One night, during my daily cruise of Twitter, I came across a girl tweeting, “Wow, bae didn’t bring my morning Starbucks and it completely ruined my day,” followed by an annoyed emoji and all I could think was, “Can you get your own Starbucks, or nah?”

And a couple of weeks ago I was on the computer around some friends who were looking up wedding proposals and we happened to stumble upon an article about a girl proposing to a guy. The response was somewhat disapproving.

Today it remains common for men to do things first in relationships — ask the girl to prom, buy her gifts, or even something as simple as texting her first. Over time specific gender roles have begun to die out, and some may even say they’re gone. So, why is it so common for men to do everything?

Sure, it may be radical for a girl to ask her boyfriend to marry her, but why is it so uncommon? Because it’s not traditional? Because it’s just the man’s job to do everything? If women are doing everything a man does in the socioeconomic world, then women should be doing everything men do in relationships. Women should be proposing to men, opening doors, and texting first. Men and women may seem equal in relationships, but honestly they’re not. Boys and girls don’t understand the essence of good relationships because we haven’t had the proper examples. How many of us go home to only one parent or even a guardian?

Because we don’t see solid relationships at home, we have gotten to the point where traditional gender roles are prominent and we lack proper examples of what makes a healthy modern relationship. That has caused our generation to turn toward movies, and “relationship goal” accounts on Twitter for guidance. In today’s society, there’s this idea of what “normal” is when in reality, it isn’t likely that anyone will bring us Starbucks because we posted on Twitter that a Caramel Frappuccino sounds delicious. But more importantly, why would we expect them to? Wouldn’t you feel insulted if “bae” asked you for Starbucks rather than company?

The ideal couple used to be a man that buys his girlfriend something every anniversary, gets her flowers any and every occasion, texts her good morning and goodnight every day and waits with her until her practice gets out, etc.

Meanwhile, the perfect girlfriend remains consistently nice, supportive, always beautiful, healthy and athletic.
Times have changed in this sense. Couples will often go to the gym together — perhaps a possible “relationship goal” photo op.

Our generation has evolved into begging drones craving so much from our significant others that relationships become false pretenses. Every now and then, we see those ridiculous fourth grade couples that throw around the complicated words “I love you,” and while this may seem comical, it really shows how confused our generation is about relationships.

It’s our time as a generation to come together and set an example for future generations, to show that we can actually be in a relationship without googling what the ideal one is, and that men and women in relationships share the same amount of love so there is no need for it to be one-sided.