Most of my friends and cousins have families driven by women in almost every aspect in their relationship - money, children’s education, properties to buy, where to settle and other major decisions.

I am not sure if it is a paradigm shift but that’s what it seems based on personal experience. My dad and my uncles were the breadwinners. Most of my older male cousins still “direct” the decisions of the family and are still the breadwinners. That changed in the families of friends and cousins of the same age or younger.

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Lack of Ambition

Men get stuck or go up to slow. The men in my friends’ life aren’t that ambitious to begin with. Most of them are stable but almost none are particularly driven to get more and be more. They are happy with their 8-5 and hobbies like collecting shoes, games, collecting toys, basketball and others.

The women are the ones who seek to go higher, who work to be better and who find ways to be more than what they are.

It’s easy to argue that it’s the women who want more material things and are, therefore, more driven to earn more but most of these women’s indulgence are either travels or interior design rather than shoes, clothes and bags.

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Juvenile

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Hobbies are healthy but most men don’t know when to stop. They would rather buy a new pair of shoes or new toys than plan for a family vacation. Gawd knows every family in SoCal needs one. They refuse to sacrifice some of their time spent on their toys or games to take a second job or give in to their family’s requests.

My college friends are all male. Gaming and toys for the big boys or obsession over sports, running shoes and gears aren’t strange to me. As I’ve said, I think it’s healthy. It is important for women, just as it is for men, to have their own “thing” going on. It stops being healthy when they sacrifice family interest for their hobbies.

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Babies

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The bigger concern is their lack of vision. The stability and security of having a wife, a kid and a routine seem to put them in so much ease. Someone takes care of them, someone picks up after them, someone thinks for them. They just need to go with it. They become dependents and their only way to assert dominance is to sound masculine to shut up their wives when they start nagging.

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Where’s the partnership?

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What’s the point? Why take on another person who will only add to your load? It’s hard enough figure all these sh** out for yourself, why take on another one?

I thought marriage was supposed to be a partnership. I know my parents had that. One performed the responsibility the other couldn’t. I do hope that is still a possibility. I hope that men who truly understand that marriage is a partnership still exist.