Couples Are Cringe. Boyfriends Bring Baggage?

In a cultural pivot that's as swift as a TikTok trend, the once-unquestioned allure of heterosexual romance is under fire—recast not as a fairy-tale endpoint but as a potential social liability. Drawing from a Vogue feature, viral podcast snippets, and a probing New York Times magazine essay,  we unpack the rising tide of "heterofatalism": a cocktail of exhaustion, irony, and quiet rebellion among straight women navigating the boyfriend conundrum. 

What was once a status symbol—think "Boyfriend Land" selfies flooding feeds in the early 2010s—has morphed into something subtly shamed, with singlehood emerging as the sleek, mysterious upgrade. Yet beneath the memes and eye-rolls lies a deeper malaise: men's relational anxieties are clashing with women's sharpened expectations, turning desire into a high-stakes standoff.

The conversation ignites in British Vogue's "Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?", where author Stephanie Yeboah dissects the subtle sabotage of coupledom in the social media era.

 Gone are the days of overt "hard-launches"—those gushy couple photos that scream commitment. Instead, women opt for cryptic signals: a manicured hand draped over a steering wheel, a partner's face artfully blurred in the background, or entire fiancés cropped out of vacation reels to dodge the "evil eye" of jinxing fate. Yeboah cites cultural critic Zoé Samudzi's sharp take: straight women crave "the prize and celebration of partnership" but recoil from its "norminess," lest it paint them as basic or overly invested.<

Real-world fallout abounds: influencer Sophie Milner watched followers vanish after posting about a romantic getaway, while Yeboah herself shed devotees post-hard-launch, admitting the posts felt "cringy" amid a dating scene that's "tough as hell." Echoing broader heteronormative fatigue, the piece frames this as politicized single-glamour—where independence isn't just empowering; it's cooler, edgier, a sly fuck-you to the patriarchy's pairing mandates.

This vibe pulses through the clips, amplifying the discourse with raw, relatable snark. In a TikTok from author Chantayy Jayy (tied to the Vogue orbit), the creator delivers bite-sized dating wisdom in a confessional style: quick cuts of expressive faces against trendy animations, overlaid with punchy text like red-flag warnings or boundary-setter mantras, all backed by an upbeat sound bite.

Though the exact script evades full capture, the essence lands as a call to self-preservation—spot the pitfalls in modern romance, communicate unapologetically, and bail on the emotional labor traps that turn potential partners into ghosts. It's peak Gen-Z therapy-speak: validating the viewer's gut while urging, "Don't dim your slay for a situationship."


Tying it all into a theoretical knot is the New York Times' "The Trouble With Wanting Men," a July 2025 deep-dive that coins "heterofatalism" as the era's defining romantic gloom.<

Author Carina del Valle Schorske (building on Asa Seresin's "heteropessimism") paints it as straight women's bone-deep resignation: heterosexuality isn't just flawed—it's a rigged game of anticipated letdowns, from domestic drudgery to erotic misfires and routine ghosting. Men's "normative male alexithymia"—that studied emotional inarticulacy—fuels the fire, spawning cycles of female "hermeneutic labor" (decoding his silences) and male withdrawal (framed as helpless incapacity, not choice). Dating apps amplify the chaos, peddling infinite swipes that breed "multiverse mindsets," where commitment feels like settling in a sea of maybes.

Schorske's vignettes hit like gut punches: a dinner-party roast of "fraidy-cat" guys too anxious to grope (or even text back); a promising lawyer who bails on date three, blaming her "eagerness" for clarity; the author's own tango with "J.," a self-proclaimed "good guy" whose relational "flaw" mirrors a child's tantrum—charming in pursuit, catatonic in depth. Even "evolved" suitors flop: a bar stranger peddles companionate sex with overzealous consent scripts, while poly-fluent "Sex Nerd" preaches group vibes over monogamous mess, leaving Schorske cold. These aren't villain tales but symphonies of ambivalence—women joking about phallic "justifications" or punning "A good man is hard to want" in group chats, bitterness laced with unrelenting desire.

Ultimately, these pieces converge on a bittersweet truth: the boyfriend badge is tarnished not by misogyny alone, but by a mutual mirage—women's fatalistic armor clanging against men's anxious retreats, all under the glare of performative singledom. Single life isn't solitude; it's strategy, a "carefree smile" over swallowed hurts, romanticizing autonomy to sidestep the institution's traps. Yet Schorske warns against complacency: true rupture demands "mutual surrender," birthing an "intersubjective third" beyond dominance. As Yeboah quips, lo

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Podcasting since two thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is the King of Podcasts Radio network, King of
Podcasts dot com.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Just in time for cuffing season. Boyfriends are cringe. We're
all a little depraved and debaucherous. Here is the King
of Podcasts. Thank you for being on the listening to
the praise of the dress the program that. I am

(00:29):
still amazed that I have such a wonderful, lively, engaging
audience out there. I appreciate each and every one of
you for listening to this programmeration every week wherever you
find the show, especially for those of you on Spotify.
For those of you to find me on Spotify, you
know I love your comments and I love the gun
hear from you. So if you are so inclined or
I'll get it to, feel free to always reach out

(00:49):
to me on the Spotify feed and comment on any
episode that I had there, or comment on the YouTube channel,
or reach out out to me on my website King
of Podcasts dot com. There's a contact from there you're
willing to go to reach out to me on any
of those platforms at any time about any of the
past episodes. Okay, it's just wonderful things to do I know,
I have more people talk about the tattoo video that

(01:10):
I have put out years ago and I can to
bring up and I get more comments about that. So
I will get to that point and revisit that story
pretty soon. But a good story came out this week
that I had to get into, and that is a
story from Vogue and a writer writting a story that
caught my attention is having a boyfriend Embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Chantey Joseph is the writer and she first of all
put out a TikTok video to preview what this was
all about. So let's get into that.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
For Britige Vogue, I wrote this piece is having a
boyfriend Embarrassing?

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I know people have been in the headline they're like,
but listen. For this piece, I interviewed a bunch of women.
I spoke to them about why they hide that partners
on social media or they like post very inconspicuously about them.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Some people said it was about privacy and this sort
of unique special privacy that you only afford a romantic partner.
A lot of people spoke about the evil eye and
this idea that oh if I post my partner, then
people who are jealous of me, will somehow through their
terrible vibes, ruin my relationship. Some people said that they
felt as if they were scared to post because what
happens when someone comes to them as a woman, or

(02:19):
what happens when they break up and they have to,
you know, delete all the posts, and there's this whole
feeling of shame of having tried and failed to find love.
And then there was a really interesting point that came
across both people in relationships and single people, and this
idea that like being in a relationship with a man
and showcasing it to the world in and of itself
was an embarrassing thing to do.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
And now we can see that in the pop culture
today when we look right now at Taylor Swifts and
Travis Kelsey. You know, you see that there's closed stars,
Madison Beer and Justin Herbert now these days when it
comes to the NFL stars and their pop starlets, right,
things like that. But now the thing is, is this

(03:00):
the embarrassment It doesn't necessarily need to be from the
woman that is finding a boyfriend and finding love, especially
this time of year. Now, we'll give it a part.
If cuffing season has anything to do with it because
it is that time of year. I always warn you
just around September time, right around the fall equinox when

(03:22):
that always happens, because that's something that's going to come up,
and I'm just making you aware. I'm just being cognizant
of what's going on. Those kind of things will happen now.
In the Story of the Chante writes here, first of all,
social media is going to say whatever they're going to say.
Social media is a bashing, a wasteland of people that

(03:46):
do not want to see you succeed, do not want
to see you happy. People are dystopian and social media
in many different points, which is why I only use
it really for promotional purposes. Because if I had to
go and believe or listen to everybody that listened to
on social media gaslighting me or manipulating me or making
me think that the world is like so bad, then
you know, I would be in a really sad place

(04:08):
if I really believe what they said. The bottom line is,
it's like if somebody tells you, you know, how high
you know? You know, if you want to go ahead
and jump off a cliff, you say how high? You
don't want to do that. So there made a point
here about a sub stack called boyfriend Land, where women's

(04:30):
online autentities are centered around the lives of their partners.
Women rewarded for their ability to find a keep a
man with elevated social status and praise. And she says
there's been a pronounced shift in the way people showcase
relationships online. Far from fully hard launching romantic partners, straight
women are opting for subtle science, a hand on a string, wheel,

(04:52):
clinking glasses, a dinner, or the back of someone said right,
don't even show who it is, because you know what,
if you add yourself on to social media and decide
to showcase you're with, doesn't work. Celebrity is much easier
to go and do that because they're you know, open
to ridicule. If they want to come put that out
there for themselves, they can do that too. But it
is quite interesting that even now I don't see a

(05:15):
lot of women that I would normally see when I
do my uber driving when I do it part time.
One of the biggest things I would get every year was,
especially here in South Florida, I'd always get a bachelrett party,
or i'd get a party of people going to a wedding,
and they're all dressed up ready to go, so they
go to the polo grounds, they go to something like
some big ranch in like some big country looking area

(05:36):
out in Jupiter farms. Right, I'd have to go and
table to a church or go to a you know,
big ballroom, whatever it was. Those kind of things just
happen all the time. Or I'd have a bachelortt party.
You could tell they we're out going to the club,
going to bars, or going to wherever they're going to
go to hang out, have fun, good to a restaurant,
and or take them back from said restaurant or a
club or bar, whatever there was. But that's the part

(05:58):
that's very interesting. I don't see a lot of that.
We're not any marriage, any weddings that I was taking
anybody to as well, any couples freshly married here that
used to be a normal thing now And I'll tell
you this year did not happen to get to this
point right now. The tourist season that is in South Florida,
I haven't seen any of it, and not a lot
of where I see a lot of couples that are

(06:18):
out there just kind of showcasing themselves. I mean, of
course you still see it, but like you still see
the people that are like you can kind of tell
that even people that are in fresh in relationships, they're
not being seen out in public and you're not seeing
I don't least I don't see that many first dates
out there, like flat out not as much as they
used to. But I think the importance of keeping social

(06:42):
media away from having anyone go ahead and look at
what you're doing. If you want to talk about who
you're with and not showcase them, probably better off because
you're already are tinkery with social media, with the fact
that if you are getting together with somebody and then
you're saying you look at what other people are looking at.
I mean you put it like this. If I had

(07:03):
to try to have a girlfriend now, I mean I could,
but I don't because it's so hard today and also
so hard to go and find somebody that's in there
for love and not for transactional privileges. You know, something
of benefit to them out of this, and it's not
even love, it's more than that. It's gotta be some
kind of transactional kind of feel to it. Now. But

(07:25):
I can imagine that I look at women that I
see on TikTok and I think, well, they're like a
so approachable and like you're seeing all these young, beautiful women,
amazing looking, and it tells me, man, these are the
women that I used to think we're always at the club,
always at the bar, always out that I would never
see out and about or they were absolutely taken. But
now it's a matter of that. Guys, know, we have

(07:49):
a lot more single women available. Let's make that clear too.
More than ever, you have a lot more single women
to choose from. It's just harder to get them to
commit or to pin them down to be with and
to know that they're going to be somebody that you
want to be with in the first place. But that's

(08:09):
the biggest crux here. And I don't know if I
like it now where there are a lot of single
women available, but you know what you have to get
into to even try to get into a relationship with
them because of what is out there. I don't know.
Do I want it like it was in the pastor
I want it like it is now. That's a very

(08:29):
tough decision, very tough.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
I saw this girl make a video and she was like,
isn't it kind of funny? Like I feel like having
a boyfriend now is like lame and like shameful. And
she was like, I feel like it used to be
really cool, but now it's like you meet a girl
and you're like, oh, you'd be cooler if you, like
didn't have a boy And I was like, I really
do feel that way. Like when I meet a girl
and she doesn't have a boyfriend, I am like, oh, like, yeah,
that's kind of like you're cool. Like I like that,

(08:55):
you know.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
And that's like the worst thing to even hear. You
don't want a woman to feel like she needs to
approve who you're with. Remember, guys, keep this in mind,
and women, I hope you understand this. That you might
have women that are friends of yours for a long time,
but there is some kind of animosity if you are

(09:18):
doing a little bit better than them, Okay, when you
have women that are with each other in a pack.
I see it all the time too, that I know
it because of the fact that I used to have
that problem where I would try to get to a
girl and I met her at a club. I can't
say how many times that happened where One particular time,
I went to Monkey Club and I remember going in

(09:40):
and there was a girl that was dancing go or
was it liquid? Excuse me, it was club liquid, okay,
Clematis Street. Downtown was Pumpbeach, And this girl has a
boyfriend with her or some guy she's with hanging along with.
But this other girl is like the third wheel and
just hanging out, and she's, you know, been drinking a
little bit, but we were dancing, and and a little

(10:02):
bit later on she's falling along with me as we're
going out, and I had I didn't have anybody else
with me that night, so I have her by the
hand and we're walking out the door, and of course
what happens. This girl her friend says uh uh, pulls
the friend back in and leaves me out there hanging dry.

(10:23):
And even when she has somebody else of her own,
she didn't want to see her best friend or her
friend see me with you, see her with me, or
with any guy for that manner, she did not want
to go and leave me alone. I don't know if
it was something about the fact that what I was
gonna do with her, I don't know. We were going out.
It's the middle of public Clemata Street, thousands of people

(10:44):
along the strips on a Friday Saturday night, and in
the early two thousands, everybody was out there like you
had crowded streets out there. Who knows what we would
have done. All I know is I woulded to hang
out with her. She was cute, we were having fun.
We kissed, and then I'm walking with her outside and like, okay,
we're schilling you know, we're chilling out. And then this

(11:06):
girl just literally grabs her mother arm yanks her back's
head or yanks her right back in just like that.
Still it bothers me today. It's still crystal clear in
my mind. And trust me, there's a lot of things
in my past I don't really think about it and
go back to. But there we go. So this girl
right here, this particular podcast is she's bringing up where

(11:30):
she says that this the whole idea was that is
a girl is seen as single. Of course they like her,
but if she's got a boyfriend, they don't like her
so much. So women are encouraging modern independent women to
stay modern independent women. But that's just like for approval

(11:51):
for them. But that doesn't say anything for the girl
who says, well, who knows. Maybe I want to have
a life, maybe I want to have kids, maybe I
want to have a relationship, maybe I want to have
love like it should not be where that girl feels like,
oh that I need to get approved by these girls,
they can drop you like a hat. So there was
the Delusional Diaries podcast, and then there's comments on the

(12:16):
Instagram post on here where they said like, boyfriends are
out of style. They won't come back in until they
start acting right. Another one says having a boyfriend typically
takes hits on a woman's aura. And by the way,
the hosts of this program have partners, and even partner
women will lament men and heterosexuality, partly solidarity with other women,

(12:40):
but also because it is now fundamentally uncool to be
a boyfriend girl. A boyfriend girl, no girlfriend girlfriend? Why
is this sole problem for a woman to be with
a guy? You know, one of the hardest things I
had to go and worry about, and I was always
caught up over, was the fact that if I wanted

(13:02):
to talk to a girl and she was with a boyfriend,
well that she was off limits. And I didn't try
to go and pursue me to go there because I
found out, okay, good off my list fine, And I
used to feel something about the fact that I'd feel
jealous for the guys that had the girls, and I
was like, why can't I have one? Until I started realizing,
you know how much drama and stress that a lot

(13:26):
of these guys. I was thinking about what they had
to go through to be what the girls they're with,
and what they had to go ahead and tolerate to
be in relationship because it does take work. I can
see that, I've seen it, I've talked about it, I've
seen friends of mine, I've gone through it. It's a lot.
But the thing is that now, even though I know

(13:47):
women are probably not with boyfriends right now, it's like,
I don't want women single women to not have boyfriends.
I don't want or girlfriends whatever. I don't want single
women to stay single. That's a problem. It's an epidemic.
I feel bad for women that are single. I wish
they weren't. I wish they could find love, and I

(14:11):
wish they weren't hurt or going through the things that
being modern independent come with that They're done that way
because of the fact of what has gone through with
them and their time even trying to be relationships for
whatever reason, What wasn't that caused them to stay single?
Because it's a choice, But also is that choice being

(14:34):
done because a woman could really find real happiness being alone.
I don't know if I really buy in that. So
she talks to a couple different people, Chanta and Joseph
hearing this article about they're hard launching with boyfriends, and
one is Sophie Milliner, a content creator, says that this

(14:57):
summer a boy took me to sicily. I posted about
it almost subscriber section, and people replied like, please don't
get a boyfriend, and many of her content perhaps becomes
less exciting when she's in a relationship. Quote being single
gives you this ultimate freedom to say and do what
you want. It is absolutely not every woman, but I
did notice that we can become more beige and water
down when an online in a relationship. Myself included yes,

(15:18):
because you aren't gonna change, You're going to bring yourself
out of that hole like girl Boss kind of adventure
free willing attitude because you're gonna set a little bit
because you're finding yourself into comfort zone. With a guy
or a gal that you're with. It's like, now women
are acting like the guys. Oh so if somebody that

(15:39):
we like, we have a crush on has a boyfriend
that we were like, okay, we're turned off by it.
It's the same thing with the girls now, it's like reverse,
What is that all about? That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
In her conversations, Chante says that the script is shifting.
Big partner doesn't affirm your womanhood anymore. It is no
longer considered an achievement, and if anything, it's become over
of flex to pronounce yourself single, as you've referring to
straight women, saying that we're confronting something that every other
sexuality has had to contend with, a politicization of our identity.

(16:14):
Heterosexuality has long been purposefully indefinable, so it's harder for
those within it and outside of it to critique. But
traditional roles are continuing told tremble, and maybe we're being
forced to evaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality. And I
think part of the thing that we got to talk
about too, is that, Okay, so these women that don't

(16:35):
want to have guy women to have boyfriends, So who
are they fucking who are they having sex with? So
are you just going to just randomly go around? I
think that would get tired after a while, unless they're
just getting something from it and they just don't care.
But I mean that's the part too. I think women

(16:55):
that get to be in a long lasting relationship and
a healthy relationship, they make that clear because what I
also don't want. I don't want to go and see
women that are with boyfriends that are absolutely not good
for them. Let's make that clear too. Part of the
reason we have so many single women too, is because
of all the problems that men have right now being

(17:17):
proper to be boyfriends. And we're not talking about misogyny
and all this stuff. No, no, no, no. I have no
problem with the whole alpha mindset guys to get their
money on, get their business on, get their success on,
get themselves in good shape, be the best version of themselves. Absolutely,
self improvement maintenance. Absolutely I agree with all that. But
the other part is that younger guys I keep seeing

(17:41):
all the time, I don't see them out with a
girlfriend and hanging out. If you do. It's also like
the hard launch as well. It's like you have to
go out and be seen. You know, it's interesting. I
would wonder how it is now in high school for
guys and guys to get together, and you know, social
media is being so hyper local and then so critical.

(18:05):
You have to hard launch if you're going to be
seen out there. Imagine if you trying to keep that
under wraps or try to go and hard launch in
high school. Now the pressure must be ridiculous now, even
for like the high school cheerleader and the you know,
Johnny football guy. Like, you know, it's like not a
surfing popular that song, which I know, I'm surprised that
song never got viral. But again again, you know, but

(18:27):
maybe you should. She goes on to say, here's Chante Joseph,
that there's no shame in falling in love, but there's
also no shame in trying and failing to find it
or not trying at all. And as long as we're
openly rethinking and criticizing heterodormativity, having a boyfriend will remain
having somewhat fragile or even contentious concept within public life.

(18:52):
So the idea of a woman that could stay single
forever become a spencer with loads of cats be that auntie.
It's now becoming a desirable and covered his status. Another
nail in the confet of a century old heterosexual theory
tale that never really benefited woman to begin with. Okay,
all right, let me go back to Chantey and sort
of war of Rakamas here on this story.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Feel as inspired or engaged by her, and then when
someone doesn't, I feel like they have so much life
and prospect and they are just entertaining and fun, and
I kind of feel empowered by their individualism. But interestingly,
the girls talking about this on the podcast, agreeing with
this idea that like girls without boyfriends are cool, are
also in relationships themselves. And so I was thinking so

(19:37):
much about how it is very uncool to be a
boyfriend girl, it is very uncool to be a man
my man person. And I spoke to both just people
who are on social but also content creators and influencers
about what happens when they post their partners right, A
lot of them lose a lot of followers, especially if
they were already single. And this idea that now you
are someone's girlfriend and you're posting about this is something

(19:59):
that people all not to disengage from.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
I do it now. I'll tell you this too. If
you are a girl that is just talking about my man,
my man, and my man this, Okay, there is something
to be said about, like you got to have a
life because even if you are through the honeymoon period
in relationship, yeah, you gotta have some time for others,
for other things, and for yourself because your life cannot
be circling around twenty four to seven around this guy,

(20:24):
because if he's gone, the void is going to be
a mess. So that's the other part you gotta worry
about too, And I think that's something that's got to
be importantly discussed focused on. But it's like for women
to have healthy relationships. They're getting so much bad advice
from women in the first place. Make that clear. What

(20:47):
the delusional This delusional podcast right here that we just
talked about before, let me get that name one more time,
The Delusional Diaries of podcast Helly and Jazz. Don't let them.
I don't care how many likes they get. Listen for
some women that are gonna listen to this podcast with
women that are host to the show that have their

(21:07):
own partners. Okay, they're in love individually and with their
own relationships, So why are you listening to them? They
are just out there to go ahead and take the
dirty laundry and also play into the bitterness and anger
and vitriol of women that are single, modern, independent and
not happy. Okay, they're playing into all that. That is

(21:31):
gaslighting at the highest level. I'm sorry it is. So
why are you listening to them? If women don't realize
that healthy relationships are a good thing, and that doesn't
mean you're gonna be held down. Women have the control
of a relationship. Don't you understand that men want, We

(21:52):
worship women, we praise, we love women. So if you're
with the right guy, he's gonna do whatever it takes
to be with you. So if it is okay, this
girl wants to go to Sicily, this this one wants
to go jet setting, if that's what they want, and
the guy wants to go in accommodate it because he
loves her, Yeah, he'll do it. That's okay. If the
guy wants to do it, fine, but reciprocate. Make sure

(22:14):
that you also are making him feel like he is
deserving of you. But at the same time, you show
him he's worthy, and you reciprocate to him, you make
him feel loved, you show him lots of affection. Women,
it's not that hard for you to find a man,
and it's also not that hard for you to go
ahead and keep a man, because guys right now will

(22:36):
take anything. But then again, we're also not going to
go ahead and get take it for granted anymore. About like, Okay,
we know that women are out there that might be
just looking for something for themselves. It might be selfish
because he want to keep that modern, independent lifestyle and
they don't want a man to go and get involved
in it. I mean, there's something about that, the fact

(22:57):
that there would be women that don't want to go
ahead and let anybody know that they're with boyfriends or
just relationships in general. And I wonder is it the
same thing with girlfriends, Like if you're hard launching with
a girlfriend, is there a problem with that too? I
don't know. I'd like to go and figure out if
that asked something else, that's like the same kind of

(23:21):
issue that goes on whether it's gay or straight. I'd
love to go to know that. And there was another
story they brought up in here that also came into
this part about hetero fatalism, and I thought this would
be interesting to go and go along with here, And
you know, one of those things where I have to
go and get past the paywall here to get to

(23:41):
the article. But of course I'm gonna do that. The
Trouble with wanting men, New York Times magazine writing about
how women are so fed up with any men. There's
a federal the phenomenon of hetero fatalism. So they go
on and say here in the story, this writer says
that one of the reasons my marriage ended was I

(24:03):
fell in love with another man and spontaneously graceful, with
a soft voice and an ordinate sad eyed smile, this
new guy made her laugh stopped her breath. Being a
good guy, he intimated from the jump that he did
not know how to do relationships. Give me to understand
if I expected one with him, I did so at
my apparel. Still he pursued me. We seemed to be

(24:24):
doing something together that the love bombing sounds like My
husband and I had an open relationship at the time
that this new guy and her met. The terms of
the involvement were at first limited, and although the new
guy exerted a pleasant pressure against these limitations. Ultimately they
suited him. I was the one who light of the terms,
rather by finding it intolerable to care that much in

(24:45):
that way for one person while being married to another.
I could not disinbiguate sex from love or love from devotion, futurity,
family integrations, things I wanted with from the new guy.
Even as throughout the year and a half we were
together seeing each other, he continued to gesture into his
incapacity to commit, as if it were a separate being

(25:06):
an unfortunate child who falled and relied upon maybe a
physical constraint. I stood there, reaching for him, while he
sat faced back at me like a boxed mine. He
couldn't talk about it. He wished things were different, maybe
something the child would mature, the glass would break. Before
now there was really nothing to be done. And she says,
there were so many roused to the species of disappointment.

(25:27):
I'm circling here, But however we get there. The academy
is weighing in. We now have a fancy word, heteropessimism
to describe the outlook of straight women fed up with
the mating of behavior of men. This is coined by
the sexuality scholar as Saracen, later emitting it to hetero fatalism, saying,
at first glanced to the stile mood that is no

(25:47):
less timely for being timeless. Now they talked about another
author in her memoir Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick describing the
english of being ignored by a lover to a female friend, saying, quote,
what I couldn't absorb was his plunging us back into
the cruelty of old fashioned man woman stuff, turning me
into a woman who waits for a phone call that

(26:08):
never comes, and himself into the man who must avoid
the woman who is waiting. You have the whole thing
where women don't want us to go ahead and be
so approachable and easy, the hard to get through the
dating game. We've always been taught to good and do
this well. Guys are not smart enough, for the most part,
to go ahead and understand psychology, or to understand what

(26:29):
your coding is saying, what your nonverbal communications saying. Okay,
that's one thing you got to go and pay that
to do is the fact that guys don't pay the debt.
They've always never been good at that. But you have
to learn, and you only learn by experience, by trial
and error, and not a lot of guys are out
there that these young ladies are talking about that have

(26:51):
been out on many relationships because they're few and far between.
Now there's not that many anymore, okay, And so guys
don't have the experience to go and say, okay, well,
when I had this relationship, this was something I shouldn't
have done. I need to do better at that. Right,
you don't date anymore. And if guys don't date, they
don't get to learn, So there's a problem with that too.

(27:13):
This writer says that if the experts say my romantic
letdowns have some larger social significance, I'm not going to
argue the men I want are not wanting me badly enough,
not communicating with me clearly enough, not devoting themselves to me,
because that's supposed to be cringe. Women have told us
if we get so needy and clinging, that is cringe,
that is simp behavior. You don't want that, this woman says,

(27:37):
he does, Well, you don't. What is she saying? Then
it goes on to say that the petulantly proud masculiness
subcultures have arisen as reactions to these pessimisms keep coughing
up new reasons to hear, to fear, rage against and
complain about men. But those men aren't the men my

(28:00):
friends are. I are feeling oblikable. Well, it's a sweet
good ones, damn it. Yeah. When we're not being honest
with ourselves, we're not being authentic and real. I get it.
And that was one of the things I gotta understand.
For some guys that had not been that many relationships,
maybe they just have the sexual conquests and that's it,
but no relationships, what's were over to go ahead and

(28:22):
speak about. I got to understand that part, because the
part was I never got that many relationships at all.
So I was the sweet good ones and you can't
be that. You could offer to be that once you're
in the relationship, but to be that the whole at
the beginning and hopefully thinking that's gonna go ahead and
land a girl that might be, but then she's also

(28:42):
not gonna stay, and that's also just gonna go ahead
and just rub off the wrong way. It will if
you just can't be yourself. And for some and for me,
that was a lesson. It took forever to learn forever,
and I wish I would have learned it sooner, but
I didn't. That's okay, so I had this program to
talk about it more on this story, men struggle to

(29:05):
communicate in romantic relationships is why it's better enough to
have earned a psychological designation normative male alexithmia. What the
condition of being unable to put words to emotions And
there's an expert here. Ell Anderson is saying that it
often forces women to date men to become relationship maintenance experts,

(29:28):
solidifying what she cites as is the most common communication
pattern among heterosexual dating couples. The female demand male w
withdraw pattern. Women approaches man to discuss something, man removes
himself on the bed. The female demand male will draw
pattern pulses with sensuality in life. It sometimes ste like
it will drive me out of my senses. It creates work, tough,
tragic female work, or emotional labor. They would say it calls,

(29:53):
but then el Anderson gives a new term, emotional labor
that the women and what the work they have to
do to interpret mystifying male cues her meneutic labor, as
she posits as a form of gendered exploitation and intimate relationships.
The guy I deating my friend may have been too
busy loring to confirm his plans with her. But meanwhile,

(30:15):
Anderson might say, my friend was working to jobs one
to earn her living one is the sole manager of
an emotional entanglement that was also his. Well, women, sometimes,
I mean, do you realize who you're picking, who you're
choosing to go and be with and why? I mean,
is it just for vanity? Is it just for status?
Like what is it that you're looking for?

Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know?

Speaker 1 (30:39):
I mean when you see people that get married, you
ever notice it's never always the most attractive person they've
ever been with. It's always the best person they've ever
been with. Period. That looks above average, probably, but from
more than likely it's always going to be something more tangible.
And then women that the suicidial Okay, you're gonna try

(31:01):
to give a chance to somebody, and then they just don't.
They're just completely in it. Well, when she this lady
right here in this article about the trouble with wanting men,
the guy also that you're probably choosing might just want
to just go ahead and you know, crack so the
phrase of herd of some guy, I'll takta offall all
the time. You always talk about, you know, having sex crack.

(31:24):
So the thing is that guys probably just want to
go ahead and fool around the ones that you're probably
dealing with in this particular situation, and you're trying to
go and get more out of it, but you're not
calling it a gendered exploitation of intimate relationships. But you know,
it's like, there's not a lot of benefit for guys

(31:45):
to be in relationships right now if they know they
have to go through the whole process of and basically
paying the way to get to know somebody, because you
just can't get to know somebody into a traditional sense
and it has to be so many different things that
are going on. Is that an anxiety for women? Look,
so we can always and it's a way the other
way around, But I'm not trying to do that. I'm
just saying that women don't need to be calling this

(32:05):
whole thing and being said, oh, well, you know you
have a boyfriend. That's an ick. That's cringeworthy because women
are telling you that, no, don't listen to them. Don't
listen to them because they're not happy. Okay, so you
can let them go ahead and be unhappy all they want.
You can keep your boyfriend. You could do what you
want with them. You can let them be single, modern independent,

(32:28):
And they could also be the praise and devouchers