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Goodbye Relationship Gender Roles

There are no gender roles, only learned behavior

By Nailah RobinsonPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Goodbye Relationship Gender Roles
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I was talking to someone not too long ago, and I mentioned how my ex loved drama, and how he felt like if there was no drama in the relationship something was wrong even if nothing was. He needed that to fuel his very fiery nature. He was a very passionate person, and if there was no drama, he didn’t feel that passion. They turned to me and said those words that I think are completely ridiculous. They said “That’s not normally a man thing. That’s usually a woman thing.” This is completely inaccurate. In my 38 years on this planet, one thing that I have learned is that men have the same disposition as women when it comes to relationships.

People learn from previous relationships. If their first relationship was full of drama, and they got some kind of satisfaction from this, they learn that drama is what a relationship is. This isn’t a woman thing, this is a people thing. It’s really not surprising. The sex is so much better with someone that you have an emotional connection with, and that drama connects you like a healthy relationship just cannot. That’s the reason why it’s so hard to be in a healthy relationship after being in a toxic one. A healthy relationship feels boring. So men, too, are prone to keep up that dysfunction in their relationships to keep things interesting.

Just like if you started out with a healthy relationship. You know what that is supposed to look like, so when you come across a toxic relationship, it is much easier to walk away. It won’t feel good to you, it will feel dangerous. So people who start off in a healthy relationship, search for that instead.

We are all just a series of learned behaviors. When things feel good, we repeat the patterns. When things hurt, we shy away. Every now and then we push away from things that may feel good in the moment, but are detrimental for our physical or mental health, however, this is not what our instincts tell us to do. This is true for men and women.

Sometimes we work on ourselves and we grow out of these habits. Sometimes we relearn them over and over because we get the same good feeling we got before. Sometimes we just grow out of certain things, but at the core, these learned habits make up who we are. So saying that’s something men do or that’s something women do is just plain wrong. It’s a learned behavior that this person, man or woman, has yet to work on.

People say that women always associate sex with love, whereas men can diferentiate the two. I am a woman who does not associate sex with love. It is a learned behavior from my rape induced past. Also watching the men in my life and how they moved forced me to see men a certain way that would then take me out of the fairytale view of sex. Sex is sex. Love is love. This was learned early, and so I’m not automatically connected to someone just because they have seen me naked.

People say that women should stay home and take care of the children because they are the more nurturing sex. There are real men out here better equipped to take care of the children while their partner goes out to make a living. They have chosen a partner who is good at that because they know they are better suited to be stay at home.

Then there's the fact that there are same sex couples who go through the same issues as heterosexual couples. This completely invalidates any gender specific roles to cause the issues.

Men cheat. Women cheat. Men have broken hearts. Women have broken hearts. Women take care of children. Men take care of children. Men are workaholics. Women are workaholics. Women cook and clean. Men cook and clean. Women cry. Men cry. Women fall and love. Men fall in love.

My point is that the things that we do have no gender. Can it be more likely that one would do something than the other? Yes, I will give you that. This is mostly because it is what was learned through societal observations though. It is not because they are a man or a woman. In reality men do have more testosterone and women have more estrogen, but the truth is we all have some of both. So scientifically speaking women and men can portray the same learned behavior. It’s just a matter of if that was learned or not. So let's just stop saying that's something that a man would do or that's something that a woman would do. It's offensive to those of us who live outside the box.

Ok. My little rant is over. There's so much more I can say on the subject. Don’t forget to tip, heart, and share as you should desire to help me keep writing.

gender roles
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About the Creator

Nailah Robinson

Author, Mother, Wife, Sister, Daughter, Cousin, Daughter In Law, Sister In Law, Friend, Grand Daughter, Niece, Teacher, and Student. I am so many things to so many people, but in the end, I'm just Nailah.

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