May 28, 2025 • 34 mins
What does it mean to be boysober, and why did Hope do it in the first place? Hear all about her journey and the unexpected setbacks she faced while taking a break from men, sex, and dating. And find out what her new plan for Boysober 2.0 entails.
- Special thanks to the beautiful people in New York who spoke to us, and to @fenigab, @marilynnoltee, @the.chloebird, @alicesbalance, and @user2765489013 on TikTok. And, of course, Mimi.
Do you have a boysober story to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send us a voice note at boysoberpodcast@gmail.com, or leave a voicemail at (518) 83-SOBER. Please say your name before leaving your message, and don’t forget to include your phone number in case we want to follow up. By leaving a voicemail, you are giving Boysober permission and license to use some or all of your message in our show. But if you want to be anonymous, please state that in your call.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If I were to take a college course on fixing
(00:02):
my attachment issues and my abandonment issues, what would be
on the syllabus? Am I going to dinner with my ex?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Maybe I am. You know what, I am also judging me? Okay?
So I am addicted to male validation, I am addicted
to situationship problems, and I am addicted to being my
own worst enemy, that confused, defeated girl. You just heard
that's me. I'm Hopewoodard, a comedian creator and perpetual people pleaser,
(00:35):
But to a majority of people, I'm the girl behind
boy Sober, a movement that exploded in twenty twenty four.
I'm going boy.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Sober for a year, which means no dating, no romance,
no nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It all started out with me alone in my apartment,
spinning out over the mess of my latest situationship. So,
no situationships, no exo, so xoxo. I posted that video
on TikTok and it somehow got two million views comments
after comments were left by girls in similar situations having
(01:11):
an addiction to male validation, being unable to decenter men
in life, stuck constantly in a trauma loop of romance.
After some reflection, I realized my dependence on sex and
relationships was more than a surface level problem. It was generational,
(01:34):
it was societal. It was something I had to take
drastic measures to break free from. Feel like I need
to clarify that I'm the ex that needs to be blocked.
I had to abstain from the vices that were tearing
me down. I needed to take a break from men,
sex and dating. I had to be boysover. You might
(01:59):
hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me,
voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships
and romantic validation. And man, did I have a lot
to learn and unlearn about that. So how did I
(02:24):
get here in the first place? Why do all this
soul searching? Why publicly swear off men and sex? Why
attach myself to an entire movement that at times I
do not relate to anymore? The truth is I come
from a very long line of women who have obsessed
over men, women who have used men and male validation
(02:47):
as a means of escape and a false sense of security.
The origin of Voiceover was actually inspired by my grandmother,
not completely inspired by her. It was also inspired by
my own sort of chaotic, often self destructive patterns that
(03:08):
I told myself was how I was finding love. But
where do our patterns really start? In my opinion, we
learn how to love through scripts that are invisibly passed
down generation to generation, from woman to woman, from mother
to daughter, until someone decides to stop and rewrite the story.
(03:31):
My grandmother inspired the rewrite. I call her Mimimi. Do
you remember your first boyfriend? Now? No? Do you remember
your first kiss? First walk? Kiss? Now you? Yeah? Damn love?
(03:53):
We shouldn't be Mimimi raised me in a lot of ways,
and I got some of my best quality from her.
She's the person who taught me to say hello to
everyone in the room. She's the person who taught me
to compliment almost everyone I see. Like growing up, every
time we would go somewhere like Olive Garden, she'd pull
(04:14):
in the waitress or the waiter and she'd say to them,
you've just got the most beautiful scan. And I love
that about her. She sees people and she taught me
to really see people too. But she might also be
the reason why I'm a little boy crazy, because she
really is too. When Mimi was sixteen, she dropped out
(04:36):
of high school and moved to Texas with my granddaddy,
a man she had known for only one week. She
lived in a trailer in his parents' backyard, raising my
uncle and my mom while my granddaddy worked abroad as
a pipeline welder. She replaced her family with his and
started one of her own. They eventually left Texas and
moved back to Tennessee, where she got a job at
(04:58):
a factory and met him man named Leroy, a tall,
charismatic security guard who knew exactly how to make her laugh.
Andy was handsome. I'm sure it all started in innocence,
with friendship, saying hello to each other, simple and appropriate.
But somewhere along the way they fell in love and
(05:22):
they started to have an affair. From what I can gather,
Mimi's fifteen year marriage to my granddaddy was pretty toxic,
but her relationship with Leroy, who she eventually married after
divorcing her husband, was a place of safety for her.
He knew how to laugh with her and not at her,
(05:43):
an important distinction that my granddaddy was never quite able
to make himself. Despite their love, Mimi and LeRoy's this
caused a huge scandal in the family, and honestly, my
mom is still not over it. But to me growing up,
Mimi and Leroy or Papa as I called him, were
(06:05):
the best example of a loving married couple that I had.
Fast forward to twenty twenty three and my Papa has
passed away. Mimi is now eighty years old and she
has dementia and my mom is her only caretaker. A
few months after moving in with Mimi, my mom calls
(06:25):
me frantic because Mimi had broken out of the house.
My Mimi, who cannot even make it down a grocery
store aisle alone, somehow left the house, crossed a state highway,
broke into an office building. I found a front desk
worker and asked her, can you take me to church?
(06:48):
And it was a Tuesday. She hits to ride to church,
where her preacher took her in and he drove her
home and waited inside until my mom got back from work.
On the phone, my mom sounded so defeated, and she
sounded so angry. The preacher had made her feel judged
(07:09):
for the way she was taking care of Mimi, and
I think I heard a little bit of self righteousness
in her voice. But I'm pretty sure that was just
armor for feeling so much guilt and so much isolation
and being overwhelmed by everything that she had to do.
So after hearing my mom like that, I eventually found
(07:31):
myself in the car driving the twelve hours back home
to Tennessee to take care of Mimi, and I was excited.
Going home to take care of a sick family member
makes me sound like a saint, but in all honesty,
I was a little relieved to escape New York. Taking
care of my Mimi for a week meant that I
could avoid my own reality, And in that reality, I
(07:56):
was crashing out over a situationship that ghosted me and
emotionally manipulating an ex who was in love with me
to avoid the hurt. I felt terrible for stringing the
ex along and barely recognized myself in my actions, So
I wasn't that hurt when Mimi didn't recognize me either.
(08:18):
Should we do some kind of test for you to
figure hope? Yes, ma'am, I'm really hope. That picture in
the bathroom here, yes, ma'am. I did my best to
keep her company. Lord, look at that rain. Should we
go out there? Lord? No? You want to dance a
little in the rain, Come on, come on. We watched
a lot of the prices right look at fair. I
(08:42):
took her to church, and I discovered that she had
a crush on the preacher. She broke out of the house,
not because she was trying to find God. She was
just trying to see her crush. She was following him around,
trying to get an extra and she would get so
giddy around him. It was during this time that I
(09:05):
started to think about Mimi's relationship to men. All she
talked about was either the preacher, or my mom's boyfriend,
or my papa. Because of her dementia, Mimi was always
forgetting that Papa was dead. I'll tell you what we could,
then why we'll get shopped about five minutes and ask
(09:26):
him the flavor boys up there? You know I hate
said saty, So you you know, oh goodness, gracious, maybe
we'll do that tomorrow. Let me college see where he is.
Give it a try, you not give it a try,
see what happens. I was happy to play along with it.
When she asks me to order him a sandwich, I
(09:48):
don't ask any questions. When she wants to go and
see him, I always say we'll go later. But sometimes
it's more difficult because Mimi will not accept help from
me or my mom where honestly any other woman. She
wants help from a man, and when we try to
(10:11):
help her and she refuses, she always says it's because
Papa'll be home soon. A few days after being together,
she really needed to take a bath, and I knew
she didn't want to, but she had to, she needed to.
I was trying to convince her and nothing was working
until I said, oh, we're not going to go to
(10:33):
the cemetery. Were good, You go to cemetery and say
Papa or yeah. Immediately, she jumped in that bathtub, got in,
took a bath, and we were visiting the gravesite ten
minutes later. The love for him is very real, but
it is obsessive. It stops her from accepting love and
(10:58):
help from everyone around her. One night, it hit me
that I was a little too similar to Mimi, and
we were both a little too boy crazy. We were
sitting next to each other in the living room, pretending
to watch the Prices right She was on her phone
and I was on mine. I was texting a boy
(11:20):
someone to distract me from all the dating drama that
I was running away from I looked over at Mimi
and realized she was texting too, typing furiously on her
flip phone. I knew she wasn't actually texting anyone because
her phone doesn't even send text messages. I asked her
who she was texting, and she said, you're Papa. And
(11:42):
when I looked at the screen, I saw the text
that she had typed out, and it said did your
truck just drive by? Because where she sits in the
living room, she can look out the window and she
sees all the cars. She was just sitting there kind
of all day, waiting to see him drive by, waiting
for him to come in the door, texting him, asking
(12:03):
him where he is, and he wasn't responding. He was
never going to respond. And that's when I realized my
grandmother was in her eighties, in the last years of
her life, and she was still getting left on red,
getting ghosted by a man, waiting desperately for him to
(12:24):
see her, talk to her, be with her again. All
my life, I wanted love like Mimi and Papa's. I
know part of Mimi's mental and physical deterioration is due
to the grief of losing a partner of twenty years,
but seeing the way she's acting out now that it's
bringing out the worst part of her boy crazy nature,
(12:48):
the kind that I inherited from her, made me realize
that if I didn't change something about myself, I was
going to be exactly where she is one day. I
needed to stop the cycle. I needed and I wanted
to rewrite the script. By the end of twenty twenty three,
(13:22):
I was back in New York and determined to give
up men, sex, and dating for exactly one year. I
was inspired by the year I gave up drinking. I
figured I could change my relationship to men and sex
the same way I had changed my relationship to alcohol.
I've used them both in similar ways as a crutch
(13:44):
to ease anxiety, to fake confidence, to feel wanted. After
a year of no alcohol, no drinking, I was able
to enjoy a glass of wine instead of wanting to
drink the whole bottle. So I thought, if I gave
up men for a year, maybe I could go back
(14:05):
to them one day with a little more control, less using,
more choosing, less chaos, more clarity. That's what I was
looking for. But this was not the first time I
had tried giving up men. I had failed before twice,
once in college and then again when I joined the
(14:25):
Peace Corps. So this time to make sure I stuck
with it, I made the Internet the public my accountability partner.
And at first it was like a perfect digital recovery group.
All right, let's do one voiceover, not dating apps, world deleted.
(14:48):
I was voice sober for a whole year. I am
officially voiceover and it was the most peaceful year of
my life. If you know me, you know that I
love void and I'm excited. So this week I decided
to go voice sober. A debate started bubbling up in
(15:09):
the comments every time I would share a story about
interacting with a man. Was I allowed to give my
number away? Was I allowed to flirt? Was I allowed
to have a conversation even look at a man? Everyone
wanted a set of rules for going voyober, which makes sense.
AA has twelve steps, religions have ten commandments. People want
(15:31):
structure and clarity, and everyone was looking to me to
tell them what the rules should be. But who am
I to decide someone else's rules? Do they have generational
patterns like mine? Are they chaotic? Or did they play
it safe. Should they be putting themselves out there more
or did they need to pull back for a while
(15:52):
like I did. I was reluctant to make rules because
I barely knew my own I was building the plane
while I was flying it. But one night I was
out with some girlfriends, I crowdsourced a little wisdom, jotted
some things down in my notes app, and gave the
people what they wanted. Okay, So these are the twenty
twenty four boy Sober rules. No dating apps, no dates,
(16:18):
no xes, no situationships, no xoxo XO, no hugs and
kisses extended, no hugs and kisses, et cetera. A month
after I posted the rules, a reporter for The New
York Times reached out, Hey, Hope, I'd love to interview
you about what it means to be boy sober and
why you're on this journey. Would you be available to chat? Immediately,
(16:42):
I saw my Mimi's name in a headline, and it
felt like more than just my story. It felt like
a chance to really validate where I came from. I
thought of this one time at a party. I was
in Manhattan, and after talking to someone for a while,
they asked me how did you not end up like
(17:04):
everyone else from Tennessee? And I said, like what And
they said like ignorant? And I'll never forget that guy,
because this is how I think a lot of people
feel about Southerners. They think we're slow, they think we're stupid,
and hey, I'll be the first to admit our politics
(17:26):
are flawed and there's no denying that. But no place
is perfect. And in a small, maybe selfish way, this
felt like an opportunity for me to finally be taken
seriously in New York. This was a big deal and
a big moment to feel validated. That journalist was on
(17:47):
my couch the next day and she asked me to
define what it is to be boysover? What did it mean,
who does it apply to? What is it all about?
She asked me specifically a lot about sex. One of
her questions was, will you really give up sex for
an entire year? And I said, well, a year is
(18:10):
a long time, which is Southern polite coded for I'm
going to try my best. When the article came out,
I'll just say it wasn't at all what I expected.
I thought Mimi would be the focus a story about
breaking generational patterns and getting out of relational trauma loops
(18:31):
and women choosing themselves over chasing men. But instead the
headline literally read she's not celibate, she's boyober. And this
is no shade to the reporter. I know headlines need
to be punchy, but oh my god, Never in one
hundred years did I think I was going to be
(18:53):
the face of celibacy. That is not something I wanted.
First of all, making sweet love I think it's one
of the most important parts of life. I think everyone
should be doing it if they want to. Good sex
is special and it's important, and I never want to
make any woman feel like they can't or shouldn't have that.
(19:17):
I did not give up sex to start a movement
on abstinence or even encourage anyone to do the same.
I gave up sex because I had some healing to do.
I started having sex when I was thirteen, which is
way too young to understand how it would impact the
(19:37):
rest of my life. And because of how it happened, secretly,
shamefully and wrapped up in so much religious guilt, I
learned to hide everything about my sex life. I didn't
know how to feel like a good person. And be
a person who had sex. And I carried that confusion
(19:59):
into every relationship I had. I was doing a lot
of hiding, and I was keeping a lot of secrets,
and I was hurting people because of that. Because of
how I was introduced to sex, I was always scared
that if people knew I was having it, I would
be less worthy of something. If I was a woman
who didn't have sex, I'd be seen as a better person,
(20:23):
more respectable, more lovable. And if people knew that I
was having sex, I could lose all of that. So
I learned how to hide. When those headlines came out
praising me for giving up sex, it felt like my
biggest fear had come true. And that is really when
(20:46):
the entire idea of going boy sober was kind of
taken out of my hands. It was really no longer
mine after that. It wasn't me and my support group anymore.
It had become some kind of public purity project, a
performance for everyone, not a reckoning for myself. That's how
(21:08):
I internalized it, anyways, and then the headlines kept coming.
Voiceover had taken on a life of its own, headline
after headline after headline, crowning me as the queen of celibacy,
and I tried to keep it up. But I had
never dealt with anything like this before, and I can't
(21:30):
say I handled it very well. To put it bluntly,
my life off camera fell apart. I was crashing out
so bad. Let me just run you through it real quick.
First I got a tattoo that I immediately regretted. Then
I went through a friend breakup. Then I went through
(21:50):
another friend breakup. Then I developed a nicotine addiction. I
smoke about a pack every two days. I'm sorry, mom.
I went into credit card debt, and then boylaps, boy laps,
boylaps for everyone wondering, No, I did not last an
entire year without sex. The thing about me and rules
(22:11):
is I love breaking them. But I was breaking these
rules in a way that was self destructive. I really
lost myself and lost my purpose. And honestly, I look
back at videos of myself around this time and I think,
who is that? Poor girl?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
How am I going to practice setting boundaries with men
if I'm not interacting with them?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, so I'm flirting whatever, and everybody like, hope, you're
too far down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
You're relapsing whatever, and you could be right and I
am unhinged, and I do like to toe the line.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It was like the entire year that was supposed to
be about healing, connecting growth had crushed me, flattened me
into this headline and turned me into a ca character
that people could project their anger and insecurities onto. Being
niche Internet famous is a really bizarre experience, and basically
(23:10):
I just didn't really feel like I had anyone to
turn to, maybe no one to really relate to. So
on my darkest nights, I'd pour my feelings into voice
memos alone in my apartment. It feels so lonely because
I don't think that many people can actually resonate.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
With what I'm going through. Because I was try to
be so stupid and earnest, I everyone just thinks I'm
so fucking stupid.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And then it got very dark mental health wise. I
started googling some questionable things like what's the best bridge
to jump off of in New York? And that was
a warning sign to me that I needed to go
back home. So I moved back to Tennessee because I
(24:14):
could honestly not live safely alone in New York. I
didn't want to end my life, but I was not
in a position to be alone with my thoughts and actions.
So I moved back in with my mom and my
grandmother to make sure I didn't do anything irrevocable. So
you're in one order of tyson, ma'am, I've got my own.
(24:36):
Oh damn, did you switch with her or something other?
Is that much better? In Tennessee? Living with my mom
and Mimi, I got to experience a different kind of reality,
the reality of never having left Tennessee, kind of the
reality of never being on the internet, too, the alternate
reality of what if I didn't live in New York.
(24:58):
What if I rode with my mom to work sometimes?
What if I saw my family every day? What if
I was surrounded by people like me? What if I
was with people who knew me before the Internet? I
have flirted with your daughter. While I was there, I
was writing a lot, writing about all of the wrong
(25:18):
turns I'd taken, writing about how I got here. And
one day I was taking care of Mimi and I
asked her if I could read something to her. It
was the story of going boy sober? Why I did it?
Whose hearts had been broken? How I was constantly breaking
my own but I didn't tell her it was about me.
I told her it was about a friend of mine,
(25:40):
so that she would tell me her honest thoughts, not
lie just to be nice or get mad, because I'm
her granddaughter and I shouldn't be acting out of line. Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I read Mimi my first draft at boy Sober, and
these were her comments. Number one, and she's got some problems.
Number two. I don't think a lot of people could
help her at this point, which I thought was telling.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
And I thought damn, because this whole time before going
boice sober, and even after, I was waiting for someone
to help me, someone to save me, the public, the headlines,
the performing, looking for someone or something to validate me
enough to believe in myself, to choose myself or whatever
(26:36):
that means. And finally she had said it so simply,
I was the only one who could save myself. So
here I am boys over two point zero, trying again
a little differently this time. Hi, Hi, just hanging out.
(27:11):
You know, we're asking people that they've heard about going
voice sober.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Going voiceover what.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Not?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Dating men? Oh yeah, you could say we've heard of it.
Centering men. I am voice sober. I don't want that.
I just don't. I just don't want that. I oftentimes
like wish that I had someone at the beginning of
college that like shook me and told me, like, don't
focus on guys, focus on yourself, because I didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Dot you.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It's been almost a year and a half since I
posted the boy Sober Rules, and these days, when I
talk to people about the whole concept, it feels way
less about me. It feels like a more cultural moment ability.
Are you in a situationship right now? I'm trying to
get out of it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I feel like I've gone on a lot of dates that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Weren't fruitful, and I'm protective of my time and my
energy and my peace. So the whole decentering men thing
went pretty mainstream by summer twenty twenty four. High profile
IT girls were talking all about it. Emily Radikowski said
she was decentering men. Julia Fox came out I celibate.
(28:26):
It was so mainstream that dating apps started to get worried.
Bumble launched ads that read celibacy is not the Answer,
a pretty poorly thought out campaign that Drew called for
a boycott. Then by the fall it got political. But
do you ever feel like you're sleeping with the enemy,
(28:47):
you know what? Sometimes Yeah, to the extent someone's like
not going to respect me or seeing as an equal,
Like that's a no go right off the bat, between
the dwindling abortion rights and threats to women's quality in
the United States and the fact that a majority of
men in this country voted for Donald Trump, movements that
shared some DNA with boys sober sprung up? Is that
(29:13):
like Korean thing for getting Oh, it's like four B
kind of the four B movement in South Korea, in
which women refuse to marry, have kids, date, or have
sex with men, was rapidly spreading in America. I was
interviewed for a Times article about this too, and that
was a moment when I realized how far away from
(29:33):
me this had gotten. And in a way it was
kind of freeing because with everyone personalizing this movement, it
meant I can come back to it in my own way,
which brings me to now to you with this podcast.
If you follow me, you know I have publicly committed
(29:54):
to a boy sober two point zero, just with less rules,
a little more great and a few more crushes. Last
time I was boicsover voiceover one point oh, I was like, no,
man is allowed to take up space in my head.
Boiceover two point oh, I'm like, Hey, that's gonna happen.
I'm also still fascinated by the idea of boy sober
(30:17):
as a whole, the idea that there's power in sharing
your story, your deepest personal anxieties, and that it can
lead to a movement. When I go out and talk
about this now, ask people if they know what it
means to be boicober and how they relate to the term.
I'm inspired by all the different answers I get, and
(30:39):
plenty of them aren't women, and plenty of them don't
date men. No I am voiceover, I'm gay, I'm lesbian.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
She wants her own space.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
She wants space. Did you want space? No? But now
I have to work on myself. I'm someone who's been
very chronically single for most of the life. In a
lot of ways, felt like some shame around that of like,
oh my gosh, what does it mean to have desire?
To be desired? And by this point it should be
(31:10):
clear that boy sober is not celibacy. It isn't cutting
yourself off from dating. It's about expanding the way we
think about love and relationships. Taking a moment to think
about yourself, to understand what you actually want, not what
you've been socialized to want. What are the crutches you
(31:31):
turn to, and who are you without them? These questions
are why I'm still here publicly exploring these ideas all
the ways someone can be emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically.
Boys sober think of this as a research project of sorts,
one where we'll be talking to a lot of people
(31:54):
like sex therapists, who will help us untangle the physical
and emotional in relationationships. It's a very very normal experience
to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts
of that relationship that aren't being naked together. Creators like
myself wondering how healthy it is to put their private
life on display, like of course, it would help me
(32:18):
romantically and sexually to not have the artistic output in
the voice that I do. People who are working on
finding clarity and control on love in their own family.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to
love me, but the price is too high.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You'll even be hearing updates from my own journey. How
do I do single?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right? I think you need to have a project that's
not about your dating life, right.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I think just read me to film and I'll be
asking all of you about yours And we're asking people
about their love lives. Oh god, no, what are your readers?
At the end of the day. Voice Sober is whatever
you need right now to heal yourself. So come with
me on this journey of learning and unlearning, finding out
(33:08):
how we do things right, how we do things wrong,
how we can change, and how we can take back
the ways we love and find love. Voiceover is a
production of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host, Hopewood. Christina Everett
(33:31):
is our executive producer. Emily Maronov is our supervising producer,
Engineering by Baheed Frasier, mixing and mastering by Aboo Zafar,
and special thanks to our executive producer Julie Panero. If
you liked this episode, please tell a friend and don't
forget to rate, review, and subscribe to boys Over on
(33:52):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your
favorite shows.
If I were to take a college course on fixing
(00:02):
my attachment issues and my abandonment issues, what would be
on the syllabus? Am I going to dinner with my ex?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Maybe I am. You know what, I am also judging me? Okay?
So I am addicted to male validation, I am addicted
to situationship problems, and I am addicted to being my
own worst enemy, that confused, defeated girl. You just heard
that's me. I'm Hopewoodard, a comedian creator and perpetual people pleaser,
(00:35):
But to a majority of people, I'm the girl behind
boy Sober, a movement that exploded in twenty twenty four.
I'm going boy.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Sober for a year, which means no dating, no romance,
no nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It all started out with me alone in my apartment,
spinning out over the mess of my latest situationship. So,
no situationships, no exo, so xoxo. I posted that video
on TikTok and it somehow got two million views comments
after comments were left by girls in similar situations having
(01:11):
an addiction to male validation, being unable to decenter men
in life, stuck constantly in a trauma loop of romance.
After some reflection, I realized my dependence on sex and
relationships was more than a surface level problem. It was generational,
(01:34):
it was societal. It was something I had to take
drastic measures to break free from. Feel like I need
to clarify that I'm the ex that needs to be blocked.
I had to abstain from the vices that were tearing
me down. I needed to take a break from men,
sex and dating. I had to be boysover. You might
(01:59):
hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me,
voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships
and romantic validation. And man, did I have a lot
to learn and unlearn about that. So how did I
(02:24):
get here in the first place? Why do all this
soul searching? Why publicly swear off men and sex? Why
attach myself to an entire movement that at times I
do not relate to anymore? The truth is I come
from a very long line of women who have obsessed
over men, women who have used men and male validation
(02:47):
as a means of escape and a false sense of security.
The origin of Voiceover was actually inspired by my grandmother,
not completely inspired by her. It was also inspired by
my own sort of chaotic, often self destructive patterns that
(03:08):
I told myself was how I was finding love. But
where do our patterns really start? In my opinion, we
learn how to love through scripts that are invisibly passed
down generation to generation, from woman to woman, from mother
to daughter, until someone decides to stop and rewrite the story.
(03:31):
My grandmother inspired the rewrite. I call her Mimimi. Do
you remember your first boyfriend? Now? No? Do you remember
your first kiss? First walk? Kiss? Now you? Yeah? Damn love?
(03:53):
We shouldn't be Mimimi raised me in a lot of ways,
and I got some of my best quality from her.
She's the person who taught me to say hello to
everyone in the room. She's the person who taught me
to compliment almost everyone I see. Like growing up, every
time we would go somewhere like Olive Garden, she'd pull
(04:14):
in the waitress or the waiter and she'd say to them,
you've just got the most beautiful scan. And I love
that about her. She sees people and she taught me
to really see people too. But she might also be
the reason why I'm a little boy crazy, because she
really is too. When Mimi was sixteen, she dropped out
(04:36):
of high school and moved to Texas with my granddaddy,
a man she had known for only one week. She
lived in a trailer in his parents' backyard, raising my
uncle and my mom while my granddaddy worked abroad as
a pipeline welder. She replaced her family with his and
started one of her own. They eventually left Texas and
moved back to Tennessee, where she got a job at
(04:58):
a factory and met him man named Leroy, a tall,
charismatic security guard who knew exactly how to make her laugh.
Andy was handsome. I'm sure it all started in innocence,
with friendship, saying hello to each other, simple and appropriate.
But somewhere along the way they fell in love and
(05:22):
they started to have an affair. From what I can gather,
Mimi's fifteen year marriage to my granddaddy was pretty toxic,
but her relationship with Leroy, who she eventually married after
divorcing her husband, was a place of safety for her.
He knew how to laugh with her and not at her,
(05:43):
an important distinction that my granddaddy was never quite able
to make himself. Despite their love, Mimi and LeRoy's this
caused a huge scandal in the family, and honestly, my
mom is still not over it. But to me growing up,
Mimi and Leroy or Papa as I called him, were
(06:05):
the best example of a loving married couple that I had.
Fast forward to twenty twenty three and my Papa has
passed away. Mimi is now eighty years old and she
has dementia and my mom is her only caretaker. A
few months after moving in with Mimi, my mom calls
(06:25):
me frantic because Mimi had broken out of the house.
My Mimi, who cannot even make it down a grocery
store aisle alone, somehow left the house, crossed a state highway,
broke into an office building. I found a front desk
worker and asked her, can you take me to church?
(06:48):
And it was a Tuesday. She hits to ride to church,
where her preacher took her in and he drove her
home and waited inside until my mom got back from work.
On the phone, my mom sounded so defeated, and she
sounded so angry. The preacher had made her feel judged
(07:09):
for the way she was taking care of Mimi, and
I think I heard a little bit of self righteousness
in her voice. But I'm pretty sure that was just
armor for feeling so much guilt and so much isolation
and being overwhelmed by everything that she had to do.
So after hearing my mom like that, I eventually found
(07:31):
myself in the car driving the twelve hours back home
to Tennessee to take care of Mimi, and I was excited.
Going home to take care of a sick family member
makes me sound like a saint, but in all honesty,
I was a little relieved to escape New York. Taking
care of my Mimi for a week meant that I
could avoid my own reality, And in that reality, I
(07:56):
was crashing out over a situationship that ghosted me and
emotionally manipulating an ex who was in love with me
to avoid the hurt. I felt terrible for stringing the
ex along and barely recognized myself in my actions, So
I wasn't that hurt when Mimi didn't recognize me either.
(08:18):
Should we do some kind of test for you to
figure hope? Yes, ma'am, I'm really hope. That picture in
the bathroom here, yes, ma'am. I did my best to
keep her company. Lord, look at that rain. Should we
go out there? Lord? No? You want to dance a
little in the rain, Come on, come on. We watched
a lot of the prices right look at fair. I
(08:42):
took her to church, and I discovered that she had
a crush on the preacher. She broke out of the house,
not because she was trying to find God. She was
just trying to see her crush. She was following him around,
trying to get an extra and she would get so
giddy around him. It was during this time that I
(09:05):
started to think about Mimi's relationship to men. All she
talked about was either the preacher, or my mom's boyfriend,
or my papa. Because of her dementia, Mimi was always
forgetting that Papa was dead. I'll tell you what we could,
then why we'll get shopped about five minutes and ask
(09:26):
him the flavor boys up there? You know I hate
said saty, So you you know, oh goodness, gracious, maybe
we'll do that tomorrow. Let me college see where he is.
Give it a try, you not give it a try,
see what happens. I was happy to play along with it.
When she asks me to order him a sandwich, I
(09:48):
don't ask any questions. When she wants to go and
see him, I always say we'll go later. But sometimes
it's more difficult because Mimi will not accept help from
me or my mom where honestly any other woman. She
wants help from a man, and when we try to
(10:11):
help her and she refuses, she always says it's because
Papa'll be home soon. A few days after being together,
she really needed to take a bath, and I knew
she didn't want to, but she had to, she needed to.
I was trying to convince her and nothing was working
until I said, oh, we're not going to go to
(10:33):
the cemetery. Were good, You go to cemetery and say
Papa or yeah. Immediately, she jumped in that bathtub, got in,
took a bath, and we were visiting the gravesite ten
minutes later. The love for him is very real, but
it is obsessive. It stops her from accepting love and
(10:58):
help from everyone around her. One night, it hit me
that I was a little too similar to Mimi, and
we were both a little too boy crazy. We were
sitting next to each other in the living room, pretending
to watch the Prices right She was on her phone
and I was on mine. I was texting a boy
(11:20):
someone to distract me from all the dating drama that
I was running away from I looked over at Mimi
and realized she was texting too, typing furiously on her
flip phone. I knew she wasn't actually texting anyone because
her phone doesn't even send text messages. I asked her
who she was texting, and she said, you're Papa. And
(11:42):
when I looked at the screen, I saw the text
that she had typed out, and it said did your
truck just drive by? Because where she sits in the
living room, she can look out the window and she
sees all the cars. She was just sitting there kind
of all day, waiting to see him drive by, waiting
for him to come in the door, texting him, asking
(12:03):
him where he is, and he wasn't responding. He was
never going to respond. And that's when I realized my
grandmother was in her eighties, in the last years of
her life, and she was still getting left on red,
getting ghosted by a man, waiting desperately for him to
(12:24):
see her, talk to her, be with her again. All
my life, I wanted love like Mimi and Papa's. I
know part of Mimi's mental and physical deterioration is due
to the grief of losing a partner of twenty years,
but seeing the way she's acting out now that it's
bringing out the worst part of her boy crazy nature,
(12:48):
the kind that I inherited from her, made me realize
that if I didn't change something about myself, I was
going to be exactly where she is one day. I
needed to stop the cycle. I needed and I wanted
to rewrite the script. By the end of twenty twenty three,
(13:22):
I was back in New York and determined to give
up men, sex, and dating for exactly one year. I
was inspired by the year I gave up drinking. I
figured I could change my relationship to men and sex
the same way I had changed my relationship to alcohol.
I've used them both in similar ways as a crutch
(13:44):
to ease anxiety, to fake confidence, to feel wanted. After
a year of no alcohol, no drinking, I was able
to enjoy a glass of wine instead of wanting to
drink the whole bottle. So I thought, if I gave
up men for a year, maybe I could go back
(14:05):
to them one day with a little more control, less using,
more choosing, less chaos, more clarity. That's what I was
looking for. But this was not the first time I
had tried giving up men. I had failed before twice,
once in college and then again when I joined the
(14:25):
Peace Corps. So this time to make sure I stuck
with it, I made the Internet the public my accountability partner.
And at first it was like a perfect digital recovery group.
All right, let's do one voiceover, not dating apps, world deleted.
(14:48):
I was voice sober for a whole year. I am
officially voiceover and it was the most peaceful year of
my life. If you know me, you know that I
love void and I'm excited. So this week I decided
to go voice sober. A debate started bubbling up in
(15:09):
the comments every time I would share a story about
interacting with a man. Was I allowed to give my
number away? Was I allowed to flirt? Was I allowed
to have a conversation even look at a man? Everyone
wanted a set of rules for going voyober, which makes sense.
AA has twelve steps, religions have ten commandments. People want
(15:31):
structure and clarity, and everyone was looking to me to
tell them what the rules should be. But who am
I to decide someone else's rules? Do they have generational
patterns like mine? Are they chaotic? Or did they play
it safe. Should they be putting themselves out there more
or did they need to pull back for a while
(15:52):
like I did. I was reluctant to make rules because
I barely knew my own I was building the plane
while I was flying it. But one night I was
out with some girlfriends, I crowdsourced a little wisdom, jotted
some things down in my notes app, and gave the
people what they wanted. Okay, So these are the twenty
twenty four boy Sober rules. No dating apps, no dates,
(16:18):
no xes, no situationships, no xoxo XO, no hugs and
kisses extended, no hugs and kisses, et cetera. A month
after I posted the rules, a reporter for The New
York Times reached out, Hey, Hope, I'd love to interview
you about what it means to be boy sober and
why you're on this journey. Would you be available to chat? Immediately,
(16:42):
I saw my Mimi's name in a headline, and it
felt like more than just my story. It felt like
a chance to really validate where I came from. I
thought of this one time at a party. I was
in Manhattan, and after talking to someone for a while,
they asked me how did you not end up like
(17:04):
everyone else from Tennessee? And I said, like what And
they said like ignorant? And I'll never forget that guy,
because this is how I think a lot of people
feel about Southerners. They think we're slow, they think we're stupid,
and hey, I'll be the first to admit our politics
(17:26):
are flawed and there's no denying that. But no place
is perfect. And in a small, maybe selfish way, this
felt like an opportunity for me to finally be taken
seriously in New York. This was a big deal and
a big moment to feel validated. That journalist was on
(17:47):
my couch the next day and she asked me to
define what it is to be boysover? What did it mean,
who does it apply to? What is it all about?
She asked me specifically a lot about sex. One of
her questions was, will you really give up sex for
an entire year? And I said, well, a year is
(18:10):
a long time, which is Southern polite coded for I'm
going to try my best. When the article came out,
I'll just say it wasn't at all what I expected.
I thought Mimi would be the focus a story about
breaking generational patterns and getting out of relational trauma loops
(18:31):
and women choosing themselves over chasing men. But instead the
headline literally read she's not celibate, she's boyober. And this
is no shade to the reporter. I know headlines need
to be punchy, but oh my god, Never in one
hundred years did I think I was going to be
(18:53):
the face of celibacy. That is not something I wanted.
First of all, making sweet love I think it's one
of the most important parts of life. I think everyone
should be doing it if they want to. Good sex
is special and it's important, and I never want to
make any woman feel like they can't or shouldn't have that.
(19:17):
I did not give up sex to start a movement
on abstinence or even encourage anyone to do the same.
I gave up sex because I had some healing to do.
I started having sex when I was thirteen, which is
way too young to understand how it would impact the
(19:37):
rest of my life. And because of how it happened, secretly,
shamefully and wrapped up in so much religious guilt, I
learned to hide everything about my sex life. I didn't
know how to feel like a good person. And be
a person who had sex. And I carried that confusion
(19:59):
into every relationship I had. I was doing a lot
of hiding, and I was keeping a lot of secrets,
and I was hurting people because of that. Because of
how I was introduced to sex, I was always scared
that if people knew I was having it, I would
be less worthy of something. If I was a woman
who didn't have sex, I'd be seen as a better person,
(20:23):
more respectable, more lovable. And if people knew that I
was having sex, I could lose all of that. So
I learned how to hide. When those headlines came out
praising me for giving up sex, it felt like my
biggest fear had come true. And that is really when
(20:46):
the entire idea of going boy sober was kind of
taken out of my hands. It was really no longer
mine after that. It wasn't me and my support group anymore.
It had become some kind of public purity project, a
performance for everyone, not a reckoning for myself. That's how
(21:08):
I internalized it, anyways, and then the headlines kept coming.
Voiceover had taken on a life of its own, headline
after headline after headline, crowning me as the queen of celibacy,
and I tried to keep it up. But I had
never dealt with anything like this before, and I can't
(21:30):
say I handled it very well. To put it bluntly,
my life off camera fell apart. I was crashing out
so bad. Let me just run you through it real quick.
First I got a tattoo that I immediately regretted. Then
I went through a friend breakup. Then I went through
(21:50):
another friend breakup. Then I developed a nicotine addiction. I
smoke about a pack every two days. I'm sorry, mom.
I went into credit card debt, and then boylaps, boy laps,
boylaps for everyone wondering, No, I did not last an
entire year without sex. The thing about me and rules
(22:11):
is I love breaking them. But I was breaking these
rules in a way that was self destructive. I really
lost myself and lost my purpose. And honestly, I look
back at videos of myself around this time and I think,
who is that? Poor girl?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
How am I going to practice setting boundaries with men
if I'm not interacting with them?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, so I'm flirting whatever, and everybody like, hope, you're
too far down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
You're relapsing whatever, and you could be right and I
am unhinged, and I do like to toe the line.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It was like the entire year that was supposed to
be about healing, connecting growth had crushed me, flattened me
into this headline and turned me into a ca character
that people could project their anger and insecurities onto. Being
niche Internet famous is a really bizarre experience, and basically
(23:10):
I just didn't really feel like I had anyone to
turn to, maybe no one to really relate to. So
on my darkest nights, I'd pour my feelings into voice
memos alone in my apartment. It feels so lonely because
I don't think that many people can actually resonate.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
With what I'm going through. Because I was try to
be so stupid and earnest, I everyone just thinks I'm
so fucking stupid.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And then it got very dark mental health wise. I
started googling some questionable things like what's the best bridge
to jump off of in New York? And that was
a warning sign to me that I needed to go
back home. So I moved back to Tennessee because I
(24:14):
could honestly not live safely alone in New York. I
didn't want to end my life, but I was not
in a position to be alone with my thoughts and actions.
So I moved back in with my mom and my
grandmother to make sure I didn't do anything irrevocable. So
you're in one order of tyson, ma'am, I've got my own.
(24:36):
Oh damn, did you switch with her or something other?
Is that much better? In Tennessee? Living with my mom
and Mimi, I got to experience a different kind of reality,
the reality of never having left Tennessee, kind of the
reality of never being on the internet, too, the alternate
reality of what if I didn't live in New York.
(24:58):
What if I rode with my mom to work sometimes?
What if I saw my family every day? What if
I was surrounded by people like me? What if I
was with people who knew me before the Internet? I
have flirted with your daughter. While I was there, I
was writing a lot, writing about all of the wrong
(25:18):
turns I'd taken, writing about how I got here. And
one day I was taking care of Mimi and I
asked her if I could read something to her. It
was the story of going boy sober? Why I did it?
Whose hearts had been broken? How I was constantly breaking
my own but I didn't tell her it was about me.
I told her it was about a friend of mine,
(25:40):
so that she would tell me her honest thoughts, not
lie just to be nice or get mad, because I'm
her granddaughter and I shouldn't be acting out of line. Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I read Mimi my first draft at boy Sober, and
these were her comments. Number one, and she's got some problems.
Number two. I don't think a lot of people could
help her at this point, which I thought was telling.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
And I thought damn, because this whole time before going
boice sober, and even after, I was waiting for someone
to help me, someone to save me, the public, the headlines,
the performing, looking for someone or something to validate me
enough to believe in myself, to choose myself or whatever
(26:36):
that means. And finally she had said it so simply,
I was the only one who could save myself. So
here I am boys over two point zero, trying again
a little differently this time. Hi, Hi, just hanging out.
(27:11):
You know, we're asking people that they've heard about going
voice sober.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Going voiceover what.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Not?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Dating men? Oh yeah, you could say we've heard of it.
Centering men. I am voice sober. I don't want that.
I just don't. I just don't want that. I oftentimes
like wish that I had someone at the beginning of
college that like shook me and told me, like, don't
focus on guys, focus on yourself, because I didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Dot you.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It's been almost a year and a half since I
posted the boy Sober Rules, and these days, when I
talk to people about the whole concept, it feels way
less about me. It feels like a more cultural moment ability.
Are you in a situationship right now? I'm trying to
get out of it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I feel like I've gone on a lot of dates that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Weren't fruitful, and I'm protective of my time and my
energy and my peace. So the whole decentering men thing
went pretty mainstream by summer twenty twenty four. High profile
IT girls were talking all about it. Emily Radikowski said
she was decentering men. Julia Fox came out I celibate.
(28:26):
It was so mainstream that dating apps started to get worried.
Bumble launched ads that read celibacy is not the Answer,
a pretty poorly thought out campaign that Drew called for
a boycott. Then by the fall it got political. But
do you ever feel like you're sleeping with the enemy,
(28:47):
you know what? Sometimes Yeah, to the extent someone's like
not going to respect me or seeing as an equal,
Like that's a no go right off the bat, between
the dwindling abortion rights and threats to women's quality in
the United States and the fact that a majority of
men in this country voted for Donald Trump, movements that
shared some DNA with boys sober sprung up? Is that
(29:13):
like Korean thing for getting Oh, it's like four B
kind of the four B movement in South Korea, in
which women refuse to marry, have kids, date, or have
sex with men, was rapidly spreading in America. I was
interviewed for a Times article about this too, and that
was a moment when I realized how far away from
(29:33):
me this had gotten. And in a way it was
kind of freeing because with everyone personalizing this movement, it
meant I can come back to it in my own way,
which brings me to now to you with this podcast.
If you follow me, you know I have publicly committed
(29:54):
to a boy sober two point zero, just with less rules,
a little more great and a few more crushes. Last
time I was boicsover voiceover one point oh, I was like, no,
man is allowed to take up space in my head.
Boiceover two point oh, I'm like, Hey, that's gonna happen.
I'm also still fascinated by the idea of boy sober
(30:17):
as a whole, the idea that there's power in sharing
your story, your deepest personal anxieties, and that it can
lead to a movement. When I go out and talk
about this now, ask people if they know what it
means to be boicober and how they relate to the term.
I'm inspired by all the different answers I get, and
(30:39):
plenty of them aren't women, and plenty of them don't
date men. No I am voiceover, I'm gay, I'm lesbian.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
She wants her own space.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
She wants space. Did you want space? No? But now
I have to work on myself. I'm someone who's been
very chronically single for most of the life. In a
lot of ways, felt like some shame around that of like,
oh my gosh, what does it mean to have desire?
To be desired? And by this point it should be
(31:10):
clear that boy sober is not celibacy. It isn't cutting
yourself off from dating. It's about expanding the way we
think about love and relationships. Taking a moment to think
about yourself, to understand what you actually want, not what
you've been socialized to want. What are the crutches you
(31:31):
turn to, and who are you without them? These questions
are why I'm still here publicly exploring these ideas all
the ways someone can be emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically.
Boys sober think of this as a research project of sorts,
one where we'll be talking to a lot of people
(31:54):
like sex therapists, who will help us untangle the physical
and emotional in relationationships. It's a very very normal experience
to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts
of that relationship that aren't being naked together. Creators like
myself wondering how healthy it is to put their private
life on display, like of course, it would help me
(32:18):
romantically and sexually to not have the artistic output in
the voice that I do. People who are working on
finding clarity and control on love in their own family.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to
love me, but the price is too high.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You'll even be hearing updates from my own journey. How
do I do single?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right? I think you need to have a project that's
not about your dating life, right.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I think just read me to film and I'll be
asking all of you about yours And we're asking people
about their love lives. Oh god, no, what are your readers?
At the end of the day. Voice Sober is whatever
you need right now to heal yourself. So come with
me on this journey of learning and unlearning, finding out
(33:08):
how we do things right, how we do things wrong,
how we can change, and how we can take back
the ways we love and find love. Voiceover is a
production of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host, Hopewood. Christina Everett
(33:31):
is our executive producer. Emily Maronov is our supervising producer,
Engineering by Baheed Frasier, mixing and mastering by Aboo Zafar,
and special thanks to our executive producer Julie Panero. If
you liked this episode, please tell a friend and don't
forget to rate, review, and subscribe to boys Over on
(33:52):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your
favorite shows.
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Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com