What Do I Have To Offer A Man?

I spent years going on dates, and it always followed a certain pattern. Until one day, a man across the table looked at me and asked the question that so many modern guys ask now:

“What can you offer me? What do you bring to my life?”

I sat there. In the first second, my brain was like, I am in absolute shock. I am completely losing it over this question. A whole wave of defensive answers started racing through my head — the kind of answers any woman would have: “What can I offer? Well, how about paying my bills? Helping me out. Taking care of me, solving my endless problems, or looking after my health!”

What can I offer?

Well… I can cook sometimes. I can take care of you, make you laugh, listen to your nonsense, praise you when you need it, and give you a kick in the ass when you really need one. I can bring ideas, energy, affection, chaos, and a ridiculous amount of emotional intensity into your life.

I can kiss you, hug you, sleep next to you — and honestly, sometimes that’s all I want too.

I want a warm, living human being beside me when I wake up. Preferably a cute one. Maybe a six-foot-five, 220-pound cute one. Someone who occasionally moves, makes acceptable noises, and hugs me back.

Is that really too much to ask?

But then I took a step back and looked at myself from the outside. Objectively. I am a divorced woman with three kids and a huge pile of problems that I haven’t been able to get out of for years. What exactly, out of all this mess, can I offer a successful, single man? Nothing. Well, maybe the chance to feel like a hero saving me from this hell for a fleeting moment. But does he actually need that? Why would he want someone else’s chaos?

The pause didn’t last long. I looked him straight in the eye and said:

“Nothing. There is absolutely nothing I can offer you that you couldn’t just buy for yourself.”

To understand why I answered that way, we need to take a step back. By profession, I am a cleaner. I clean private apartments and houses; I go into places where outsiders are never allowed. I see the raw flipside of other people’s lives — the things it’s just not polite to talk about in decent society. And after hundreds of cleaned properties, I can say with absolute certainty: modern men outclass us in so many ways.

Single men handle their lives beautifully on their own. When I walk into their apartments, I see immaculate order and flawless taste. They cook great food for themselves, buy high-quality things, and completely manage their domestic life. They don’t need a woman to wash their socks or cook them dinner. And it made me wonder: where did this stupid stereotype even come from — that a man will instantly fall apart and drown in filth without a woman? Why is there such a massive gulf between reality and what we were taught?

In our society, people assume that a woman is an obligatory decoration, a status symbol that a man has to bargain for. Media and Instagram scream from every corner: “You have to be better, you have to do this, you have to be a brand, super-polished, and then men will chase you in packs.”

No, they won’t. Normal, psychologically mature men will not chase you. They don’t need an external trophy to prove their own strength. He has already realized himself in business; he has the income, the apartments, the cars — he has everything. The illusion that a man looks cooler if he surrounds himself with dolls who have had tons of plastic surgeries and overfilled lips is a huge mistake. Only broken, insecure guys run after that “perfect gloss” in packs because they need to validate themselves at someone else’s expense. A self-sufficient person simply doesn’t need it.

The truth is, we objectively have nothing to offer them. Sex? You can buy it at any moment. Having children? Today, for a wealthy man, that’s not a problem at all: there is adoption, there is surrogacy — things you can simply pay for.

And this is where the most critical, chilling question comes up: what is the point of it all then? Why even date if this basic, centuries-old mutual utility is completely gone? What do we, as women, even want from them, and — most importantly — do they actually want us?

Do you believe in great love? In love at first sight?

The older I get, the less I believe in it. Yes, short-term infatuation exists — it’s stupid to deny the hormonal rush. But “great love”? I highly doubt it. In reality, all that’s left are agreements and mutual benefit. Maybe we will be comfortable with each other, or maybe we won’t. Relationships today are just a question of what level of stress you need in your life at any given moment. Sometimes people hook onto intense, toxic emotions, needing them like a drug, and that’s what drives them to make reckless choices. Sorry, but that’s not love. That’s just chemistry and neurosis.

And then another question hit me.

Why am I even dating?

Seriously. Why?

I had spent years assuming that dating was simply something you did if you wanted to have a relationship. But where did that desire actually come from?

We are taught the script almost from childhood:

love → couple → marriage → family → children → happiness.

And when you have lived with that script for twenty or thirty years, it becomes almost impossible to tell where your own desire ends and the programming begins.

Do I actually want marriage?

Do I actually want a husband?

Do I actually want to build a family with another person?

Or do I want these things because I was taught that this is what a successful, complete life is supposed to look like?

And if I strip away that script, what is left?

Why am I sitting across from this man at all?

Is it because I genuinely want him?

Or because I have been taught that being alone means something is missing?

That question disturbed me much more than his original “What do you offer?” ever did.

Because maybe the real trap isn’t that modern men no longer need women.

Maybe the real trap is that we were taught to need relationships long after relationships stopped being necessary for survival.

Let’s drop the fairytale gloss and admit the obvious: the entire centuries-old meaning we built around relationships is completely lost. The institution of family is dead. In this new world, nobody needs anyone else materially, domestically, or legally.

Do they want us? Maybe in a specific, fleeting moment — yes. Do we want them? For the exact same reason. But there are no more guarantees, no more obligations. It’s foolish to hope that this person will stay in your life for a long time. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Tomorrow he will find something more interesting for himself, or you will find someone better for you.

In the end, I just stopped overthinking this question. When men ask me what I bring to the table, I just smile. We can just try to be, to live in the moment here and now — together. Maybe something will come out of it, maybe it won’t. If it doesn’t, we will try again with someone else. Fortunately, we have plenty of time and an infinite number of options. The main thing is that we feel good while doing it.

-Alena McRey