How Patriarchy Destroys Relationships

One of the thinkers who has deeply shaped how we understand gender, relationships, and emotional life is Carol Gilligan.

Her work challenges a really important assumption in our culture — the idea that masculinity and femininity are naturally opposite, separate worlds.

Gilligan argues that this division — what she calls the binary — isn’t actually natural. It’s something created and reinforced by patriarchy.

And patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women.

It hurts men too.
It hurts our relationships.
And ultimately, it hurts our capacity for intimacy.

Let me explain what she means.

Gilligan noticed something interesting in her research with children.

If you watch very young kids, boys and girls are actually remarkably similar.

They’re emotionally expressive.
They’re relational.
They care about fairness.
They want connection.

But then something happens around early childhood. (4-7 years old)

Boys begin receiving a message — sometimes subtle, sometimes direct — that certain parts of themselves are not acceptable.

They hear things like:

“Don’t cry.”
“Be a man.”
“Stop being so sensitive.”
“Toughen up.”

And what Gilligan noticed is that boys start to separate from their emotional world in order to maintain belonging.

They learn that to be a “real boy,” they have to disconnect from vulnerability, tenderness, and dependency.

In other words, they learn to silence their relational voice.

Girls go through a different but equally painful process.

Young girls also start out incredibly clear about their perceptions and feelings.

They know when something feels unfair.
They know when someone is being hurt.
They speak up.

But as they approach adolescence, many girls start getting another message: (around 12)

Don’t be too loud.
Don’t be too much.
Don’t make people uncomfortable.
Be nice.

So girls often begin to doubt their own perceptions. (I don’t know)

Instead of losing their connection to feelings like boys often do, girls start losing confidence in their voice.

They begin to prioritize relationships so much that they may silence their own truth.

So what happens?

Patriarchy creates two distorted versions of human development.

Boys learn:

“Stay connected to yourself, but disconnect from relationships and vulnerability.”

Girls learn:

“Stay connected to relationships, but disconnect from your own voice and authority.”

Neither of those is healthy.

Both require losing part of ourselves.

And this is where the real cost shows up — especially in adult relationships.

Think about what happens when these two patterns meet in a partnership.

One partner has learned to avoid vulnerability.

The other partner has learned to suppress their voice.

So when conflict happens — which it inevitably does — something tragic unfolds.

The person who fears vulnerability withdraws or shuts down.

The person who fears losing connection may over-accommodate, pursue, or silence their truth.

And suddenly, instead of two whole people meeting each other honestly, we have two people acting out survival strategies they learned in childhood.

This is what Gilligan says patriarchy does:

It breaks the natural link between love and truth.

Real intimacy requires both.

It requires the courage to say what’s true and the capacity to stay emotionally connected.

But patriarchy teaches us to split those things apart.

Gilligan says something really powerful.

She says patriarchy is sustained not just by power structures, but by psychological adaptations that children make to survive in their families and cultures.

Children are incredibly smart.

They figure out quickly:

“What do I have to give up about myself to stay loved here?”

Some give up vulnerability.

Some give up their voice.

But almost everyone gives up something essential.

And those adaptations follow us into adulthood.

This is why so many couples say things like:

“I want to be close, but we keep hurting each other.”

Or

“We love each other, but we can’t talk about hard things.”

Often what’s happening underneath is this early training.

One partner is protecting themselves from vulnerability.

The other is protecting the relationship by suppressing truth.

And intimacy collapses under that tension.

The hopeful part of Gilligan’s work is that she believes these losses are not permanent.

The relational voice that boys suppressed?
It’s still there.

The clear inner knowing that girls doubted?
It’s still there too.

When people feel safe enough, those voices begin to return.

You see men reconnecting with tenderness, empathy, and emotional depth.

You see women reclaiming clarity, authority, and the courage to say what they really think.

And when that happens, something beautiful becomes possible.

Relationships stop being a negotiation between distance and accommodation.

Instead, they become a place where truth and love can coexist.

Gilligan’s core insight is actually very simple.

Human beings were never meant to live inside this rigid binary of masculine versus feminine.

We are all capable of strength and vulnerability.
Autonomy and connection.
Voice and care.

Patriarchy divides those human capacities and assigns them to different genders.

But intimacy requires reuniting them.

Inside each of us.

And between us.

So when we talk about healing relationships, we’re not just talking about communication skills.

We’re talking about something deeper.

We’re talking about helping people reclaim the parts of themselves they had to give up in order to belong.

When men recover their capacity for vulnerability, and women recover confidence in their voice, something radical happens.

For the first time, two whole people can meet.

And that’s when real intimacy begins.