Men aren't needed anymore, and they’re struggling to adapt to being wanted
Historically, women needed to attach themselves to men. Women couldn’t inherit land, sign a lease, or travel without a male escort. Did you know women couldn’t sign up for credit cards on their own until 1974? As a single woman in 2026 with a tremendous talent for spending money, trust me: If I needed a man to shop, I’d have settled down with one of my less-than-fabulous Hinge matches by now.
Thankfully, I can solo travel, live on my own, and buy overpriced dresses without a husband, so when I date, I don’t evaluate a man on his ability to provide food, shelter, and safety, but instead whether he’s someone I want to be around.
I think a lot of people lump the “independent woman” and “man-hater” tropes together, but I feel like if anything, modern freedoms allow us to appreciate men for who they are rather than what they provide. As a result, men are no longer needed, but wanted. And instead of seeing this as a freeing and exciting development, I have reason to believe men are struggling to adapt.
Since having a husband was a requirement for survival, women adapted to maximize desirability. From restricting their diets to restricting their personalities, women did anything they could to demonstrate their ability to make men’s lives easier and be wives, mothers, and caregivers. However, society has changed and women no longer need to be picked to survive. Yet men still desire women, but as a group, men were never required, nor encouraged, to undergo that same development. Thus, a skill gap has emerged.
A few days ago, someone left 100-pound weights on a machine at my gym. I couldn’t move them on my own, so I went up to a guy and asked if he could help me. Before I even finished my question, he leaped up and moved all the weights. I was shocked how happy he seemed to be helping me out. I wondered: Is this the secret to talking to men? Do I just need to ask men to do more tasks?
I posted a video online explaining the situation and was shocked when it got over a million views in a day.
Some comments were condescending, likening men to toddlers that just want to do a task. I find this dangerous, as infantilizing men is as damaging as idealizing them. Sayings like “men are simple” or “boys will be boys” are bad for two reasons:
Reducing men to base, caveman-ish caricatures in popular media sets a low self-expectation for men.
Encouraging women to see men as incapable of having rich inner worlds normalizes poor male behavior. Over time, this gap leads to misandristic thinking and combative dating.
Surprisingly, most of the comments were positive, and even more surprising, those comments were left by… men (a demographic I’ve come to associate exclusively with commenting “you’re not funny” on my YouTube shorts). Even more unexpected: they were using emotional language like “valued,” “appreciated,” and “chosen.” One account commented,
“Being asked for help is being seen, by others, as someone capable and valuable and we all want to be seen that way. And are scared of being seen as weak, unvalued, or worthless. Because we think if that’s how people see us, as worthless, they’ll leave.” - @peterlucier
It seemed that most of the men saying things like “yes! I love a task!” weren’t really focused on the tasks, but more on the feeling of being chosen to help.
Another type of comment started to emerge, calling out the men who talked about loving tasks, yet didn’t help out around the house.
Do we just need to make trash heavier? I’m kidding… but sludgekitten has a good point (a sentence I could never have imagined I’d write earnestly). Maybe it’s that in a committed relationship, a woman asking a man to take the trash out feels like an assigned task rather than “helping,” which takes away the allure for a man. Women shouldn’t be responsible for managing their husband’s emotions around trash, but it is an interesting observation (and I am very open to others’ interpretations- please comment your take). I do think if there was a designated “weight helper” in the gym and I asked him to help, he’d likely be way less enthused than this random man.
Lastly, my friend and I read the comment below and both reacted the same way… “so much to unpack here.”
I am about to put more thought into this comment than @anadeweerd could ever have anticipated. On one hand… I understand how her son wants to be helpful. But let’s say her daughter wants to carry a chair. Carrying it makes her daughter feel strong and useful. The same goes for her son. But there is only one chair.
Who gets to carry it? Should the daughter give up the chair just so her brother can feel useful? I’d argue that her brother should be able to feel useful without carrying the chair, by watching her be strong, cheering her on. However, this is an emotional usefulness that serves his sister as well as himself. In giving the boy the chair, we maintain the farce that he is successfully portraying specific, old-school “masculine” traits instead of modern-day ones, like emotional strength, support, kindness.
If we just let boys carry chairs to feel good about themselves, aren’t we just lying to them? I’d argue that teaching this pattern early is damaging for men. We’re conditioning them to think that their usefulness is tied to accomplishing tasks we don’t actually care about. Then, when women ask for the help they truly need (i.e., cleaning dishes), they get rejected, because it doesn’t match the pattern of what men have learned falls within the expected realm of masculine usefulness.
My friend P recently told me that she is intentional with how she asks her fiancee for help. If she can tie it to “manliness,” he’s much more willing to get involved. I think it’s reasonable to put thought into how we communicate with our partners, but it’s also important to consider the long-term ramifications of being complicit in this pattern.
She said,
“Men like to feel needed until they actually are. If you need them financially or you need them to do 50% of house chores, all of a sudden that’s too much. If it’s being needed in a way that is easy to fulfill and strokes their ego, they love that.”
If you’re needed before you actually are, isn’t that being wanted? So men want you to want their help, not just rely on it.
These days, women make fun of men who have abandoned chivalry, splitting the bill, sitting on their phones while their wives tend to 5 children and 3 carry on bags.
Listen: some of these men deserve to be made fun of. For sure. But shouldn’t men feel chosen in their relationships with women, too? Both people in a relationship should feel wanted, but I think the issues arise in that “being wanted” manifests differently for different people, and it’s the mismatched expectation that is problematic. This applies to friendship as well.
Being wanted is harder than being needed because it’s not as definite. Being wanted can be withdrawn at any moment, which I’d imagine makes men feel less secure, especially if they were taught their value solely came from being indispensable.
It seems like we need to remind men that their worth doesn’t come solely from being useful. I think this quiet change from need to want has been destabilizing for men who tie their self-worth to utility, and has resulted in a large misalignment in modern dating.
Today, true usefulness is often a lot more emotional. Maybe you’re dating a woman who doesn’t need help lifting chairs, but needs you to listen. If it’s being useful that you’re after, no amount of moving furniture is going to help. But sitting on that furniture and listening to her… that’s helpful. Even if you’re not lifting something or fighting a bear, you’re still valuable because you’re you.
Let me make one thing very clear: I don’t want men to stop lifting things or helping me at the gym. I just want them to see that there’s ways to be helpful / do tasks / be needed outside of the predefined mold men have been filling for since their inception. Their responsibilities are changing and expanding, which means there’s a more diverse set of ways to be wanted than before. And I think that’s something to be excited about, rather than dread.
I’m a very independent person, so when I choose a partner it’s because I want to be with them, not because I need them to survive. And I think that kind of wanting, the kind that’s chosen, is a lot stronger than any that’s built solely on necessity.
If you liked this, check out my other posts:
P.S. Thank you to Holyn Thigpen for editing.
P.S.S. If this piece left you hungry for more, check out my video essay where I address some of the common comments/DMs I’ve received. Thank you all for reading!
Olivia can be reached at hello@oliviabarbulescu.com.
Considering the whole 'help with the dishes' thing, they're my dishes, too. If they were ALL hers, maybe that would be considered helping. Those are also MY kids to take care of. I'm not helping out my wife by 'babysitting' our kids. This 'needing to be asked to help' seems more like a product of the patriarchy and culture-of-power crapfest than a primal need within the male soul or whatever.
This was a fantastic analysis. As a fellow independent woman, I struggle so much with dating because guys complain that I don’t need them. Which is true, I don’t in the traditional sense. I want a partner, I want my equal, but that just confuses them.