Lizzie, while I sympathize with your disappointments, I can't help but feel we are always on dangerous ground when we make sweeping generalizations about any large group. The notion that "all" (or even "most") X does Y leads us into group condemnation. The fact is that most relationships are unbalanced, with one person contributing more than the other; even more tricky is the fact each person sees and values the contribution they are making while often failing to see and value the contribution the other person is making. Our individual perspectives, being us-centric, are often an unreliable guide to reality. This is not to say that the various phenomenon you experienced weren't real - of course they were - but rather to say that none of us gets to have a purely objective view of any interpersonal relationship. So when we know this, and when we likewise know that it's unwise to ascribe to an entire group (men, people with dark skins, people of a particular religion, people of a particular nationality) with a given trait, it becomes clear we need to talk only about our own experience and not assume it generalizes to everyone else.

For my part, in my first marriage I did 99% of everything - the domestic duties, the child-rearing, the contingency planning, the arranging of everything, the emotional nurturing, the caring-for-when-sick - and received essentially little more than disapproval in return. I've seen other relationships in which the woman coasts while the man paddles like fury in a desperate attempt to keep things going. And I've seen many women leave dishes in the sink, rotting food in the fridge, and so on. But I would hesitate to assume "all women are X" because of these individual data points. I know many women are as you describe yourself: the lynchpin of the family. Hence my conclusion that we're on far safer ground when we talk about our own experiences, but refrain from making sweeping generalizations about others about whom we know little or nothing.