Women cannot live with only self-love, hooks states. Self-love is the necessary basis for love and cannot be pitted against other love. However, self-love does not automatically lead to “happily ever after.” Women who do the work of self-love realize that it requires sacrifice, and some women who intuitively know they should endeavor towards self-love are trapped by fear. Change can also lead to fear, which stops women from pursuing self-love. The more women achieve, the more essential the cultivation of self-esteem and self-love becomes. Self-esteem can undermine women who fear that achieving too much will make them incapable of finding loving partnerships. hooks herself faced this insecurity, as her relationship ended when her partner refused to support her taking an Ivy League job, creating an impetus for hooks to leave. She feared that the patriarchal lessons her parents taught her, that men really do not like smart women, had come true. Though she was excelling in academia and her career, she felt she had done something wrong when her partner stopped supporting her.

This pattern of men feeling threatened by women is common, hooks asserts, as when women became equals of men in the workplace, sexist stereotypes about high-achieving women became prevalent. These women were monstrous and ruthless, man-hating and unfeminine, “sucking the air out of the room” (145). When hooks first heard this phrase to describe a powerful woman, she found the idea of a powerful and successful woman suffocating other women disturbing, as it is a perverse inversion of the typical image of women as nurturers and life-givers. She was also disturbed by the verbal tool for women to tear down other women.

As these negative stereotypes grew in prevalence, some young women began to embrace the “bitch” persona the patriarchal society had carved out for them. hooks argues that accepting this stereotype is not a reclamation but instead a capitulation to the patriarchal framework that dictates that all powerful women are “bitches” and a “repudiation of the idea that powerful women need to receive love” (148). hooks asserts that being self-loving means women will not choose to embrace negative stereotypes or roles as a sign of power.

Society deems that powerful women, the “bitches,” are failures at love, incapable of finding or cultivating relationships with others. hooks states that, though the female search for love is often deemed pathological, self-loving women know they do not need to choose success over love, or vice versa. Self-loving women also know that taking care of their own emotional needs does not supersede the place of loving relationships and partnerships. However, hooks found that when she discussed her desire for a relationship with other successful women, they denigrated her longing for love, especially as hooks entered her midlife. These women could not accept that hooks was successful and dedicated to her work while seeking love.

hooks asserts that self-love can sustain women, but receiving love from others in community is also important. Powerful women are often attacked in patriarchal society, and self-loving, powerful women rely on love and relationships with others to survive such attacks. Self-actualized women feel no shame for desiring love, and hooks, having reached midlife, feels at peace with her life and the cultivation of love she’s worked towards. She implores other women not to feel shame for seeking love or feel compelled to close themselves off from love. She also encourages women not to hold themselves back from all they can achieve for fear of never finding love. Love, hooks states, is the foundation upon which the house of dreams is built. This house has many rooms, and some rooms are for relationships, but that is not everything; the house must be in balance. Self-loving women know that love abounds in the world, and people who want to know love will find each other.

Looking for love and looking for a man are not synonymous, hooks argues. A man is easy to find, while finding real love with a man is more challenging. In the context of the stereotype of feminists as man-haters, hooks investigates her own feelings about men. The three men she thinks of most are her father, her grandfather, and her brother. Her father was patriarchal and cruel, emotionally cold and angry. Her grandfather, Daddy Gus, was antipatriarchal, gentle, and kind. Her brother Kenneth was humorous and fun-loving, an example of a male that hooks and her sisters did not fear.

hooks acknowledges that without Daddy Gus, she may have grown to fear and hate men. If women only experience cruel and patriarchal men, they associate all men with cruelty and patriarchy, forming inherent distrust of all men. hooks recalls discussing the violence and harm done by men and the infectious nature of the desire of women to see abusive men eradicated from the world. However, hooks states that there are some women, whom she dubs “patriarchally male-identified,” who seek to uphold patriarchy, as they do not realize—or refuse to accept—the detrimental elements of patriarchal society.

hooks goes on to examine the role that perceived differences between the sexes plays in constructing patriarchal society, then illustrates that different cultures have different perspectives on these roles that are not consistent; men are not always the ones to do the physical arduous labor, for example. One of the perceived gender differences surrounds men’s ability to express their emotions. hooks’s partner would rarely open up emotionally, and when he did, he expressed thoughts and views that hooks disagreed with. She states that women are afraid to hear patriarchal men speak their thoughts because it illustrates that women cannot connect to them, and these men will often pretend to be interested in love just to get sex.

hooks also illustrates that patriarchal men are not happy in domineering relationships, as her father found no joy in domineering her mother; he yearned for connection. Patriarchy pits women and men against each other, which women find difficult to accept. In order for men to be loving, hooks asserts, men must challenge patriarchy, because patriarchy rewards men for not being loving. Patriarchy can be challenged and changed, and the men who rise to the challenge are the men hooks tells women to look for. As patriarchy changes, men can better love women, and women can better love men.

hooks begins the essay by examining patriarchy through the lens of the Vietnam War. Feminism allowed men and women alike to criticize the patriarchal masculinity that inspired the war and pushed young men to the battlefield. She then examines the role of men in the development of the feminist movement. Though some staunch patriarchal older men and women refused to let go of patriarchy, droves of younger men began rethinking masculinity and its role in society. hooks establishes that a “new man” was on the rise, a man capable of being strong while emotionally available, raised by men and women who sought to challenge patriarchy. This “new man,” the antisexist man, made women feel even more dissatisfied with patriarchal men, as women realized that sexist behavior is learned and can be unlearned.

hooks, in interviews, was occasionally asked if she likes younger men, as younger men tend to hold more feminist beliefs. She did not, but her criteria for partners was that they be wholeheartedly committed to feminism. She does not want to have to convince her partners to agree with her beliefs, because those agreements would be superficial. Women want men with whom they can have meaningful, reciprocal conversations, who truly and intimately appreciate their bodies. These “good men” do not make women live in fear of domination or violence.

Women who seek male partners and love must acknowledge they cannot find it within the arms of patriarchy. Men must seek self-love like women seek self-love, and both men and women must return to childhood to reparent their younger selves to “recover the joy that they experienced when they felt they could open their hearts and just let the feelings come in” (191). Men and women who yearn for love and love freely can create the dialogue of love that allows “true heterosexual communion” to begin (191).