You Don’t Need Your Significant Other To Support You

Support. This is one of the major qualities we look for in a partner. When you got through articles that tell you what kind of qualities your partner should have, being supportive is a big one and you agree. Who doesn’t want to date someone who helps them through their troubles? Who isn’t looking for someone who pushes them to greater heights? I am. Are you?

Speaking as a woman, I’ve read numerous articles congratulating men who “let” their wives pursue their careers. Men whose wives travelled alone for work were hailed. Those who moved across the country, across the world to be with their wives who got promoted or employed away from home were praised. When they quit their jobs to look after the home and children because their wives wanted to work, the men were called special, like no other.

This works both ways too. Women who don’t ridicule their partners for failing to climb the corporate ladder are spoken of as the good kind. The ones who make more than their husbands do, yet do not ridicule them but regards her income as both theirs, are seen as angels.

You look at these people and say they’re rare that you’d have liked your partner to be like that. Women need to be more accommodative and men more supportive and on the story goes.

Where does this stem from though?

Our environment and societal beliefs assign men and women to certain roles. Roles that must be fulfilled to become an ideal husband, wife or partner. These duties are ingrained in us inherently making us see ourselves as a group that is supposed to do this or that. Therefore if we perceive ourselves in said categories fulfilling certain duties, we see others in the same way and if they don’t do that then they’re not good.

And I get it, we all have qualities we would like in a partner. We know what we want and if it’s not that, then it’s nothing. I’m not disputing this. But all the support we claim our partners must give us to prove they’re not like the rest is a misinformed role that I disagree with fully.

Instead,

A partner should look at you and see you as a person, full stop.
A person, like he is, a person like she is, going through what people do.

I don’t need to sympathize, empathize, support or put myself in your shoes if I see you as a human being.
I hurt and so do you too, I know pain, joy, anger and so should you too.
I have dreams and hopes in my way and understand that you have those too.
I fail in many ways, come short when I make some promises and it’s no wonder when you do this too.
Your partner is a person like you, not a category, a statistic or a personality.

All this support we talk of is not that. Support means adding strength, purporting that the other is deficient in it. You’re told to empower them as if they’re less than they are and you should bring them higher.

What you need is to recognize that your life and all it entails from the highs to the lows is experienced by your partner too. That their need to do certain things as they please, you know it too. So it’s not that you “let ” them be who they are or want to be. It is that you recognize that life is one and shared. That hope is still hope, pain is still pain, a dream is still one regardless of who’s doing it.

All these roles stop when people see each other as just that, people. Feeling what they do. “He took out the trash and washed the kids”, “She gave me the money without expecting it back”. Normal things that are now seen as extraordinary because we assume the ones who do it must be greater than we are because they’re doing something outside their roles. Women get tired just like men do and men get broke just like women do. No one is lesser or greater.

We all are people and it’s time we start seeing each other like that.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

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