Unpopular opinion: Men need the chase

When I was younger, in my teens and 20s, I was a tomboy and a stark feminist. No man was allowed to open the door for me or carry my luggage or pay for my dinner. What, you think I can’t do it myself?! Of course I can! I had a lot to prove.

There’s a saying in Russian that translates loosely to: the man is the head and the woman is the neck. What this suggests is that while the man is loud and everyone sees him at the forefront of the relationship, the woman is quietly controlling him from behind the scenes. The head can only turn if the neck lets it, but the neck is quiet about its power.

I fought this idea for a long time. I come from a very traditional gender-role culture. Men make the money, women raise kids and take care of the household. So I fought it. No, I said. My partner has to be an equal. I’m just as strong as a man. Mind you this was also before dating apps and swipe culture turned everything upside down.

So I dated. And I got married. And in every relationship, I became the mom. I took being equal to such an extreme that I’d actually overpower the man. He’d rely on me for everything - making decisions, making plans, booking trips, food choices, even choosing what they’d wear. Because as women, we are better at multitasking, we are better at taking on burdens, we can carry more emotional weight. I can do 10 things at the same time and it energizes me. Ask any man I’ve been with to do 2 things at once and he gets overwhelmed.

So here’s what I’ve learned. Take it from a very single, divorced 34-year-old, who’s unsuccessfully tried to date for the past 1.5 years in the new dating app culture…

Men need the chase.

A man needs to feel like a man. He needs to be the aggressor. He needs to be the stronger partner. He needs to be the protector. When a woman is equally strong, or, God forbid, even more strong, the man gets lost. He gets disinterested. He’s not given the opportunity to act and feel like a man. His instincts to chase and to protect and to show off his strength are wasted on a woman who is just as strong or even stronger, who is just as bold or even bolder, who doesn’t need help or support or a man to come after her.

It’s hard for me to just sit back and wait if I’m interested in a guy on any level. I go for what I want. I don’t have fear or shame. I can walk up to any man and ask him out. So the idea of waiting for him to approach me is SO foreign and so difficult. But I’m working on it. I’m working on having patience. Because once I break the seal of being the one to approach him, he won’t look at me as someone he needs to protect. He’ll never treat me how I want to be treated - as a woman - because I didn’t act as a woman on our very first interaction. Because I was the aggressor.

“Swipe culture,” which if you haven’t heard of before, is basically the premise that people on dating apps stop valuing or even viewing one another as human because all you’re doing is swiping on a face and body. You aren’t considering the human behind that, who has a past, and needs, and emotions. Dating apps promote an ease to discard one another, because there’s always someone else. There’s always the next picture. And this isn’t just an issue with men - women are doing it too. That’s why ghosting is so prevalent - we don’t even feel the need to tell someone the truth anymore, as a society. We drop people in real life just as if we were swiping on their face in an app. Also, as an aside, do you know what young people are calling sexual partners nowadays? Body count. Like “What’s your body count?”, as in how many people have you had sex with. We’re no longer going on dates with humans. We are all just a picture that can be discarded in a second without repercussions or consequences.

Anyway, back to my point. I feel like this has brought our dating and relationship values full circle. We had traditional gender roles that we women were fighting for a while, and we found more respect from our partners in that way, but now I think it’s reverted back. Now a woman can ask a guy for his dick size in a DM and no one bats an eye. So men don’t value independence - that’s assumed. What men value is feeling needed, feeling masculine.

I’ve seen this happen countless times to myself and to the strong, driven, beautiful women around me. When we are fully in our power, men get weak, they retreat, they lose interest in lieu of a weaker woman, one who needs them.

I’ve even gotten that feedback directly more than once - that I make it very clear that I don’t need the man I’m with. I’m an extremely loving, giving, loyal person... but I get it. I’m too independent. I push men away. I can deal with things without help. But I want the help. I want a man to protect me. I want my man to feel needed. I don’t want to do life alone.

So here we are. And here I am. I’m at a point in my life where I want a man who will treat me like his queen. I want a man who will open doors, pay for dinner, give gifts, plan trips. I want a man who will pursue me, who will text first, who will show me how bad he wants me. I want a man. Because, if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve been that man in all of my relationships. I’ve been the stronger one. I’ve been the aggressor. I’ve been the protector. I’ve paid for them. I’ve carried their bags. I’ve taken on taking care of us.

And. I. am. done.

So, I’ll just be sitting here quietly, single, until a man can pursue me the way I know I deserve to be pursued.

Thoughts? Opinions? Tell me below <3

Love always,