Ms Independent, it’s time you got support from your man

A couple of weeks ago, early in the morning, a woman in her early 30s went into labour with her first child. Her husband who she had assumed would be her birth partner was nowhere to be seen. Scared and frustrated, she reached out to her friends thinking that she would get support. Instead, she was reprimanded for waiting on a man instead of just snapping out of it and handling it. Why are you making a fuss? Can’t you just go to the hospital? Only you will be delivering the baby anyway, they told her.

Now, being independent, having something going for you, being able to pay your bills and show up for yourself is a good thing. It’s another thing, however, to lower your expectations of a person or people in your life, to cease expecting them to do their roles just because you can do them yourself. Being independent and having expectations of another are not mutually exclusive.

This woman who went into labour could have called a taxi and gone to the hospital herself. She could have got herself admitted and had the baby alone. In fact, this was what she did. But I disagree that it was wrong of her to expect the man that she is going to be parenting with to be her support system during delivery. That other women thought that she was whining and expecting too much goes to show that we are expecting too little of our men.

If all you want to do is kick ass, go for it. If you want to smash the glass ceilings and the opportunities are available to you, then do it. Do not however let your independence lower your expectations of the people around you. We have different needs to be met by different people in our lives. You can’t have all your needs met by your significant other. Still, there are those things that he owes you.

You should expect respect from your significant other; you should expect your feelings to matter to him. You should expect him to think about how his behaviour affects you, expect him to be intimate with you. These are reasonable expectations and they will keep changing. And it’s okay to be bothered if these things are not available from your man.

Expecting things from him does not take away from your independence. Expecting him to stand by you during a difficult experience does not mean that you are weak or that you can’t do it by yourself. It means that you trust another person enough to let them play a role in your life.

On the flip side, your significant other is right to expect things from you like loyalty and honesty about your intentions in the relationship. You can’t however fulfil all his hopes and dreams. Do not attempt to.