We need to talk about men needing to be partners, not 'providers and protectors'

[Echobelly]

I see a lot of messaging, especially in the 'manosphere' but some outside it too that men's role in relationships is to 'provide and protect'. In this day and age, though, that's an outdated model. Marriage has for a very long time not been the only way for women to get money to pat for anything, so we're not going to swoon over a guy just for earning money. For most couples, both need to work, plenty of women now outearn men and men can't expect to be forgiven having to give any help at home because they are out 'providing' (this was never a particularly fair deal anyway given women's unpaid labour). And we're not going off to war every 5 minutes these days, so the 'protect' part seems a bit redundant, especially when we know that intimate partners are the biggest risk to women.

But too many people still talk about things as that's all women want or need and - a man with a job who might be able to shout threateningly if you happened to have a break in at your house. And it sets men up to fail because the parameters are so different from the world this idea was based on.

I think a key source of disappointment and disillusionment for women is men just not being real partners in a relationship and as parents. And it seems they need to be told this - to know that their wives/partners are working (whether earning or not) and you don't just get to come home and say you're too tired from 'working hard' to help. Or that if you don't have kids, female partners aren't there to run your life with you or do all the management of your family and social life. Men need to be full participants in relationships, not virtual bystanders whose only job is to bring in money - and the way we talk to men and boys and bring up our kids should reflect this.

I think it’s fine for those who prefer to be in a relationship with a “protector / provider” but like you I prefer “partnership” to “protection and provision”. I don’t need protecting nor providing for but having a true partner in every sense is a cheat code for life (imo).

I dont need a man fullstop.

Provider and protector.
I Provide for my self and I protect my self.
Don't need a man for money I earn my own, dont need a man to stand up for me i can do that myself because I'm an adult.

I dont have kids because I dont want to be tied down to a man for the rest of my life.
Its not just 18 years.

Life's tough enough now no way would I swap one prison for another.

Also I loathe the kind of man who wants his only contribution to relationships to be wallets.

Not all short men are like that though. My DB has been happily with a woman 6 inches taller than him for 18 years.

Men need to be full participants in relationships, not virtual bystanders whose only job is to bring in money

PREACH!!

Nonsense. Men don’t go to war for women.

I'm sure, but if you don't learn your lessons in your own life what is the point. I learnt 3 times not to go there again.

Bit of a depressing take.

So that’s an experience that shapes many women - not simply the biological reality of being a woman.

I have and will have no experience of childbearing so any and everything related to that has no impact on my reality of being a woman

It’s really down to parenting. Both parents should be teaching their children [of both sexes] that relationships are partnerships. But even in 2025 they are not. And they often aren’t demonstrating it in the way they operate in their own relationships, so YP learn by what they see, not what they are told.

And if companies doesn't provide supportive environments where men can have flexible hours to help with picks up and take compassionate leave without fear of it negatively impacting their careers - then with the best will in the world, even the most progressive couples will find it hard to demonstrate the equality of roles - a partnership - within the homes that those YP live in.

I think it needs a gradual unlearning/retraining over decades, I’m afraid.

I don't know. I think you are undervaluing protection here.

I suspect many women from the Ukraine right now might have a differernt perspective. It's not like they were living a radically differernt lifestyle like medieval times, they are/were women with normal jobs and lives we'd all recognise.

And yet, many Ukrainian women are fled with their kids, while their husbands are at war.

Should the women be there too? Or should they have drawn lots for whether it was husbands or wives who stayed behind to fight?

Why do people get so hung up on this?

Especially when men have the same preference in reverse. A preference for women smaller than them as tall women look “mannish” or make them intimidated. It’s not women alone who created the “tall - masculine / short - feminine” dynamic.

It’s not women alone who have height related dating preferences nor tie them to evolutionary reasons. Yet only women are criticised for this.

What’s depressing about it?

Similar height - had the same experiences as you for the most part.

But for me it’s even simpler - it’s attraction. I cannot date men I have no physical attraction to and it’s rare I am physically attracted to a man I tower over.

It works for me.

There are around 100,000 female soldiers in the Ukrainian army, including many in positions of command.

I don't believe anyone should be conscripted into an army, male or female.

We’re not feeding that protect and provide BS to our teen son, definitely going down the partner route. I hope he finds someone his equal in all things. And we talk about us protecting each other as a family, he looks out for his sister, his sister looks out for him, we parents take care of both of them.

" but I don’t see any women who are seeking ‘providers and protectors’ in my real life."

Plenty of women still expect men to pay for dates, and are only "attracted" to men significantly taller than they are. This is" real life". This comes up all the time on dating threads....

Having the kind of body that carries children is very much innate to being a woman, it's definitionally what makes you a woman, and it has a huge effect on who you are.

It's easier to see once you have had kids, not so much because of the kids, but because you see the effects of your female hormones. Or if you've gone through menopause.

The ability of so many women to choose no kids is largely down to technology that suppresses normal female bodily functions. Which is find but it's worth keeping in mind that if you want to remain childless, avoid pregnancy, and also have a sex life, that is something that is enabled by technology, and which you need to keep up with.

That surely counts as an "innate" differernce.

What should those women have done with their children? What choice did they really have? We have a woman in Our neighbourhood with 5 kids - her 2, her sisters 2, and her brothers 1.
Her husband, her brother and his wife, her sister and her partner are all fighting the Russians - 4 in the army, 1 helping run an essential power station.
I know she certainly doesn’t want to be here, and I don’t honestly think she has it much easier here with 5 kids all missing their parents, going to school in a foreign country.

I need neither protecting nor providing for. I need a partner who cares for me and works with me to build a sustainable life together. I need him to be caring and considerate and to hold up his end of the house stuff / life stuff without me nagging. I basically want him to be an equal partner and if he can't then I just don't need him at all.

Luckily I have one who can and does!

Maybe not your dp but many men do go for their wives and kids.

Nobody is gonna defend your country without conscription LOL may as well roll out the red carpet for the Russian army.

This is going to be a problem going forward. Nobody will want to make sacrifices anymore for their family, their community, their country. And will lose out to those who do have this hierarchy.

That you are in the moral position means nothing if you are dead and your culture a graveyard.

While I agree with you about mat leave, I wonder if this just seems gendered because women who have children often have this period of financial and physical vulnerability, because of just having had a baby. I would look after my DP/DH in this way if he became really ill, for example, so it wouldn't be a "man providing for and protecting a woman" thing, just a "less vulnerable partner taking care of the more vulnerable partner during that time" thing.

Yes, there are female soldiers, I was one.

But there is a very good reason that it is men who had to stay and not women. My experience as a female soldier speaks to that, there are significant differernces in war which is why you don't see women soldiers often in certain roles.

And there are real reasons that women are sent with the children more often than men.

I think in a situation like Ukraine, men who ran away without dispensation should be stripped of their citizenship and treated as stateless individuals. Fuck them, they have failed to step up in the most basic way required.