From Struggle Love to Soft Life: What Black Women Deserve in 2025

“A man who feeds you can also starve you,” I once read on Twitter.

These words feel especially heavy as we step into 2025. Social media is flooded with videos of women embracing the “soft life” and demanding “princess treatment” from their partners. These movements promise Black women a life where love feels easy, where someone else carries the load for once, and where exhaustion is replaced by champagne brunches and diamond bracelets.
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It’s seductive—who wouldn’t want to shed the weight of generational struggle and step into a life of care and ease? But the reality for Black women is never as simple as an Instagram reel. Behind the hashtags and curated perfection lies a more complicated truth: Can Black women ever really have a “soft life” when systemic oppression is still at play? And at what cost does this version of rest come, especially when it masks unhealthy power dynamics?

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The Truth About Struggle Love

For too long, Black women have been told to endure in the name of love. Be patient. Hold him down. Be his peace. These mantras have been handed down for generations, selling us the idea that a good woman is defined by how much she suffers. This is what we call “struggle love,” and let me be clear: Black women are done with it.

Struggle love has demanded too much. It has asked us to pour from empty cups, to accept breadcrumbs, to sacrifice our dreams for the sake of someone else’s potential. The “soft life” movement says no. No to being the sole provider. No to carrying emotional labor. No to believing that loyalty means suffering in silence.

And yet, even as we reject struggle love, we have to confront the economic realities that keep so many of us trapped in survival mode. The median wealth of Black households in 2021 was $24,520--less than 10% of the $250,400 median wealth of White households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. How do we embrace rest and ease when the financial gaps between Black and White families are this stark?
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For Black men, systemic barriers like unemployment and wage discrimination make it harder to step into the traditional role of provider. And for Black women, who are the most educated demographic in the U.S. but often underpaid and overworked, the promise of a “soft life” feels out of reach.

Princess Treatment or Just Another Performance?

The idea of “princess treatment” is equally alluring. Who wouldn’t want to be cherished, pampered, and adored? On the surface, it feels like a direct rejection of the strong Black woman trope that has demanded we be everything to everyone. But not all that glitters is gold.

Take Shera Seven, for example. A popular social media figure and author of Sprinkle Sprinkle: How to Date a Provider and Avoid a Dusty, Shera openly advises women to avoid Black men as potential partners, often citing the economic disparities that Black men face. Her perspective ties directly to the systemic barriers that disproportionately impact Black men’s earning potential, from racial wage gaps to higher unemployment rates, leaving them less likely to provide the housewife lifestyle Shera promotes.

Historically, Black relationships have been defined more by partnership than traditional housewife-provider roles. During slavery, survival was a shared burden as Black men and women labored side by side. Even after emancipation, systemic racism limited economic opportunities for Black men, meaning Black women often worked as domestic laborers or caregivers to help support their families. While white women were largely relegated to homemaking, Black women have long carried the dual responsibility of earning income and managing the home.

This is where Shera’s philosophy resonates with many women: the desire for rest, ease, and provision that Black women have historically been denied. But the "soft life" she advocates for is complicated by its dependence on someone else's wealth, particularly when systemic inequities make financial stability elusive for many Black families.

The reality is that even white housewives, who seemingly had the luxury of being cared for, often chafed against the limitations of that role. Divorce rates skyrocketed during the 1960s and 1970s when women gained greater access to education, employment, and financial independence. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the divorce rate in the United States increased from 2.2 per 1,000 people in 1960 to 5.3 per 1,000 people in 1981. For generations, many white housewives yearned for the freedoms that working Black women had, even if those freedoms came masked as responsibility. Shera’s message taps into this historical yearning for rest, but it also highlights how the housewife ideal has often obscured the sacrifices and vulnerabilities that come with economic dependence.

Shera’s dual message—advocating for financial provision in relationships while also encouraging women to start their own businesses—underscores this tension. While she says, “I can’t work for other people,” she also warns women not to rely entirely on a partner, no matter how wealthy. This pragmatic approach reflects the reality that true rest and ease require more than financial support; they require autonomy.

As activist Tarana Burke has said, “We are so used to protecting our image that we forget to protect ourselves.”

The tragic story of Isis Morales further illustrates this tension between appearance and reality. Morales, a social media influencer who built her brand teaching Black women how to become “trophy wives,” later revealed that her husband had raped her multiple times—something she concealed out of shame while continuing to portray their relationship as perfect. However, when she discovered he had sexually assaulted their two- and four-year-old daughters, she immediately took action. Morales’s story shows how dangerous power imbalances in relationships can be, even when everything seems perfect on the surface.

True princess treatment isn’t about how much someone spends on you; it’s about how they protect your peace, your body, and your soul.​

Redefining Love in 2025

Here’s the truth: Black women deserve rest, not just in our relationships but in every corner of our lives. The soft life is about more than luxury—it’s about rejecting anything that doesn’t serve our peace. But we can’t achieve this by replicating the very systems that have oppressed us.

As my dad used to tell me, “If a man doesn’t walk on the outside of the street, he’s no good. If he doesn’t buy you flowers, he’s no good. If he doesn’t feed you, he’s no good. And if he does all those things? He still might be no good.”

At the time, his words struck me as cynical, but now I see the truth in them. Grand gestures and material gifts can never replace genuine love, safety, and respect. A man can pamper you with all the trappings of the “princess treatment” and still fail to protect your peace or honor your dignity. The soft life isn’t just about what someone does for you—it’s about how they show up for you, consistently and with integrity.

So how do we step into spaces of care, rest, and mutual respect? It begins with setting unapologetic boundaries and prioritizing peace over the need to please. It means building reciprocal relationships where love flows both ways and allowing ourselves to lean on the communities that uplift us. Investing in ourselves—whether it’s starting that business, pursuing a passion, or taking a long-overdue break—is essential, not optional. And we must communicate our needs with clarity, refusing to accept anything less than the love and care we deserve.
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As we move into 2025, let’s leave the struggle behind. Let’s create relationships that lift us up, communities that celebrate us in all our fullness, and lives that honor the beauty and power we’ve always deserved—one intentional choice at a time.

Sources

1. hooks, bell. All About Love. William Morrow, 2000.
2. Gay, Roxane. Bad Feminist. Harper Perennial, 2014.
3. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 1991.
4. U.S. Census Bureau, “Wealth in America: Racial and Ethnic Differences.” 2021.
5. U.S. Census Bureau, “Marriage and Divorce Rates in the United States.” 1981.
6. Burke, Tarana. Interview with The Guardian, 2018.
7. Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists. Anchor, 2014.
8. Shera Seven, Sprinkle Sprinkle: How to Date a Provider and Avoid a Dusty, self-published, 2022.