Slavic woman coupled with an Austrian here: he cooks daily, he does the groceries and a cleaning lady hired for 18 hours per week. My free time is as equally important as his free time. That is the baseline for mutual respect.

The biggest regret I have is that I didn't learn to decenter men years and years ago.

Polish woman living in USA here. Holy moly, the culture around dating and relationships was shocking to me. Ladies, you are really doing too much, be straight forward and don't settle for bare minimum. You deserve so much more.
P.S When you said you are Slavic woman everything made sense why I agree so much with your takes lol.

A good wife is someone who sacrifices herself for her husband but a good husband is just someone whose wife is sacrificing herself

Exactly, there needs to be an overcorrection to even approach equality.

The LESS you do for him, the MORE he'll do for you🎯💯

She's not lying y'all. I've lived it. I've witnessed it.

Keep going even when you worry you’re “being mean to them” they’ve been really rude and mean and apathetic about us. Yes- the over correction is absolutely necessary

I grew armpit hair. Blew his fucking mind.

I stopped centering my ex-husband and it took less than a year for him to leave. My not cooking for him was the last straw for him. He never even talked to kids or I about it about it. He just came home with moving boxes and left.

I started doing this in my early 30's (in my 40's now). Didn't even know about decentering men. I just wanted a man to meet me halfway if he wanted me around. Never happened. Till this day, the men I meet still expect me to do the most while they do the bare minimum. No sir.

when i was a kid i used to 'center' my friends. as a teenager i 'centered' a romance. later i 'centered' a job. after a break-up i was SAD that the JOY i felt in generosity was 'stolen'.  i ENJOY my generous giving nature; but felt weak or foolish wasting my JOY on PEOPLE. i don't want to be angry. i don't want to be selfish. i want to be the happy giving person that i am deep inside. i have found a CURE!!! animal shelters, trash pick-up, nature trail maintenance....i get all the benefits of being MYSELF without throwing away my generosity on the black hole that we call PEOPLE. good luck all...

So essentially being a good wife entails self-abandoning. And I think when some men are seeking a partner they choose someone based on how much of themselves (time, energy, body, emotion) they will give away in that marriage. I really am waking up to this and I don't think I will approach relationships in the same manner.

"When you start choosing yourself, love won't feel like begging, it will feel like breathing." - Mark Darwin

After 4 years of relationship I stopped doing all the work and realized: there is nothing left. He said he was sad, but didn't do anything. I ended the relationship only a few weeks later. I couldn't stay in that nothingness.
Today I know: it's not "working hard for your relationship", but love equals work. I know, I can love, I can work and I do that every single day. But in more than 20 years of dating there hasn't been one single man, who was willing and able to do the work for me - means they all didn't love me. So it's totally fine for me to have left them and never letting a man into my life again. So sad that I didn't know about decentering men 20 years ago! 😢

Couldn't agree more. This is how we tear down the patriarchy,  women doing the bare minimum.

Ladies please listen to this video. My grandma used to try to tell me this and as a child and I didn't understand. I'm married almost 34 years we have 5 kids together. When the kids were young everything was pretty great. But when our youngest got to highschool my hubby began to change in a bad way. I've always been a stay at home mom because it requires skills I already possessed when we got married. He always valued my contributions for the first 20 or so years. What did it for me was the dishes. If we are both at home, how dare hubby dirty every single glass and cup at home in 6 hours. I stopped washing all dishes that day. Then I noticed more ways he was taking me for granted so I stopped caring about his needs. It's taken about 6 years of work and some really harsh fights but we are now back to how we were in the beginning. He shows me daily how much I mean to him and I reward him. Things are going very well now.

I’m 50.  This is the best advice I’ve ever heard.

I completely agree with doing the bare minimum in every aspect of life...I barely work 25 hours in my 40 hour work week and still get all my work done. I wash and style my hair (black woman) once a week. I chose a work uniform so I don't even have to think about whether I look good or not (I always do 😊). So yes, the bare minimum strategy is the way to go.

Love the video ❤

Ladies, please watch this video, her advice is golden.

💯 ESPECIALLY when at the end you said that he will take all that time you saved him and DO NOTHING. My ex husband spent 13 years playing video games. I gave him the world and he still lives like an 11 year old boy. No chores, no cooking for himself, never writing that book he said he dreamed of, he just took the lottery he won with having me and played video games. Before, during, and after our marriage. Completely wasted potential for both of us and the best years of our lives. I wish I would’ve known about decentering men twenty years ago. Ladies, if he was playing video games and eating junk food on the couch when you met him, he will be doing the same thing two decades later. Save yourself the trouble. Please learn my costly lesson.