“Who exactly are successful women supposed to date?”

In this way, tabloids help keep women in a permanent state of fear — that women, even powerful women, need to make themselves subservient to their male partners in some way and that even if you do that, it’s no guarantee the male won’t roam and seek out somebody younger and hotter. It’s misogyny, but it’s also misandry — making all men out to be insecure assholes who can’t help but be emasculated by women’s success.

For Grantland, Molly Lambert writes about the between-a-rock-and-bullshit place women find themselves after a relationship ends: over the past few weeks, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Garner, and Gwen Stefani have all experienced excessive public scrutiny over their supposedly private relationships. It’s heartening to read an essay that treats these events not as a trend or a punchline, but as a microcosm of sexual power dynamics too often oversimplified. You know, all that “Who’s The Boss” shit.

I have often thought, privately, that the best relationships between men and women are the ones that adopt a see-saw mentality, very mature and adult, I know. But perhaps there is some truth to the idea that one person always has slightly more power than the other, either in terms of sex and longing, or career and success, or any of the other insecurities that congeal in our lizard brains (although “Am I hot” and “Am I smart” seem to be the two most pressing questions we need our Sex Friends to answer and answer wisely, all other questions emanating directly from those, but I digress).

Maybe the most successful relationships allow one person to be up for a second, because the other knows it’ll soon be their turn as well; maybe the goal of totally equal footing is a myth and a trap.

As always, tabloids should chill on their warped ideas of women’s love lives, but that’s a topic for another post.