You mentioned being independent and the suggestion that to be partnered is to be dependent. There's another term; interdependent Interdependent is an underused term, both in culture and in feminism. Interdependence is a choosing that, when done mindfully, creates healthy unions.

From my experience, women want to talk about relationship far more than men. One reason why men bow out early in those discussions is that feminism beat men to punch and defined a lot of the terms. One of the things feminsim has done is reject roles. I dont mind that so much, but what I do mind is that feminism never really replaced the roles they rejected or acknowledged that many of those roles work for many people/arrangements.

My suggestion is to view relationship through the lens of interdependance. Do an expirament; the next time you're engaging with a prospective partner, see if you can talk about roles (yourself included) without baggage or presumption. View roles/interdependance in very practical terms; who does what? And what activities do we do together?

In my younger days I was frustrated with many aspects of the modern woman. Not because she was rejecting a 'traditional role' but because she wanted many aspects of traditional male roles, but could only define what she didn't want for her own roles.