Relationship lessons I wish we taught girls from birth
We indoctrinate girls to accept abuse. It doesn't have to be this way.
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Our culture is deeply invested in getting women to partner and stay with men—any men, no matter how low-value, abusive, or destructive they may be. But if girls and women look around, they’ll quickly see the obvious facts: most women are in deeply unhappy marriages, and marriage is clearly designed for the benefit of men, at the expense of women.
So we indoctrinate them, early and aggressively, into the cult of marriage. They grow up being told that marrying their prince is life’s most important goal. If they question this, an army of aggressive men will gleefully tell them that an unmarried woman has no value.
Our obsession with marriage is so intense that if a woman so much as suggests women should only enter good marriages, she’ll be met with angry men online, insisting she’ll end up old and alone. These angry men seem to know what most girls and women have forgotten: if you want a good marriage, you probably won’t find it.
No wonder so many women ignore their own intuition, and even ignore their feelings of revulsion, to go ahead and marry men who have never done anything but make them miserable.
A marriage should be a tool of mutual liberation and intense joy. It should be a partnership that continuously spurs growth and meaning—or else it should be nothing at all.
The challenge is that our culture trains girls not to listen to women, and especially not to listen to mothers—the very people heterosexual relationships most victimize. So they learn very little about the realities of heterosexual marriage. By the time they experience the horror for themselves, it’s too late. They’ve already had a child with an abusive, unkind, irresponsible man who may pose a danger to the child.
The feminist project must begin talking to young women, unequivocally and unapologetically, about these realities.
Here are the relationship lessons we need to be teaching our daughters.
Most relationships are unhappy
Unmarried childless women are the happiest demographic. This should not be surprising, given how miserable the average heterosexual marriage is. But we don’t tell girls about how awful most marriages are. So they assume that, through sheer love, they’ll get something different from what everyone around them has, in spite of not doing anything different.
We must teach our daughters that it is very likely they will be much happier single than partnered, and that they should only give up the happiness of single life when there is compelling, ongoing, long-term evidence that a relationship is likely to add real value to their life.
Heterosexual relationships are the biggest threat to women’s health and well-being
1 in 5 men admits to physically abusing their partner, so the actual figure is certainly much higher. Think about the women you know. Almost every single one has been abused by a man in some way—and in most cases, they’ve been abused by multiple men, across many relationships.
Statistically, the biggest threat to your health and well-being is the man you partner with. Women’s well-being declines in heterosexual relationships, and once you marry or have kids with a man, escape becomes extremely difficult. Your male partner is far more likely to kill you, rape you, or hit you than he is to protect you from anything or provide you with anything more than a long list of chores he expects you to perform.
Considering a relationship with any man should involve weighing whether whatever he’s offering is worth the immense risk the relationship poses.
Relationships typically get worse over time
Whatever he’s doing right now is likely the very best it will ever be. So if it’s not good enough, it’s not going to improve when you give him more commitment and close off your avenues for escape.
In a patriarchal society, where men are rewarded for bad behavior and told they owe women nothing, men almost never change for the better. Consider the person you’re with right now as a father, caring for you as you die, buying birthday presents, cleaning the house, offering emotional care. Can he do any of those things competently? Or is he already showing you bad behavior that will inevitably worsen with time?
The reason he mistreats you doesn’t matter
Men are not improvement projects. Women are not tools men can use to rehabilitate themselves. You do not owe him accommodations, and it is not your job to fix him.
The reason he mistreats you does not matter. If you accept his mistreatment now, he will continuously generate excuses for the rest of the miserable life he builds for you together.
Your feelings actually are his responsibility
Abusive men love to co-opt the language of therapy when doing so is convenient to them. So they’ll tell you that your feelings aren’t his responsibility, even while outsourcing every emotion he ever has to you to deal with.
A relationship is a commitment to tend to and care for one another’s emotional needs. If he is incapable of doing this, it’s not because he’s a special struggling snowflake. It’s because he lacks the skills necessary to be in a relationship.
You deserve to be treated like a whole person.
Your time is as important as his
Time is the most valuable asset we have, and women’s time is just as valuable as men’s. It is an act of abuse to expect you to do more work than he does, to relax while you clean or cook, or to otherwise rob you of your time. Men who steal your time are stealing your life.
If he wanted to, he would
As you enter relationships, you’ll be inundated with well-meaning but completely wrong advice about how you can make your male partner behave better. They’ll tell you to try Fair Play and other systems for making things more equal. They will tell you he can change with the right script, that he’s a nice guy who means well, that he can do better.
Of course he can do better. But if he wanted to, he already would. Inequality in relationships does not occur because men are stupid. It occurs because men like it this way. Exploiting you is a choice. Not tending to your needs is a choice. If he wanted to do either of those things, he would already be doing them.
‘Nice’ has to actually mean something
He’s not great with emotions, but he’s a really nice guy.
He doesn’t do all the housework, but he’s one of the good ones!
He may not be perfect, but he means well.
Nice has to actually mean something. A man who steals your time, ignores your needs, sexually exploits you, parents incompetently, or refuses to discuss values for a shared future is not a nice guy.
What exactly does nice even mean when he’s harming you? Men who demand to be treated as “nice guys” are demanding the benefit of the doubt. This is a major red flag, that suggests they want you to overlook abusive and unkind behavior.
The only opinion that matters about your relationship is your opinion
You do not need permission to leave your relationship.
You do not need your male partner to approve of the reasons you are unhappy.
And you do not need anyone else to approve your departure, nor to agree with your opinions about your relationship.
If you are unhappy, you get to leave. A relationship should not be a prison that you must earn your way out of with sufficient time served.
If you feel like you have to earn your right to leave, it’s likely that you are already in an abusive relationship.
The only irreversible decision is commitment—not leaving
Family and friends often accidentally conspire to keep women in relationships that become abusive.
The dynamic works like this:
A woman will notice a red flag, then point it out to someone she loves and trusts. That person will tell her that once she leaves, there’s no going back, so she should make sure this is the right decision.
The reality is that you can often go back after leaving, especially if this is someone who really loves you. The decision that is actually irreversible is staying. Because once you have kids with someone, you are stuck with them—and your kids are stuck potentially being endangered or killed by them—for life.
There is no ‘wall’
I am 40 years old. Every time I leave my home, men follow me around begging for my attention. My mother got male attention into her seventies, even when she was severely ill. My grandmother was sexually harassed while out with her walker. There are always more men seeking relationships than there are available women because relationships with women benefit men.
There is no wall. There is no age at which no one will want you. And there is therefore no need to rush.
You can have a child without a man. What you can’t do is fully protect your child if you have that child with a low value man.
Incel men created the concept of the wall to put pressure on women to lower their standards and marry men who are unworthy of them. It’s not real. It’s a trick.
If you choose a man because you think you can’t do better, or because you believe you are running out of time, abuse becomes almost inevitable. Most men mistreat their partners, so if you choose one whom you know doesn’t fully meet your standards, it is very likely that you will end up abused.
Readers, what else do you want young women to know about relationships?
For the entirety of October 2024, I’m running a sale. All new paid subscribers will get some free feminist merch if they sign up. To claim the deal, all you have to do is become a paid subscriber here or on Patreon. Then email zawn@zawn.net with your preferred mailing address! This also applies to gift memberships, so it’s a great time to give a gift to a friend.
"The reality is that you can often go back after leaving, especially if this is someone who really loves you. The decision that is actually irreversible is staying." !!!. Loved so many parts of this article, thank you. Zawn, maybe you can write a children's book that tells some of these lessons through story?
Sexual assault is never your fault. Never ever. Ever. Ever. Don't let anyone, including your own mother, tell you otherwise. You weren't asking for it, you didn't mislead him, you didn't tease him, you don't owe him anything, there's nothing you could have done differently. It's his fault and his alone. Stop asking women what they might have done differently and start demanding that men treat women like human beings.