There’s a phrase I hear constantly in my therapy practice, and probably one you’ve said yourself: “Al menos no toma.” At least he’s not a drunk. At least he’s not a cheater. At least he’s not like her partner. At least, at least, at least.
We say it like it’s a compliment. Really, it’s a confession, a sign that somewhere along the way, we lowered the bar so far that ordinary effort started to look exceptional.
This isn’t a piece about villainizing men or making a case against traditional relationships. If you and your partner sat down together and chose a certain shape for your relationship — who provides, who manages the home, how the load gets divided — and that was a real, mutual decision, this isn’t about you. That’s a partnership with its own shape, and both people had a vote.
What I want to talk about is the roles we never really chose. The ones we inherited and assumed were just how things are done, porque así se hace.
Where the Bar Came From
Most of us were culturally trained for this on both sides, whether we had language for it or not.
I’ve talked a lot on the podcast about marianismo, the idea that a woman’s role is to be self-sacrificing, endlessly patient, the emotional and moral center of the home. Under marianismo, devotion gets measured by how much you give up, not by what you receive. The more you endure quietly, the more “good” you’re seen as being.
Then there’s the counterpart: machismo and the patriarchal norms that taught the men in our lives that showing up minimally was enough. If he’s not cheating, not hitting, not using violence, and he has a job, eso ya es suficiente. He goes to work, brings home a paycheck, and that’s often all that was ever expected, because a woman was expected to manage everything else.
That system may have made a kind of sense in a different era. But many of us watched it play out long before we ever lived it ourselves: our mothers, our abuelitas, overfunctioning and absorbing everyone’s emotional needs while the men around them were praised for doing far less.
I want to be clear: naming this system isn’t about villainizing anyone. Both roles were shaped by something bigger than any one person.
“At Least He’s Not Like That”
You’ve probably heard versions of this from a partner directly: “I’m here, aren’t I? I don’t cheat. What more do you want?”Or the comparison game, “At least I’m not like your sister’s partner.” Or the classic deflection: “That’s just how I am. My dad never did any of this either, and my mom never complained.”
Even men who aren’t cruel, who genuinely love their partners, still benefit from the patriarchy. Benefiting from a system doesn’t require someone to be a bad person, it just requires the bar to stay low enough that ordinary participation starts to look generous.
Think about how often basic partnership gets treated like a bonus. “You’re so lucky he helps with the house.” Not participates – because both people live there – but helps, like it’s a favor. That framing is the system working exactly as designed, whether he asked for it or not.
“At least he’s not ____” was never a relationship standard. It’s a patriarchal benchmark, grading good men on a curve that was never fair to either person to begin with.
Where This Shows Up in Real Life
The bare minimum doesn’t show up just one way, it threads through nearly every part of a relationship.
Emotional labor. Normalized looks like: she remembers every birthday, manages the social calendar, decides the gifts, handles the logistics, and is the one who talks to the kids about their feelings while he only plays with them or disciplines them. Reciprocal looks like: he does this too, unprompted, without being assigned the task.
Household and logistics. Normalized looks like: she carries the entire mental load — meal planning, grocery lists, appointments — while he “helps” when asked. Reciprocal looks like: he tracks it independently, because he’s an active participant in running the household, not an assistant to it.
Conflict and repair. Normalized looks like: she starts every hard conversation, translates the emotion, and apologizes first just to keep the peace. Reciprocal looks like: he also initiates repair, can sit in discomfort without shutting down, and can give and receive feedback in a healthy way.
Affection and attention. Normalized looks like: big performative gestures on the days that count — birthdays, anniversaries, social media — and quiet in between. Reciprocal looks like: small, consistent effort that isn’t a performance on demand.
Goal support. Normalized looks like: she restructures her life around his career and cheers him on. Reciprocal looks like: he does the same for her, willing to shift his own plans to support what she’s working toward.
The Test Was Never “Traditional vs. Not”
I know plenty of people who have chosen more traditional roles, and that’s not what I’m questioning. A relationship is rarely, if ever, a true 50/50 split, some people genuinely prefer to handle certain things because they’re better at it or care more about how it’s done. That’s fine.
The real question isn’t whether a relationship looks traditional. It’s whether reciprocity was ever actually on the table. Did you choose this, or was it expected of you?
Questions Worth Sitting With
If any of this resonated, here are some questions I’d invite you to reflect on, not to judge your relationship, but to see it more clearly.
Origin: Where did I first learn this was normal? Did I choose this, or did I inherit it without noticing? When I say “at least he’s not ____,” whose voice is that, mine, or someone else’s?
Reciprocity: If I listed everything I give and everything I receive, would it hold up as a fair trade? Who initiates the planning, the repair, the remembering, always me, or both of us?
Permission: Have I ever asked for more and been told I was asking for too much? Do I feel guilty wanting more than I currently have? Do I actually believe I’m allowed to want more?
Comparison: Am I grading this relationship against other men, other couples, what I’ve seen or heard, or against what I actually need?
These questions aren’t meant to make you feel bad. A lot of us were never given permission to even ask them. Sometimes that permission is the only thing that was missing.
Reciprocity Is the Baseline, Not the Bonus
Reciprocity isn’t extra. It’s not romantic in the grand-gesture sense, and it’s not something you should have to earn or negotiate for. It’s the baseline, the very thing that both marianismo and machismo trained us, on both sides, not to expect in the first place.
It doesn’t have to look dramatic. It looks like being noticed without having to ask. Repair without having to manage it. Showing up for each other in small, consistent, unprompted ways.
If you’re in a relationship with roles you genuinely chose together, this isn’t asking you to abandon that. It’s just asking you to check in with yourself every so often: is this still what I want? You’re allowed to change your mind. We become different people over twenty years, and it’s okay to want different things than we did at the start.
And if you recognized a lot of yourself in what we covered here, please don’t blow anything up tonight. That’s not the ask. The ask is much smaller: stop calling the floor a ceiling.
This is generational work, and it’s not about blaming our mothers or abuelas, who did the best they could with what they had. But we get to choose differently for ourselves, and for whoever is watching us: our kids, our sisters, our comadres. We get to choose not to hand down the same low bar and call it love.
If this resonated, you can hear the full conversation on The Chicana Therapist Podcast, episode 15. Sign up for the newsletter at thechicanatherapist.com to get new episodes, blog posts, and retreat updates as they drop.