Lotta relationships nowadays seem like business partnerships instead of people actually loving each other.
You kinda need someone to help you out with owning a home in this economy and im convinced thats why people in my age group (regardless of gender) damn-near force themselves into marriage.
Relationships in general are business partnerships. Marriage was traditionally a joining of houses/clans/bloodlines, akin to companies merging.
As Mao Zedong put it, "Politics is war without blood, and war is politics with bloodshed."
Love, politics, and business all stem from the same struggle surrounding resource allocation.
Politics - Vying for a candidate to give you and your group what you want, and while a candidate vies for your vote to get power.
Business- Businesses vying for consumers to give them their money, while consumers have the pick of the litter.
Love - I want sex and a womb for my progeny, you want my money and security.
It's always a tug of war in relationships. We both want something, but we want it at a discount. Men and women come to the table with their terms, but men fall off and forget to enforce their side of deal. Women will be able to do the duality move very easily, appearing lovey-dovey one minute, but not afraid to enforce their terms. I've made that mistake myself, and that's why I started to make sure before I get into an arrangement, that not only they understand the terms, but I do myself. We gotta stop treating women with kid gloves.
We as men gotta start thinking about relationships in the sense that they are inherently transactional. Society pulled the trick bag on us that surrounds the Disney style of romance.
Happy wife, happy life. Simp for your woman, and sacrifice without expecting anything in return. Society had that leverage on men, because women couldn't support themselves back in the day, so they knew that by somewhat guaranteeing that majority of men will find a wife, they'll have happy husbands who will have no issue working hard to support their wife and family. Nowadays, we're hearing about men going without relationships, and the rise of NEET/incel culture where young men have no motivation to go produce value for the society.
Not saying women should be in the kitchen barefoot chained to the stove, but we as men have been lagging.
Women out here are on the F-22/stealth UAV/ modern warfare tip, while we as men are still fighting trench warfare with bolt action rifles.