Why Capitalist Patriarchy Designs Relationships Around Pain
He Was Never Her Partner. He Was Her Parasite.
I am divorced. I divorced because I felt no love, saw no progress, and was clearly married to someone who, in her DNA, could not bring herself to be a partner. I was never forced to marry her. I loved her and went into it willingly. At least I thought I loved her, because I had a Eurocentric-capitalist idea of what love should look like. We were both educated, and then my society told me that without a trust fund from a wealthy family, education was the next best thing to escape poverty and maintain a “respectable” life. I was a budding economist ready to alter the annals of economic theory, and she was a lawyer. But this story is not about me, but about my cousin. The parallel is that we both ended up with someone who did not know how to love as a team member or partner would, and in fact often made avid efforts to tear down and destroy, even at their own expense. I think they call this “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Like me, my cousin wanted love. Sadly, her husband just wanted survival. She gave him safety. He gave her dependence and emotional rot.
My cousin is finally divorcing her husband after many years of procrastination. I remember myself procrastinating as well out of shame, fear, and the knowledge of the attack to come from the jilted spouse. My cousin’s husband was a man who, from the beginning, saw her not as a partner but as a resource. She got him his Greencard and eventual citizenship in the U.S. She worked. He decided, without a discussion with her, to retire early with no plan on what would fill the void of his vanished income. She paid the mortgage, the bills, and the cost of his failed vending machine business. To do this, she robbed Peter to pay Paul as she ran her own Ponzi scheme to cover hers and his expenses for daily living. Meanwhile, he stayed home, played penny stocks into oblivion, gambled away his 401k, and when sick, leaned on her to cover his increasing health insurance premiums so he could get medical care. He refused to repair and maintain the home they lived in, and often left it to her to do on her own.
When visitors saw things falling apart, they would try to help with simple tasks like mowing the lawn, painting, fixing the deck, or assisting her with her rounds. HE got angry for that. It made him look bad because they displayed his failures as a husband. He wanted her isolated. People stopped visiting. I stopped visiting her home. Now that she’s filing for separation, he’s demanding assets—half of what she built, half of what she owns—because he believes he earned it by simply existing in her home. He is suddenly reminding her of how they worked as a team on HER 401(k) that she received from work. Really?!
But here’s the real story: trauma chose both of them.
Trauma Isn’t Always Screaming. Sometimes It’s a Whisper Saying, “Hey Joe, You Deserve This.”
My cousin didn’t marry a monster by accident. She married the echo of her father: emotionally cold, controlling, incapable of loving her in a way that let her feel seen. She learned to make herself small. Once, she told me how she tried so hard to reduce her footprint when they were around, even in her own home. She learned to prove she was worthy of love by over-functioning. Pay the bills, keep the peace, don’t take up too much space. She was trained in codependency by two emotionally absent parents, and she internalized the idea that love looks like service. That love means sacrifice. That love means staying in a toxic marriage, with disrespect and microaggressions, when your bones know you should run.
He, on the other hand, is a classic narcissistic exploiter. Entitled. Bitter. Envious – “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” was one of his common refrains. He loved to control her. He mistook control for power and saw marriage as a meal ticket. He isn’t just lazy—he’s been trained to be so by a system that tells some men they are owed everything simply for being born male. He is the kind of man who believes that dependency is a manifestation of love and that control of the woman in the house proves his masculinity. And capitalism gave him the perfect environment for that dysfunction.
The Capitalist, Patriarchal Trap
In the capitalist patriarchy, women are trained to earn love by giving of themselves. They should be working mothers who earn enough to support the household, care for the children, and, in my cousin’s case, also manage the home, do the gardening, and cope with her kids from her previous marriage, as well as her family. Men are trained to receive love by taking from the woman and controlling, ordering, insulting, or disrespecting her.
It’s a toxic formula. Women overextend themselves to compensate for partners who resent them for their competence and hard efforts to please. And men raised with entitlement expect full economic and emotional nourishment while contributing the bare minimum.
My cousin currently lives with her parents because of work and their age. She said that the more time she spends with her father, the more she sees how much he resembles her husband in their controlling behavior, and how they both impact her sense of self-worth. Women like her, with childhood histories of emotional neglect, often enter partnerships where they carry the financial burden. If the husband is ever in a position of financial power, he typically lauds it over the woman and aims to control her. These relationships often mirrored parental dynamics, with partners taking on the roles of unloving caregivers or passive aggressors.
And when you live in a society that reinforces those roles—through media, religion, unpaid labor, tax, and economic policy—it doesn’t feel dysfunctional. It feels quite normal.
Shopping Away the Pain
To survive, my cousin shopped. She still shops, in my opinion. She racked up over $30,000 in credit card debt. She buys technology, clothes, shoes, and little luxuries to salve the ache. She mentioned to me that she was in TJ Max returning an item, and I asked incredulously, “Why are you in TJ Max or any store outside of a supermarket, with that much debt?” It was her therapy, her distraction, her rebellion. Opening new packages makes her feel good. She often told me she would buy herself something for her birthday or whatever as gifts to herself, since her husband never buys her gifts. Consumerism sells us the illusion that we can buy comfort while we bleed emotionally. That the next package will fix what our childhoods broke. The next new iPhone will fix her feelings of hatred felt from her husband. But capitalism only ever sells bandages for that emotional wound. I never heal it.
Compulsive buying behaviors are symptoms of unresolved trauma and depressive symptoms. For Black women, the burden is heavier. Society expects them to be strong, independent, and unbreakable. They feel like they constantly need to prove their value to everyone around them. There’s no space to fall apart. There’s only shopping, silence, and the slow burn of resentment. In my cousin’s case, she pays her husband’s bills, including his credit card, but that doesn’t make him love her the way she needs. So, she turns to shopping, which leaves her emotions and pocketbook empty.
The Weaponization of “Morality” and Emotional Fairness
Even now, my cousin struggles to ask for what she’s legally owed. She hesitated to file for divorce. She told herself it would be “unfair.” That she should be kind. That he was sick. That he had nowhere else to go. Maybe he would die, and all her problems would go away.
Meanwhile, he was plotting how to drain her dry. When she was away, he parked his car until the batteries died and the tires deflated, while he drove hers with a red engine check light. He called her when he needed bills paid, even though he had been living in the house alone for months.
This is learned behavior. Capitalism teaches the exploited to feel guilty for protecting themselves. Patriarchy teaches women that goodness means sacrifice. Racism adds another layer, forcing Black women into the “strong but nurturing” archetype, expected to mother even the men who destroy them.
She was trying to be moral in an immoral system. Trying to apply fairness in a game designed to be unfair.
Breaking the Pattern
My cousin isn’t alone. Millions live out this same pattern. So, how do we break it? Well, let’s do the following:
- Name the trauma: Understand your childhood wounds. Did you grow up needing to prove your worth? Were you raised to serve, appease, or parent your parents? Do they still treat you the same way as if you were a child, or do they respect you as an adult? My uncle would tell my cousin that the house is his and she needs to make space for him to be comfortable. He said this while she was there looking after him in his old age.
- Understand attachment styles: Avoidants seek independence; anxious attachers over-give. If you’re always chasing emotionally unavailable people, that’s a clue. My cousin finally realized she needed to stop paying the bills for her husband. She still needs to work on earning her father’s respect.
- Reframe morality: Boundaries are not betrayal. Self-protection is not selfishness. In a system that rewards exploitation, protecting yourself is radical. This can be from family or friends. Protect your emotions.
- Disengage from capitalist romance: Stop measuring love by economic compatibility, gender roles, or social media optics. A good partner doesn’t just “let” you shine—they amplify your light. Show your partners credible praise and respect.
- Therapy helps: Especially trauma-informed therapy. It’s not the total solution, though. Have someone, a friend you trust as a guide to bounce things off of, to confide in. Genuine love and care from family and friends (you will know the ones) will care more for you than a therapist.
My Final Word
To my cousin and every person like her: You were not born to be firewood to keep someone else warm. You are not a resource. You are not a wallet. You are not a doormat. You are not a therapist, a savior, or a second chance for a broken man.
You are a human being worthy of mutual love, emotional safety, and financial respect.
If you find yourself in a relationship where you give and give and give—and all that comes back is silence, criticism, or need—ask yourself: Who picked this partner? What was your state at the time? Also, ask, “What type of person is this? Was it the one who healed me, or the one who hurt me?”
And then, choose again.
