You swipe, you scroll—but the profiles start to blur. Something’s always missing. You know what you want, yet no one seems to measure up. Frustrated with the dating scene? Wondering why the options feel endless, but genuine connections feel out of reach?
Here’s the truth: the rules of relationships are shifting. As women outpace men in education, employment, and life satisfaction, marriage has moved from a survival necessity to a choice. If women no longer need husbands for financial security, what makes a partnership meaningful? What makes people want to stay?
Shadi Hamid of The Washington Post recently sat down with Richard Reeves, British-American writer and researcher on inequality and gender, to dig into these very questions.
The Myth of the “Perfect” Partner
Many men carry an image of an ideal partner that no one can live up to. This checklist often reflects outdated and unrealistic expectations: passive yet sexy, nurturing yet flawless, forever youthful, and endlessly accommodating.
As comedian Tina Fey once quipped, the “perfect woman” has become a Frankenstein fantasy: Caucasian blue eyes, Spanish lips, Asian skin, Swedish legs, Michelle Obama’s arms, and a Jamaican dance hall ass. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t exist.
So if perfection is a myth, how do you build the real, lasting relationship you’re hoping for? Reeves and Hamid suggest: start by turning the spotlight inward.
Focusing on Yourself
Building healthier, more fulfilling relationships begins with expanding your own capacity to connect, feel, and grow. That means moving beyond rigid, narrow definitions of masculinity and embracing a fuller humanity:
- Expand your emotionality. Practice expressing the whole spectrum of emotions—joy, love, awe, sadness, fear, remorse. Vulnerability is strength.
- Balance work and family life. See cooking, caretaking, creativity, and collaboration as signs of power, not weakness.
- Value relatedness over individualism. Prioritize interdependence, collaboration, and consensus-building in conflict.
- Adopt a relational approach to sexuality. Create safety, dignity, and mutual pleasure for your partner.
- Challenge sexism and homophobia. Build relationships rooted in mutual respect, honesty, fairness, trust, and shared responsibility.
At the Institute for Family Services, we help men cultivate these capacities by raising critical consciousness—unpacking the roles of power and control that undermine relationships and replacing them with practices of accountability, care, and dignity.
As Paulo Freire reminded us, critical consciousness means daring to see the social forces shaping our lives—and then acting to transform them.
Ask Not What Women Can Do for You . . .
Reeves, reflecting on raising his sons, teaches a different model of masculinity: “Have the courage to ask a girl out, the grace to accept no for an answer, and the responsibility to make sure that either way she gets home safely.”
It’s not about entitlement—it’s about respect. About using power not to control, but to protect.
What You Can Do for Yourself
Reeves’ advice to men is clear: “Maybe men need to learn how to need marriage less, to need women less by getting better at male friendships, by doing some of the emotional labor for ourselves that previously our wives did for us. By the way, I think that will make us more attractive.”
In other words: when you grow as a man, you expand your possibilities—not just in love, but in life.
Ready to Grow?
If you’re interested in building stronger connections—with yourself, with men, and with women—we’d love to support your journey at the Institute for Family Services. Together, we can reimagine what it means to care for yourself and to show up fully in relationships.