"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"What kind of person is he?"
"How long have you been dating?"
"When are you getting married?"
"You broke up?"
"Did you really have a boyfriend?"
Marriage pressure was probably a common topic throughout most of Asia. Regardless of gender, once someone reached roughly marriageable age, countless people around them would start urging them on, urging them on...
And in this nation that was half-feudal and half-capitalist, the pressure to get married was even stronger than in the Celestial Empire—after all, this was a country where housewife was considered a viable career option.
Of course, housewives here were paid, and even the law guaranteed them many rights. Otherwise, there would not have been aristocratic girls' schools specifically dedicated to training housewives. But precisely because of that, women held relatively low status in this country...
Unless they were born lazy, most ambitious women had a hard time getting by in this country. There was no helping it—economic foundations determined the superstructure. When most women chose to become housewives, the value women could create diminished, until they became appendages of men.
And when most women made that choice, the small number of ambitious women became exceptions. Yukinoshita, Shizuka Hiratsuka, and even Utaha Kasumigaoka were all exceptions. No matter how beautiful they were or how capable they were of supporting themselves, in a country that had "men above women" carved into its bones, they were not especially desirable marriage partners.
Instead, the "Yamato nadeshiko" who could take care of others yet could not support themselves in society were what men pursued—so long as women could not support themselves, even if their husbands cheated after marriage, they could only endure it. At most, they could cheat on each other. Ahem...
That was why the Yukinoshita Family chose to take