There’s a saying that the healthiest relationships are those in which the man is slightly more in love than the woman. Heteronormativity aside, I actually think this is true. Plus, it’s bad practice to put all your eggs in one basket, as elegantly stated by YouTube video essayist Jewel Onuk. What she means is that, as a woman, it’s bad practice to pour all of yourself into a man.
Now, this isn’t some “divine femininity” rhetoric, where I’m going to tell you to miraculously attract opportunities like suitable partners instead of pursuing them, but I am going to speak on the particular social dangers of being a woman who is unaware of herself, therefore leaving her character vulnerable to exploitation by men who can convince her to stay that way: ignorant of her person, her potential, and her personal desires.
Far too often, we have seen women in relationships who grow to rely on their partners to the point of losing themselves in the process. They allow, or enable, their partners to envelop them, elevating codependency beyond the level of “I can’t do anything without him!” to “I don’t want to do anything without him!”Â
Take Kendel Kaye, once a 23-year-old stay-at-home girlfriend who followed her boyfriend to Puerto Rico—meaning no nearby family, no job opportunities, and certainly no friends. Kaye described experiencing an “instant spark” when she met her boyfriend Luke Lintz, a self-proclaimed “biohacker” and CEO of the social media growth company High Key, as shown in the opening of Jewel’s YouTube video “this is what HAPPENS when you PUT ALL YOUR EGGS in a MAN’S BASKET!” Kaye became popular from her “weekend diary of a stay at home girlfriend” TikTok series, where she detailed pouring Luke a glass of water in the morning, making him breakfast, lunch, and dinner with coffee on the side, folding his laundry, and asking, “Do you need anything?” as often as she could blink.Â
In return, her boyfriend… gives her a monthly allowance so she can attend the gym, buy ingredients for food prepping, and overall, keep herself sane in a country where she is unfamiliar with the language, community, and professional landscape. A graduate of architecture, she says, “I just don’t really feel the need to […] have a ton of my own money.” (00:45:09). Perhaps this is the creative in her, the one who recognizes the rendition of the “starving artist” and is not averse to struggle in the name of self-expression.
But Kaye didn’t really get to do a lot of that as Luke’s girlfriend. All of her time was spent coordinating their matching outfits, going to the gym together, making protein shakes and matcha lattes like an overworked barista, and fixing up fruit bowls. She might’ve been a creative chef, laundress, and maid. But I don’t think she was truly happy like this—she wasn’t allowed the time or energy to be a creative person.Â
Eventually, perhaps unsurprisingly, Luke broke up with her. Not because the quality of her cooking dropped or he wasn’t impressed with the outfits she arranged, but because of her past as an OnlyFans model, which he was aware of before they started dating, and which she stopped doing after they began dating. Jewel notes, “…underneath the soft lighting was a woman who had built her entire life around someone else’s ability and willingness to keep her there, and when he didn’t, it was over … no safety net, just an empty planner and a TikTok page full of routines that don’t apply anymore.” (0:51:18-0:51:39).Â
In the aftermath, Kaye went on the Sitting Pretty podcast to say, “… it just doesn’t feel like unconditional love if he only loves me if I’m this … Christian wholesome girl… it’s just not me.” (1:03:07-1:03:16). Of course, post-breakup, she was left with nothing. She had essentially no money, no physical friends for her to fall back on, and no way of immediately moving out or staying at someone else’s place for even a night.Â
It’s never nice to be blindsided by the person you love. So, please don’t forget yourself once you enter into a relationship. No one is worth compromising your character for. You should always have a backup plan, and always be sure that the person you date cares about you just as much as you care about them. Maybe even a little more. In order to partially protect yourself from that sudden hurt and heartbreak, you need to know that you can trust yourself to take care of yourself during the aftermath.