The absolute primary cause of relationship breakdown I have observed in my own situations and others is inner child wounding causing men to treat women they live with as if they should become substitute mother to make up for wherever they felt failed by their own parents when they were little, and women doing the same with men (making a man the father figure). And however this plays out in same sex relationships where there’s undealt with shit.
Co dependence isn’t sexy outside of bedroom role play and it’ll kill the fire in any relationship stone dead quicker than you can say ‘bungling fucktards’.
No woman wants to be put in the role of mothering another able bodied adult human unless she specialises in fetish work and I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the same goes for men with their significant others.
This is why at least BDSM scenarios are a damn sight more honest about dysfunction than your average human cohabitation situation. Through making dysfunction a transactional situation involving money, BDSM often replaces therapy and the sheer act of acknowledging the dysfunction and accepting it in itself is healing - the behaviour is given a boundaried time and space for expression in a way that is utterly respectful for all concerned, no matter the stigma that most would like to attach to the very idea of it.
In a standard cohabitating situation with all the above dysfunction where no one wants to talk about or deal with it, you just have a cycle of fucked upness with two people living in a state of denial.
Joe Schmoe on the street would be quick to judge most kink that is acted out in an organised manner as being perverted, shameful or whatever but I’d say that there’s a damn site more perversion inherent in acting this shit out day to day from a star of complete unconsciousness with your partner whilst being stuck firmly in a state of denial and claiming ‘normality’.
Thus patriarchy has, as per, trapped humanity in cycles of bullshit behaviour that no one even blinks at whilst pointing fingers at people who are brave enough to admit their wounding and actively work with it in whatever way works for them as somehow abnormal or weird.
What is really truly fuckjng weird IMO is people living in deep states of denial and acting like ‘this is just how things are’