TL

“It may be an easy way out for a woman who isn’t used to making decisions, but how will she learn? Not by giving over her responsibility.”

This is a key point. I remember my great aunt having a sweet marriage where the husband made all the decisions about everything he considered important, without discussing it with his wife. He ran the finances, buying and selling, trip arrangements and so forth. She busied herself with entertainment, cooking and home stuff. She felt she needed to be frilly and girly to please him. When he died she knew nothing about their finances, even tax stuff. She immediately began to make really bad decisions and lost a lot of the money he had saved up for her. One of them was a simple mistake to the tune of $50,000. She didn’t know how to take care of the house, yard, car and so forth. And even in her old age she continued to dote on men and be girly in order to impress.

Sadly, she could have been and done so much more as underneath it all she was really an insightful woman. But few saw that side of her. I did. She was my favorite relative. But she had been so brainwashed that the only way to please men was to be helpless, that I couldn’t get her to grow beyond that. What a loss to many.