raised to believe in gender equality, yet the actual breakdown of domestic labor in America still falls along strictly gendered lines. According to a Gallup poll, 58% of women are responsible for doing laundry, 51% for cleaning and preparing meals, while 69% of men take care of cars and yard work.
Simply put, women born in the 80s and 90s are tired. They are tired of being the primary parent and the person picking the dirty socks off the floor. They want their husbands to move on and move on, because healthy relationships are built on equity, even though the wives aren’t actually getting what they were promised.
4. Practical support for their career
Women born in the 80s and 90s want their partners to show more support for their professional careers. Because women are traditionally expected to raise children and take care of the home, their careers are often pushed aside in favor of their husbands. Childcare costs have risen to astronomical levels, causing many women to put their jobs on hold to stay at home.
According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, 72% of millennial women were employed. More millennial women have earned bachelor’s degrees than men, yet they still experience the “mom tax,” meaning they earn less money after having kids. Maternity leave costs mothers an average of $9,500, and that’s only for mothers who have access to parental leave.
Women born in the 80s and 90s were once girls who were told they could do anything. They can have it all if they just lean in. Yet reality has revealed the harsh truth that women’s work is decentralized compared to the men they are married to.
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This post was Previously published at medium.com.
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