I think it works better if you take the genders out of it: > “When people desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something

I think it works better if you take the genders out of it: > “When people desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something they need they are “deprived,” and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a another person needs they are needy.” I've seen this story many times with both men and women featuring in both roles, and I think the lesson can apply, therefore, to anyone who reads it. As a general rule, society at large favors the provider; whichever of the two is bringing home the bacon. I've found this to be true across classes, and thanks to an increasing number of women getting the role, across the genders too. I think as a species humans tend to ally with the ones we perceive to be stronger on an instinctual level, which when you consider our origins as a social animal, is really not surprising. I think the 1950's housewife trope was less to do with actual sexism of the populace, and far more to do with the sexism present in the job market. Men held the jobs; therefore, women had to clean the house. What the hell else were they going to do? Yet, now you regularly see women just as sociopathic and socially detached from their husbands as many husbands were back then; they see their marriages as a convenience, their husbands as a source of child care and free labor, just as men did. And they cheat on their husbands with men they meet in their work lives, just as the men did before. And if the woman is bringing home enough bacon more than her husband, the end result is also the same; she rules him, because he has no options. Because being a homemaker is no career path and the longer a person is in that line of work, the less employable they become. And this is not to say women are worse or better, in fact, it's to say they're largely the same. It's to say that both women and men, when given more or less entire dominion over another person, will treat that person, by and large, equally shitty. Edit; I think it's also worth noting that the high success types, the ones who make enough money to sustain an expensive lifestyle on their own with a dependent, is a self-selected group of generally speaking, socially distant and cool/calculating type of people. That's an important distinction to make, and I should've made it on the first go.