There’s a moment I used to replay in my marriage.

I’d ask my husband to book the Airbnb for our trip.
He’d say, “Sure thing.”
And then… he’d finish his coffee. Answer one more email. Move at the pace of someone who trusts the world will wait for him.

Meanwhile, I’d be vibrating, already mentally comparing twelve listings and calculating proximity to restaurants with good natural wine.

After eight minutes of waiting (which felt like eight years),
I’d just do it myself– then quietly resent him for it.
A tiny, private act of urgency I never questioned.

He’d say, “You know I was going to do that, right?”

And I’d say, “I know.”
But I didn’t.
Not in my body.

I said I wanted to relax.
I said I wanted partnership.
I said I wanted to feel held and cared for.

But I micromanaged everything that moved.

Not because I consciously wanted to be controlling—
but because somewhere along the way, I was taught that softness in a woman was weakness.

That to wait was to be exposed.
That to lean was to risk collapse.
That to let someone else lead was to bet my safety on something outside myself.

So softness didn’t feel tender.
It felt weak.
Foolish.
Unprotected.
Dangerous, even.

So for most of my life I built a wall around my heart and armored it with competence.

And now I see this everywhere in the high-achieving women I work with:

The ache to soften—and the reflex to seize control.
The longing to be partnered—and the habit of leading everything.
The desire to receive—and the inability to tolerate the waiting it requires.

It’s not incompetence.
It’s conditioning.

Where We Learned It

Not in dramatic moments.
In small, daily lessons.

We learned it in the smallest moments:

When we were praised for being “so mature for our age” while the boys in school ran wild.
When our mothers sighed with exhaustion as they did everything themselves – and we absorbed, without being told, that love means over-functioning.
When teachers rewarded us for perfection, precision, performance – gold stars for getting it right the first time.
When we watched women apologize for being “too emotional,” “too loud,” “too sensitive.”

We learned that to be admired was to be self-contained.
We learned that to be safe was to never wait on anyone.
We learned that to be strong was to never need help.

So of course we rush.
Of course we anticipate.
Of course we leap into action before anyone else has the chance.

Not because we don’t want to be held–
but because we were taught that to need holding at all
made us dangerously breakable.

The Invisible Rebellion of Overfunctioning

This now shows up in the thousands of small ways high-achieving women now dominate the emotional and logistical terrain of their relationships. But it isn’t without irony: they are exhausted by the very independence they once worked so hard to earn.

We double-check the school forms he already signed.
We “help” him drive by reading the GPS aloud.
We judge the quantity or quality of snacks he packs for the kids, and quietly fix it.
We say we want to feel taken care of—but can’t stand not being in control.

We say we want to be surprised– then send him a dozen restaurant links with “just ideas.”

We crave his leadership– while leaving instructions on how.

If you asked these women, they’d tell you their partners are passive or complacent.
What they don’t see is that their own nervous systems are trained to move first, faster, and with more precision– because for decades, that’s exactly what the world rewarded them for.

That skill helped them climb in career.
And now it’s at the root of so much disconnection and unhappiness within their most intimate relationship.

The Cost of Our Competence

We are the daughters of you can be anything.
The products of meritocracy, self-sufficiency, and “girlboss” empowerment.
We were told to get the degree, make the money, buy the house, and never need a man.

And we did. Brilliantly.

But the same vigilance that made us excellent students and indispensable executives has made many of us miserable partners.

Achievement gave us control—but control is antithetical to intimacy.
Because intimacy requires risk, timing, and trust in something outside the self.

Our bodies know this.
That tightening in your chest when your partner doesn’t move fast enough?
That’s not just irritation — it’s fear.

The primal panic of a woman whose safety has been defined by self-reliance.

And our culture reflects the confusion:

When men pulled away, we called it patriarchy.
When women pulled away, we called it empowerment.

So now, across kitchens, cars, and therapist offices, women whisper the same quiet admission:

“I’m so tired of doing it all myself.”

We are sitting in the Goldilocks Gap —
somewhere between 1950s domesticity (too cold)
and the relentless girlboss grind (too hot).

Neither model ever honored the full intelligence of a woman.

What we want is the third thing —
power without armor, softness without collapse, partnership without performance.

This isn’t nostalgia.
This is the search for equilibrium after decades of overextension.

Softness is not submission.
Softness is nervous system repair.

The Nervous System of the Modern Woman

Late-stage capitalism keeps our bodies in a low-grade fight-or-flight.

Chronic cortisol doesn’t just create stress —
it rewires the body to interpret stillness as danger.

So when we come home to a slower rhythm —
a husband stirring pasta too leisurely, folding laundry too calmly —
it doesn’t feel relaxing.

It feels threatening.

Not because we don’t trust him —
but because our nervous system doesn’t yet trust rest.

And so we reach for what we know:

The list.
The phone.
The correction.
The doing.

We don’t realize it, but our bodies are saying:

“If I stop moving, everything might fall apart.”

And here’s the ache inside this:

We say we want the grand romance, the sweeping love story —
the kind we inhale through novels and films.

But we cannot receive the love we crave
while clinging to the vigilance that keeps us “safe.”

We don’t lack desire.
We lack range– the nervous system flexibility to move between drive and focus to relaxation and surrender without losing ourselves.

The Slow Reversal

I didn’t learn any of this in theory.

 I learned it in my own home, in my own marriage, in the quiet moments that felt unbearably small and impossibly consequential.

There came a point where I was frustrated and exhausted – sitting in that quiet, simmering resentment so many women know.

And I realized:
I was waiting for him to change so I could feel better.

Which meant I wasn’t actually participating in the relationship –
I was evaluating it. Measuring it. Judging and critiquing it. 

So instead of continually asking:
“Why won’t he step up?”

I began asking:
“Where am I the source of creating and perpetuating the very dynamic I don’t want?”

Not from blame, but from truth:
Because every relationship is co-authored.
And this was the page I actually had the ability to rewrite.

So I started small. Microscopic.

I call them micro-trusts:

Five extra minutes before stepping in.
A full-body thank-you instead of a polite hollow one.
Letting him miss the turn while driving, and watching the world not end.

It wasn’t easy. My skin would crawl with the urge to correct.
But slowly, something sacred happened: his initiative returned.
Not because I told him to lead, but because I stopped trying to control everything.

When I gave up micromanagement, he filled the space with initiative.
When I softened, he rose.

This is what partnership asks of women who learned to survive through control:
Not to collapse or disappear, but to let love reshape the nervous system at the speed of safety.

A New Kind of Power

The next frontier of feminism, if we choose it, isn’t louder– bigger, bolder, more demanding.

It’s… heart connected. Deeper. More intimate.
It’s the reclamation of our softness, our right to be cared for without apology and– dare I say? – with pleasure. It is our capacity to be vulnerable and open with another human being, which is at its baseline what is required for true, deep intimacy.

And it will require the undoing of the reflex that taught us softness was dangerous, unserious, or weak.

The real revolution is letting ourselves want what we want:
to be held, to exhale, to not be the contingency plan for everyone in the room.

And as we return to wholeness as women, we remember what was never truly lost:

the part of us that knows how to love without armoring, how to receive without shrinking, how to rest without disappearing.

Softness isn’t regression.
It’s repair. 

And as we repair — home by home, relationship by relationship — we begin to revive something the world has not seen in generations:

Women who are powerful and open.
Men who are steady and present.
Love that does not require one to disappear for the other to exist.

This is not the end of feminism.
This is its maturation.
And our return to wholeness as women.