Yesterday the internet lit up with news that Ronda Rousey considered suicide after her shocking loss to Holly Holm at UFC 196. By the time of her bout, Rousey had become a feminist icon, someone who wasn’t content to be the toughest woman alive — she wanted to be known as one of the toughest people alive. Absurdly, she claimed last summer that she “could beat anyone on this planet” in a no-rules fight. The media hype machine (and her own ego) put her in a no-win position. No woman can be as physically tough as she claimed to be. With this reality in mind, watch the interview below:

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Immediately after her defeat, she felt shattered — and no wonder. She’d been built up as a superhero, but the superhero lost to a woman named Holly. She says she asked herself, “What am I anymore if I’m not this?”

In our modern, gender-bending world, we’ve placed impossible demands on people. It’s not enough for a man to be a good man, he also has to be a good woman — to get in touch with this softer, more feminine side. Thus if a male is stoic, strong, and perhaps a bit emotionally detached, there is something wrong with him. And now feminists ask women to be better men. They sell the fiction that women can be physically equal to men, that they can do all that men can do, and that classic male spaces and emotions can be theirs as well. This is the new version of “having it all.”

But just as Rousey is thinking, “I’m nothing. What do I do anymore? No one gives a sh*t about me anymore without this,” she says that thoughts of motherhood brought her back:

To be honest, I looked up and saw my man, Travis, standing there and I looked up at him and [thought] I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive!

It turns out that perhaps — just perhaps — a woman does need a man a bit more than a fish needs a bicycle. Feminists, in exalting toughness and independence, often neglect the deeply human need for connection and denigrate the marvelous and uniquely female gift of motherhood. I was touched by Rousey’s confession, and I wonder if feminists will applaud it as much as many of them applauded Penelope Trunk’s confession that she aborted her baby to help facilitate her volleyball career. Rousey will no doubt fight again, but hopefully she will no longer labor under the delusion that her physical toughness defines her. We all have roles to play that are independent of fame and career — and almost always more meaningful. The thought of motherhood helped save Rousey’s life. May its eventual reality be every bit as enriching as she hopes.