It should stand to reason that if you want a “traditional wife,” whatever that is, you should be a “traditional man,” right? But it seems all too often the men demanding this are nothing of the sort, and for one woman on Reddit, simply pointing this out has landed her in hot water with her best friend.
After pushing back on her friend’s boyfriend’s diatribe about traditional gender roles and pointing out that he doesn’t even fit his own standards, she’s suddenly been labeled the bad guy for calling him out. Now, she wonders if she really did do something wrong.
The boyfriend complained that women today do not want to be ‘traditional’ wives who take care of their husbands.
Tijana Moraca | Shutterstock
Ah, yes, our era’s retrograde obsession with gender roles rears its ugly head once again. The 25-year-old woman wrote in her Reddit post that while hanging out with some friends recently, things turned quite heated when her best friend’s boyfriend started diatribing about what he wants in a wife.
“My friend’s boyfriend kept talking about how women no longer want to be traditional wives, and that’s why many of them are single,” she wrote, adding that she responded the way many women would: “In 2025 women don’t feel like they need a man in order to provide the lives that they want for themselves.”
He was, of course, undeterred, complaining about how women USED to be “all about taking care of their husbands and household without complaining.” If that’s got you red in the face, you’re certainly not alone. But there was a far bigger elephant in the room.
The woman countered that since he’s not the breadwinner, he’s not ‘entitled’ to a ‘traditional wife.’
The inherent situation at hand when it comes to “traditional” gender roles is that for a woman to be a “traditional wife” who’s “all about taking care of their husbands and household,” the household in question has to be completely provided for by the man, right? And it turns out this particular man has a bit of a problem in that regard!
“I let it go on for a while,” she wrote, “but I got tired of hearing his rant and told him that he can’t have a traditional wife when my friend goes 50/50 on all the bills with him and works more hours than he does.” Uh oh! A bit of a fly in the ointment here!
“I continued [by saying] he isn’t a traditional husband and can’t provide for his household like he’s supposed to so that my friend can stay home and do those ‘traditional duties,'” she wrote. This seems like stating the obvious, but you can probably guess how this went over.
Her friend and her boyfriend are demanding an apology for ’embarrassing’ him.
She later got a message from her friend saying that while she agreed with what she said, she needed to apologize to her boyfriend for “embarrassing” him. “I don’t think that I should have to,” she wrote. Right, because she didn’t say anything but the truth. Her friend, however, insisted she should keep the peace because “he’d had a few drinks,” which is a dangerous excuse if there ever was one.
“I told her that I would not apologize and that he can’t come around me anymore,” which has obviously caused a rift. “But I will not be disrespected,” the woman wrote. Nor should she be. Because aside from everything else, if you’re going to bloviate about what women should and should not do, you should be able to accept pushback. That’s part of running your mouth.
Unfortunately, when it comes to who your besties date, outside of establishing your own boundaries, there’s not much more you can do. Therapist Kaylee Rose Friedman told Very Well Mind, “The important thing is to own your feelings when you share how you feel with your friend, rather than blaming them or attempting to control their choices.” Hopefully, it won’t damage the friendship, but in this case, she should not have to change how she fundamentally feels about her core values to keep the peace with her friend’s problematic boyfriend.
And while “being the bigger person” is often in order, that doesn’t apply to situations where you did nothing wrong. It is not her duty to simply swallow things that, as a woman herself, are being said about HER that she finds offensive. Nor is it her problem that this “traditional man” is so fragile. It is her friend’s problem, however. And it seems that she’s sadly going to have to learn that the hard way. Best of luck to her.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
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