I have had pretty difficult relationships to cis het women who center cis men in their kinship hierarchies: mostly because of how much I have been used to provide support, care and love to them while they prioritize their partners over any other relationship

I recently realized that I had been constantly relegated to the supportive role, because me decentering men in my life seemed to be an anomaly, as if our bonding required me to have some level of dating experience for me to be treated with same amount of respect as other women

What used to shock me the most was how much the bonding was invested in them romanticizing their partner, all while speaking about their trauma in regards to how they were treaded. It was always about “them” centering their need to deconstruct their relationship

I didn’t really mind it until I started to see a pattern in their behaviors: I always seemed to be the right person to talk too whenever they needed advice but that favor was never reciprocated better yet, I never felt like my needs as simple as they could be were important

It was a very difficult realization to accept how I was letting myself be treated: it only hit home once I watched these same women desire my energy once they had to leave their relationships. It was how disposable the dynamic was and how easy it was for them to roll back

into my life with little to no regard for the damage caused.. so many cis het women will refuse to honestly examine how much they devalue relationships to non-cis het men and how much they actually participate in exploitative dynamics with other people

And this is because our economies of care are plagued by capitalistic rationalizations of value vested in desirability politics and if we add the intersections of oppression that render these dynamics even more complex we get full on EXPLOITATION

Emotional labor is what allows relationships to be sustainable and egalitarian dynamics are the ones that recognize that and account for that labor by being balanced, reciprocal, just and ethical.

And if I really look back at the amount of relationships I have had, I can confidently say that too many of mine bordered being exploitative & neglectful and it was always pertaining to the ones where cis women were seen as desirable & prioritized hetero-romantic relationships