I'm about-same height as my better half, but guess who can lift whom. He has the musculature of a man, that's ultimately where the strength resides.

You know what's even better? The reason why his growth got somewhat stunted at some point in his life might as well have something to do with excessive training. Can't get much more "manly" than that as a reason to be on the short side, I guess.

An average man, with the average male musculature, even in spite of a height "deficit" (if present), will be physically stronger than almost any woman - exceptions made only for the very highest echelons, something like the top 2% of women, experience otherwise documented in sports and military. And if you do happen to pair up with one of these exceptional women, but are otherwise healthy and she isn't in a "physical" occupation, the chances are that you only need moderate workouts to become stronger than her. Play that angle if it's psychologically important to you to feel "manly" through having some sort of physical advantage, but you love a tall(er) woman.

Now, why it's psychologically important to you is a separate question that has to do both with a certain biological stratum, but also with the way we are socialized. In that sense, your feelings are "justified", i.e. not baseless, and should be acknowledged as your personal mental reality. But it's not necessarily the case that there's no way around it.

From the other side - this male preoccupation with not being "emasculated" can be a bit hard on us too. On the one hand you want to respect it as a way of functioning unlike your own but with its own validity that you recognize and incorporate into your shared life, but on the other hand it can get tricky to juggle without slipping into traditional gender roles.