Nadia Bokody: Why women need to stop praising men for doing bare minimum in relationships

Women do it all the time without even realising says Nadia Bokody – but while it’s a common habit, it means your relationship is “abysmal”.

A few weeks ago, I came out as gay.

It was a shocking revelation to most of the people who knew me, because I’d spent so much of my life in relationships with men.

But no one was more confounded than I was about the fact it took me 36 years to come to that conclusion.

How had I so blatantly ignored the myriad signs I wasn’t actually attracted to men? Shouldn’t that have been a little more, well … obvious?

Perhaps it might have, had I not spent the last two decades being reassured how “lucky” I was to have men in my life who loved and desired me. To be chosen by a man, I was consistently reminded, was a big deal.

If that man also happened to take an interest in my interior life and offered to do the dishes? I should probably marry him. (Incidentally, I did in my twenties.)

RELATED: How I realised I was gay at 36

Nadia Bokody ignored the myriad of signs she wasn’t attracted to men. Picture: Instagram/@nadiabokody.

When I shared my misgivings about staying with my now-ex-boyfriend, friends well-meaningly cautioned me, “Whatever you do, don’t throw him back into the ocean. There are so few decent men out there!”

Everywhere I looked, it seemed, women were twisting themselves into knots to secure one of these “decent men” – an accolade which appeared to merely require a display of basic humanity. Men who went beyond this standard were propelled to a special echelon that attracted resounding cooing and envy when spoken about in group settings.

“Hubby’s taking care of the kids so I can have the weekend off,” an exhausted friend announced over a recent girls’ brunch.

“He’s such a gem!” another friend exclaimed.

“Where do I find one like him?!” a second joined in.

It’s a depressing sentiment that’s incredibly familiar.

In a recent TikTok trend, mums share videos of their “biggest turn-ons”, showing their male partners performing painfully rudimentary tasks, like washing a dish after using it, dressing their own kids for school, and folding laundry.

Ironically, while being instructed to look out for “red flags” and “toxic traits” in our partners, women are taught to feel simultaneously rewarded by the abysmal contributions men so often make in their relationships with us.

Studies overwhelmingly indicate we increase our domestic load when we cohabitate with a male partner and are more likely to take on the lion’s share of child-rearing duties, even when we have jobs outside the home.

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Nadia believes people need to stop praising men for doing the bare minimum at home. Picture: Instagram/NadiaBokody

We’re encouraged to ignore these shortcomings by infantilising men. Our culture has developed an entire lexicon to reinforce this.

We joke about guys having “mess blindness”, of not being able to multi-task as well as women (in fact, research has proven both genders struggle to do more than one thing at a time), and of men lacking the emotional capacity to have meaningful conversations with women about their lives.

Romantic movies do little to dismantle these fallacies – regularly depicting incompetent, bumbling men attracting the affections of incredible, accomplished women.

In Knocked Up, we’re convinced lazy stoner, Ben (played by Seth Rogen) can win over the breathtaking, successful television reporter Alison (Katherine Heigl). The film’s plot line insinuates it’s Alison’s personal hang-ups about marriage (read: she’s high maintenance!) that initially hold the relationship back, not the fact Ben’s character contributes literally nothing to her life.

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Partnership with a man is frequently positioned as a woman’s ultimate goal. We tell girls they barely exist until a boy picks them and warn young women they can expect misery if forgoing marriage. In fact, it’s one of the more common (albeit bizarre) attempted insults I get from men who religiously hate-read my columns.

“Enjoy your 12 cats and being a lesbian!” they angrily tweet at me, as though being surrounded by a clouder of adorable animals and having a loving relationship with another woman is a bad thing. (Though it should be known, I’m actually more of a dog person.)

In reality, research suggests women are far more likely to end up miserable in a long-term relationship with a man than we are by being alone.

Studies show we not only earn more money and report greater levels of happiness when we’re unattached, we also live longer (while for men the opposite is true).

It may explain why roughly two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women, in spite of the propaganda we’re sold about the great torment of winding up a “spinster”. (Keeping in mind this is a sales pitch we only give women. Men who choose singledom are free to be “bachelors”.)

Men who help out every now and again are heaped with praise, while women carry the lion’s share of work. Picture: Instagram/NadiaBokody

Now in my first same-sex relationship, I’ve been able to begin to unravel why it took three decades to recognise I was gay.

Mediocrity is so tightly woven into the narrative of what we’re told to expect for ourselves as women, it leads many of us stay in situations that rob us of our joy.

And keeping the bar at rock bottom for the people we call our partners out of fear of being seen as “high maintenance” or ending up alone only serves to perpetuate that story.

In truth, women don’t need to be chosen by men to have value. We only need to choose ourselves, which is something I now make a point of doing every day.

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