Everything Is Content - Hot Girl Summer Special

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

With August almost over, what better time to recap our respective hot girl- or not girl- summers? In this special deep dive episode we’re also talking about the impact of the cost of living crisis on romance. How are we meant to find the loves of our lives when a second round of drinks is out of budget? Plus, we discuss the recent rise in celibacy. If Julia Fox and Lenny Kravitz are doing it, maybe we should be doing it too? And finally we’re asking the important questions about dating apps. Are they terrible? Why are they terrible? And what can we do to stop them making *us* feel terrible? Our DMs and comments are always open for suggestions, opinions or relevant memes. EXPERIAN- Cost of Loving OENONE’S SUBSTACK- Please, don’t ask me who I amDAZED- Why are so many young people taking hallucinogens? ASBO MAGAZINE- Pxssy Palace, Queer RenaissanceTHE CUT- The women of South Korea’s 4B movementTHE INDEPENDENT - Julia Fox explains why she won’t give up her celibacy WTF PODCAST - Marc Maron x Andrew Garfield THE GUARDIAN- Lenny Kravitz THE GUARDIAN- The Orgasm Gap REDDIT- No fapWIKIPEDIA- Lesbian Feminism APPLE - Let’s Talk About … Dating POLYESTER - The Bumble Fumble BETH MCCOLL- Romanticise Your Life—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpodMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-MeenarArtwork: Joe Gardner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

three two one no i did that badly three two one oh what's wrong with my hands i'm beth i'm richara and i'm manoni and this is everything is content every week on the podcast we dissect the pop culture biggest and best stories from the week. We're the delicious ice latte during a larty. Sorry, I wouldn't do that. I thought that, but I didn't want to correct you. I thought you just thought that's what it was. I was just like, okay, bad.

Cultural differences. We're the delicious ice latte. I can't say it now oh ice latte latte latte okay latte let's pretend i am your dad we're the delicious ice latte during a sweaty sweltering 30 degree content heatwave. This week on the podcast, we've got a special deep dive for you. We're investigating what happened to Hot Girl Summer. In 2019, We Live Laugh loved the label for women living their best lives and hooking up without shame in honour of Megan Thee Stallion. But five years later later something feels different. Is the spirit of Hot Girl Summer over? Let's see if we can figure it out. But first follow us on

Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and if you love the podcast please please please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to us. Before we dive in, shall we each go around the table and define Hot Girl Summer for ourselves and share if we've ever had one or if we'd like to have one in future? Anoni, what is Hot Girl Summer to you? Well, I've always had long-term relationships until it was I had a breakup in 2021 and then 2022 was my hot girl year basically until I did get into another relationship and oh my god did I have the time of my life I had a roster oh it was amazing I was living it up I was free I didn't care about any I didn't care if anyone texted me back.

I never really had that anxiety-free, hooking up, no strings attached. And I was basically being a man. I was very proud of myself. And there was just some seem to be like, it was like I was going down a big highway in the US and every light was turning green. Every man that I wanted to snog was available and wanted to snog me back. I just, I'm single again now. I haven't really attempted much snogging, but it very much feels like if I did try, it wouldn't be there for me.

Oh, that makes me sad. That sounds so powerful, your hot girl summer year. I think I had a similar thing around 2019 so literally timed perfectly to Megan Thee Stallion's album and like this whole trend I'd got dumped on Valentine's Day that year RIP that was devastating and literally had like grieved heartbreak during the like last bits of winter and was just like coming out like a butterfly out of a cocoon ready to just like have some fun the album dropped and I was just like coming out like a butterfly out of a cocoon ready to just like have some fun the album dropped and I was just like I was off the apps because I found them

boring so I was just meeting people in person which I like obviously could never do that now it was like pre-pandemic so people were just alive and like going to events and saying yes to everything in a way that I feel like just doesn't feel the same right now. So it was a case of just like meeting somebody at a bar or like meeting somebody at a party that I barely knew anyone at and just like going on dates and like kind of trying my best to have meet-cutes and like not make it orchestrated from like dating online. It was just so much fun. Do you know, I think it's such an interesting hangover from COVID, which we don't talk about enough because when COVID first ended, I think everyone wanted to be out you know I think it's such an interesting hangover from COVID which we don't talk about enough because when COVID first ended I think everyone wanted to be out but I think that something that happened was this the you don't owe anyone anything era coincided with Zoom calls and

us getting used to not having to leave the house to the point where we forgot that there is something fun in leaving the house and like people like can't be asked to travel like I don't think we have as much energy or perseverance in terms of like actually getting up and going out on a whim yeah have you had a hot girl summer before Beth I have and I think mine coincided with the 2019 as well I had maybe a starter hot girl summer the year before 2018 which I will cite forever as like one of the finest summers in London especially heat wave world cup love island was excellent and that was maybe my starter job I had also just had a horrible breakup so I was kind of like maybe taking it too far at times I was like I was really going for it um but in a kind of chaotic often sad way way. And then 2019, I was like, okay, I'm recovered from that. It's almost like I sensed something bigger was coming

in terms of the global situation, which we had in 2020, because I left no stone. It was like the burning of Rome. I think as I was also like approaching the end of my 20s, but I wasn't in like the panic years yet. So I was like, this is it. My, I don't know, how old was I in 2019 I really can't do the maths my I don't know my prefrontal cortex was cooked and I was like I am actually

going to do everything it was really really fun I think I probably did then need to recover from it in 2020 maybe that timing was correct like I went all out and then suddenly was like no more of that and then I started longing for like intimacy but 2019 oh it was a it was a mad one that's so funny because we all seem to have been around the same age I think I was like 27 when I had my hot girl summer and actually I remember the minute I had my breakup because I'd been in a relationship the minute I moved to London so from like 23 or maybe 22 I'd like gone straight into a relationship and I was so jealous for those people that are dated but I think there's something really to be said for having that time in your later 20s because I do think when you're

in your early 20s everything's such a mess anyway you're just running around like a headless chicken something quite empowering about that specific age to go feral you're a bit richer you can go on slightly nicer dates the boys are slightly less dumb or you can see quicker that they are not whereas I think I was in my early 20s trying to do hot girl summer sleeping with older men and thinking like look at me getting one over on them and actually they were really getting one over like they were profiting from that situation I was ending up worse for wear so I do I think it's that knowing like I can take care of myself a little bit I wrote you know I'm not all the way wise I'm a bit wiser I can make smart stupid decisions yes yes that's exactly how okay so i want to talk about the cost of living because everyone jokes about not being able to buy a house or like afford to have a family but i think currently we can't even really afford to

meet the love of our lives may i introduce you to the cost of loving. According to new research by experience, on average, people aged 18 to 35 have racked up a debt of £2,250 because of dating and relationships. And another statistic shows that two in three, so 66% of young people aged 18 to 34 feel that dating is too expensive in the cost of living crisis. I feel like this is manifesting in other ways as well. Like people stay in relationships that perhaps aren't right or they aren't happy in because they can't afford to move out, they can't afford to leave. It's just a really dire situation for single people all around. I know you girlies are in relationships, but is this something you're coming up against in your peer group or even have noticed, I guess, in your own relationships?

Yeah, definitely. I feel like I noticed in the last two years, you can feel that breakups are not just devastating because, you know, it's the loss of a relationship and a life that you built up together. It's also the fact that it's fucking expensive and it's the loss of a relationship and a life that you built up together it's also the fact that it's fucking expensive and it's like this huge crash in your life where you have to pick up the pieces financially so you know if you've moved in together jumping back into the rental market which is the fucking sticks in London and I'm sure you know the reverberations are felt across the UK in the same way as well and it's just you know moving changing your life and all that kind of stuff financially is just so shit and like so

much worse than this cost of living crisis so it does feel like you can see that things are getting worse from that point of view considerably totally I have friends who've been in long-term relationships and either they're kind of saving money to kind of build their own future together or in the case of the women a few of them have got like the kind of get out funds which usually you would associate with like abusive relationships but they're like no I just need something some little nest egg if this goes sour so I don't have the awkwardness of living with my partner so no one really has a lot free cash. And if I've got a single friend and it's getting towards the end of the month, I'm like, should we do a little something? She's like, I've got this money

left. And no offense, but I am saving it for dates. Like what if we want to get another round? What if this? It's like money is the kind of token of freedom. And a lot of people, I guess, are deciding between, do I spend this freedom token on seeing my friends or on that kind of possibility of a perfect first date? So I just do think it's quite a non-romantic time because everyone's quite skinned, or everyone is. It's a consideration, whether it's you or whether it's the person you're going on a date with. Definitely. And also, even our experience, before i moved in with my ex i was living on in my own in a flat which i loved and then when we broke up i could no longer afford to do that

anymore because everything was so much more expensive and like my living circumstances were different and i have so many friends that either like yeah basically won't break up because they're like i can't live on my own and it's it's like too scary to be single or like you were saying Beth and we'll come on to dating apps later but because we're not really meeting people organically like we're saying no one's really going out into the wild I don't know if that's a hangover from um covid or if we just got so used to being reliant on dating apps that that is kind of the fundamental way I do think we've lost a means to socialize but if you're meeting up with someone from a dating app first of all it's so hard to tell someone's. I think a general rule of thumb is if they're really good

on text, you're not going to get on in real life. I almost think like if you haven't really spoken, you're going to date, it's better. But say you're getting the train like across London, then you've got to at least buy a first drink. Then you've got to go back. Maybe it's late, you're getting a taxi. You could end up spending 50 pounds on someone that you don't even have a vibe with. And you know that within the first like few minutes, that is just, it's late you're getting a taxi you could end up spending 50 pounds on someone that you don't even have a vibe with and you know that within the first like few minutes that is just it's just not economical right now I have a few friends that leave dates the minute they don't and this is really economical the minute they know that it's not a vibe they politely leave and I spent probably four figures over the course of my whole dating life on like extra drinks

or like polite rounds that I didn't really need to. And now I'm like, God, I wish I had that money back. I wish I'd had the kind of, I don't want to say balls. I wish I'd had like, just like the strength of mind to stand up and go, it's been really nice to meet you, but I don't think this is a vibe. of luck gone home and had that money for like a pizza or something or a house deposit so I think there's something in attitude as well we can save money but we do have to be stronger my recent self-sac that I wrote which was about um not knowing who I am and talking about like a bit about people pleasing this is one of my worst things I cannot and I don't know if it's something to do with my relationship with men because I'm a very confrontational, as in not like I'm getting

in an argument. I'm good at facing things head on. I'm really good at standing my ground in a work environment. On a date, I will stay there till the bitter end, even if I am literally like, I don't find them attractive. I have this weird thing in me where I'm like, I have to make them have a good time. It almost becomes a performance. I forget if I'm even enjoying it. I'm just like, I guess they fancy me. I'll make them fancy me more. And then if they're enjoying themselves, I'm like, well, I guess I can't leave. It's so frustrating. And I, it actually worries me about dating again, because I know that I will end up in a situation that I don't want to be in, staying up way too late, having a hangover that I really didn't need to have,

or because I can't say no to a man. And it something I really need to interrogate and some of my friends are really good at it and what I'm going to try and start doing if I do start dating again is my friends like always just have something else booked in like with friends and then the date goes really well you can either text your friends I'm not actually going to be there or you can just go on another date but give yourself like a two-hour window for that date but always have a hard out so if the date's at six be like I'll meet you at six but I've got a dinner at eight because then it's like you've already set that out so that I think is a good thing to do because then obviously you also don't have to have plans you can just leave yeah that's such a good shout I feel like I probably

had the exact same problem where this is gonna sound really bad and yeah feel free to judge me but I feel like it almost becomes a bit of a game when you're on a date of like gamifying the situation to get like reward out of it. Just the validation sometimes that like you are, you know, sexy enough and you are like charming enough and somebody can feed that back to you by the end, which definitely like calls to, I think when I was dating, just like sometimes not going in for the right reasons just like doing it because I felt really crap still kind of like bubbling over the like you know the rubbishness of a breakup and like needing needing to feel like I was like I guess like cool enough or good enough but the good the good part I think about the hang-ups of like COVID and post like

you know all of us having a lower social battery is I think hopefully you guys are right that people are just way more brutal and will just like say, you know, I'm not getting much from this. I am just spending too much. I'm just going to like duck out. And that's definitely something I found with friends who have kind of basically just stopped dating for like big periods of a year just because they don't want to give up the social energy they'd rather just like cash in all of that with their friends and know that they're going to have an amazing time so they'll just like remove themselves from the dating apps and just like quit them for like basically like a year and then maybe come back in and then just

like quit it again it's always the requit it's like those apps when you give up smoking and it says you have saved this much money your lungs have got like this much health or whatever they should have that for the dating apps because it would be you have saved this many shit nights this many shit shags this much money and you've gained like this much time because I actually think the rewards are enormous do you know what's so funny one of my friends had this like really kind of unhealthy back and forth with this guy that she couldn't stop messaging so she actually downloaded one of those like you know the addiction counter thing that tells you how many days you've been free from yeah but she did it with his name it would be like today you're six days free from and it like

really helped her stay accountable because she was like sometimes I'd forget that I'd like message him but I was also just thinking because I don't think dating can be hot girl summer but I think the true essence of hot girl summer is actually being out wearing the skimpiest clothes dancing in a really sweaty nightclub turning around and climbing that tall man like a tree but I think because everything is so expensive like I was thinking about it when you go to any remotely cool bar like I went through an obsession in my hot girl summer year of going to Arch Street which actually is famously uncool because it has like singing waiters but I loved it but the gun I was there it was so close to my flat when I moved up from my ex and I really felt like I hadn't had any freedom in that relationship and it was like COVID and stuff so I would

honestly just go there every night of the week but the cocktails in there I'm not joking are like 17 pounds a drink shut up like if you want to go out and drink especially in London it's like it does not even you can't really be chill about it and be like on a Wednesday night okay girls should we just go out to this fun new bar because actually within like before you've even and who's preying anymore I mean people maybe people do but like by the time you've arrived there by the time you've got two drinks you can't even like get drunk to get into that sort of like fizzy fun mindset where you might want to snog a stranger not that you have to be to do that obviously drink responsibly but it's like I think even just going out as a concept

is dying like dancing is dying club culture is dying especially in London it's really hard to find places apart from in specific boroughs where you can stay out late unless you're going to someone like Soho House which also by the way the way, is dead. Yeah, I completely agree. It's like that spontaneity that facilitates just all the kind of messiest decisions of your life. All the ones I associate with 2019 and before, they were just like the lifeblood of them was just getting like absolutely slaughtered on like a night that you weren't expecting it, like after work drinks, then like turning up at bar just keeping the night going and meeting all sorts of people that just I don't know I just feel like a I've not had that in ages even from like a you know just a fun point of view not a hookup point of view but friends aren't having that either it's just you can't do that without like literally

footing like a what a 200 bill a 200 pound bill on a night out which is just no one can do that that would be obscene because it's the it's the spirit of yes that is the spirit of hot girl summit it's just it's the ability to say yes i'm gonna do that or i've you know i was out to meet a friend for a coffee and now we're at this bar we're at this bar someone's invited us like on a house like you know it's it's it's the spirit of yes and having to say no because the consequences of and it's just not fun to wake up a little bit of hangover but also money out of your bank account that you actually cannot afford

it just it's the morning after from hell and I do just think having to say no so often for financial reasons just has killed that spirit of spontaneity and fun and like possibility that goes hand in hand with having any kind of like hot girl summer because a hot girl summer is a summer where you don't know where you're going to end up in the night out unless you do because you've got 48 pounds I also think it's good to say that hot girl summer can happen in relationships that I've definitely had hot girl summers where it hasn't been about getting with people and it's actually just been about wearing what you want to wear, whether that's conservative or whether that's like showing skin.

Exactly that thing of like spontaneity, freedom. You don't know where the night's going to take us. Do you think it's an age thing? Do you think we've aged out of that? Because I honestly can actually not think of the last time where I've done that. And it actually hasn't been a bit of a flop. Like I did end up going to a house party maybe like a couple of months ago which was on a whim it was actually like with a friend so it's my school friends uni friend who I'd met that day and she was like come with me and I was like

I'm gonna say yes then I went I was like I don't know anyone here and also it's a bit awkward like everyone's Australian not that that's the problem but I was like that was just the demographic and I was like but so I don't know if it's an age thing where I'm not as good at getting stuck in or if our demographic just aren't as spontaneous or if the world has just changed in that like we don't have as much freedom. I think it's a bit of all of the above, genuinely. And I guess our good friend, CharlieXCX would argue

that we still have you know another win to us even you know us approaching our 30s um god forbid but I don't know it does let's well let's talk about Brat how is Brat and Brat Summer the same or different to Hot Girl Summer it would somebody be able to argue that Brat Summer is saying that like, you know, the spirit of Hot Girl Summer is alive. We're all supposedly going out, getting like wasted and taking and or not class A's or what on a night out. I think Brat Summer is like the twisted sister of Hot Girl Summer. To me, like Brat Summer is like her more like nihilistic twin. Like they are related but having lived through

both of them I think that this feels it's like yes go to the club but like dance like the world is ending because maybe it is and everything's a bit feral everything's a bit dirty whereas Hot Girls on the Head I think a real like bubbliness to it and it might just be anthropomorphizing a slogan but no I completely agree also I've been thinking about this and what I've realized because when Brat came out it was so inspirational to me like I'd just gone through a breakup and I was like do you know what life isn't over like Charlie's 31 I can have fun still like I've come out of this really serious relationship where I thought it was going to be like this different future but all is not lost so I was like great I can't wait to

be listening to this album and then it just hasn't happened and I was like why is this and I do think it's because spaces don't exist in the same way that they used to and because people don't have money and so rich people can have brat summers and more and more we're noticing that like I guess older demographics of celebrity especially like women are having these like amazing quite hedonistic lives in a way that we would normally associate whatever age group it is with motherhood I'm not talking about Charlie I'm talking about just lots of female celebrities and I think it's because they have access to spaces that we can't really get to like where are they going out it looks sick but that doesn't exist

for your lay person I honestly can't tell you a cool place to go out in London I can't remember the last time that I went somewhere I was like oh my god I just found this really cool bar every time I do end up out for drinks with my friends and we're like should we go somewhere else we're all on google maps like well where's open we could go to this place so it's an hour away and then it shuts in an hour and a half like I think that the appetite for it is there but I think with the closures and like residential spaces especially in, like encroaching in so much, there is very little outlet. And to add on to the money thing, who owns a house?

Like if I owned my own property, I would be throwing the sickest house parties. But we're at this weird in-between age where we're not living in like eight bed strong, huge houses where the landlord knows you're a load of early 20 year olds. So you're going to throw house parties every weekend. We've kind of got a slight semblance of adulthood, but we might have our own like butter dish and a Le Creuset pan, but like, it's still not a property that we own. We don't have enough space to have a party. So I think, does any of that make sense? It's like, I think we want this bright summer and everyone was really excited about it. And I think the collective feeling is oh we can't yeah yeah yeah yeah no I think everything

I do agree with everything you said and I also agree with your definition Beth there is a very vibey distinction between the two there is like a level of feralness to brat girl summer that feels kind of a bit more like cynical and a bit more like oh well fuck it let's just like let's just like die then almost do it um do you think it's just like a British cynicism do you think that's the main difference because she's English maybe yeah maybe that's a good question I think that I think that is infused in it I think you can't remove remove the fact that like Charlie is a bit of a shit poster and there is that is infused in it. I think you can't remove the fact that Charlie is a bit of a shit poster and there is that kind of smirk with everything she does. So

it does feel generally kind of a bit more edgier and seedier. But I think that is kind of British humour as well. I don't think you can be, as we've said before, very earnest about very much without feeling hugely humiliated by it. I agree. It grotty isn't it really are gen z even like we're talking about maybe we're in the age group but gen z pretty much have the same or worse financial constraints that we do and i'm obviously not in the club to to take like an age survey but are they in the club are they kind of tapping into the kind of youth nightlife that is just invisible to me or are they also are they missing out on that like house party chaos in the in the sticky club until like the early hours time because of the cost of living crisis i'd be quite interesting interested to

talk to like a swathe of proper gen z's who have the hunger for that but aren't doing it because they can't afford it either. Yeah. I keep reading so many interesting conflicting statistics on this because there's always all these articles like Gen Z don't drink and I always find that really interesting and there is a rise on Gen Z having much more like health anxiety and being much more worried about what they're putting into their bodies like including drugs and alcohol but then I read another piece that was like actually the reason is Gen Z are much more used to being online on online spaces they don't really like going out socializing as much so they tend to take drugs more like shrooms and things which are more well suited to I don't know what they do so it's like there's something there was something about like it's actually just the way that we

socialize that they don't socialize as much and how like alcohol since the beginning of time has been used as a social lubricant people have been bonding over beer and wine since we figured out how to ferment the fruits and so there is something to be said that yes britain has a really bad relation with alcohol and alcohol can be such a destructive drug. But I also am such a huge believer that alcohol can be very magical and it has been something that we have bandied around for years. I need to do more research on the Gen Z thing. Just anecdotally, when I was with my friend the other day, we were going to a gig. I'm 30, she's 33. We bumped into two of the most beautiful 20-year-old girls you've ever seen and they were asking us where to go out and we both panicked but that did give me a bit of joy de vivre because I was

like okay they are still out but it was only two and they didn't know where to go I do think they keep us young though don't they they always lie as well they're like you're not 30 and we were like oh my god but like they obviously we obviously did look 30 but they were just buttering us up then they were like can you stay with us and we were really seriously considering not going to this gig which was like my friend's friend's gig that we had to go to we were like should we go and then we were like no we can't so we need the young people to to sort of fluff us up and invigorate us and actually i think if we have a whole generation beneath us who are not going out the same way i think we'll wither on the vine i think we actually do rely on gen z to sort of chase us out of our

houses and get us doing hot girl summers I hope so I mean part of me would be terrified if I saw a club full of like people 20 years old and I was the only person like turning 30 it would make me feel a bit like maybe I should leave now that has that is what happens to me though when I do try and go out sometimes like me and the girls literally feel like we're the four women from sex in the city when they turn up to that club and they're like wait you know she gets to the guy and turns out she goes back to his flat and it's like rank and she realizes all like 21 that has happened to us and also because you're so dressed up in your little heels and you're like where is the club for the for the for the 30 year olds don't know why I want American then so one thing I will say

is I love Pussy Palace just because they've explicitly done nights out for 25 year olds and above um which has gone down a storm online and has been pretty divisive but you know good for them for fighting the good fight Pussy Palace is um a queer night out run by women of color for women of color so we've gone from hot girl summer shunning slut shaming and sexual freedom and promiscuity to people actively giving up sex altogether over the last few years there's been more than 120 million posts on tiktok about the rise of an unexpected trend, self-imposed celibacy. So there's loads of movements that have gained traction in the media around the rise of the so-called celibacy, you know, from boys sober to de-centering men. There's one called 4B, which is supposedly quite big in South Korea. But what we can see is essentially there's more and more

reporting of women leaving sex behind and actively identifying as celibate. So what do you girls think about this? Do you think it is a case of the media inflating what could be an anecdotal trend and making it seem as if you know generationally there's this giant shift and women are giving up sex or do you think it's quite legit like have you heard of friends doing this what's your take I do you know what I was even thinking I actually think it's quite empowering because I think what's happening at the minute and I I kind of speak about this all the time on other things is that we've had so much progress in the psyche and the collective understanding of women's progress towards feminism and our place in the world and creating more equality and parity.

And it just feels like there is this exhaustion where it doesn't feel like men have caught up. And so we're trying so hard to come this far and the men aren't meeting us in the middle. And so often I think women are finding dating quite exhausting. They're finding the lack of emotional intelligence from men quite exhausting. And then it's like, why am I giving up, not giving up power? Cause I didn't, it kind of is like, I don't necessarily want to sexually engage with men because I find it draining. It's upsetting. In some ways it's kind of making me feel a bit devalued and so I'm just going to either only you know masturbate or whatever or I'm just going to not have sex for a bit and contain that power and I do think there's this growing rise in sort of quite spiritual leaning beliefs which I don't know if also just happens when you're 30 because I've also started becoming a

bit more woo woo but just this idea of like re-grounding re-owning your your sexuality because whilst I do think you can be super liberated by having lots of no strings attached sets and I do think that every woman should go through a slut era if that's something that you want to do I do think it's something that imagine lying on a deathbed and being like I didn't have loads of sets I was worried about being called a slut it's like one of life's pleasures go get it but I also do think maybe there is something to be said for completely re-centering in terms of like not having sex I think there's something quite interesting and powerful about it even if it's just for like a period of time and yeah I do

have friends who have maybe started off accidentally kind of like not having sex for a bit and then it's like after a while you kind of don't want to have sex and then getting back out that's quite hard people say that with women the longer they're single the later in their life it gets much much harder to try and introduce a heteronormal relationship into that because statistically women actually don't benefit in heteronormative relationships and so the older you get and the longer that you're single the more you're like this is kind of actually better this is the scam I agree with all of that and I think talking to my friends I'm surprised more people aren't trying celibacy I think more of my friends will I think as people break up with husbands and I'm going to talk about women but you

know we'll get on to the topic of men I think with women because our sexuality normally is born like a healthy sexuality is I think born by ourselves I think men maybe learn to have pleasurable sex by the having of sex whereas I think women learn pleasure alone so I think there's something almost like coming home about not having sex because there's not that same pressure in young women you know you want to lose it you want to like join your friends and like the not no virginity club but there's not the same pressure in young women you know you want to lose it you want to like join your friends and like the not no virginity club but there's not the same pressure of like I need to start having sex because that's like almost social capital I think it's quite comfortable and

quite reassuring to kind of come back to that there's no huge concern like sort of in-cell movement like vol-cell voluntary celibacy I think is quite an empowering thing it's talked about as yeah like returning home rediscovering something whereas I think is quite an empowering thing it's talked about as yeah like returning home rediscovering something whereas I think when men talk about celibacy it's always and I guess it's like famous men it's always like I'm abstaining from this to get stronger in the same way they talk about like fasting whereas for me or for women I think that I've talked to celibacy is more like it's a kind of feast it's like I'm actually like feasting on this I'm getting I'm gaining so much rather than like Iing on this. I'm getting, I'm gaining so much

rather than like I'm abstaining and I'm getting stronger because I'm not having this lovely thing. I just think there's such a different, even as like more famous people talk about it, like Andrew Garfield talked about being celibate. Lenny Kravitz, I think is celibate. And then there's like women who talk about it

and the difference in how they talk about it is really stark. And I bet some of my male friends are celibate but it's not something we would talk about over tea whereas me and the girls are delving right in that's such that's such an interesting point about the language used around it because yeah I um I've this is such a bizarre thread but I follow loads of different reddit accounts in the hopes of finding stuff to write about and one of them is like um the communities built around like not

masturbating like nofap and um men trying to give up porn and it very much is languaged in a way that is as you said Beth fasting and denial and denial and discipline, and it feels very strict and militant. Whereas, yeah, I mean, the way Julia Fox very recently has spoken about choosing to be celibate feels like, as you said, inviting more energy into her life and inviting joy and happiness, and it feels open. It feels inviting and lovely and embraceful of like a new life it's so it's so interesting isn't it um and yeah I don't know I would love to I would love to unpick what is going on between those two communities and maybe that's why maybe that's why we're in the position we find ourselves in where women are deriving joy from doing that whereas

men feel like they have to do that for some reason um I do think as well, we need to talk about the orgasm gap and how that plays a part into this. So, you know, lots has been written about the fact that in heterosexual relationships or hookups, women often don't derive the same pleasure that men do. I've got some stats from a 2023 Guardian article that said, according to Durex, straight men have four times as many orgasms as straight women. Although that fudges the figures a little, 20% of men and 5% of women answered always when asked whether they orgasm during sexual encounters. So it is considerably different. That's so interesting. And it goes back to the thing that you said, Beth, which I haven't

thought about since you said it, which is that men find pleasure in other people and women find pleasure in themselves. And every single woman that I know mostly started off having sex as an act of service to a man and an act of, you know, having your virginity taken from you, becoming a woman in that sense of like having experienced sexuality. And then it wasn't until maybe much further down the line that they either discovered masturbation or discovered that their own pleasure should have been at the forefront of that sexual activity. I think that with the internet, I don't think that sex education is getting better as we've seen with laws that are trying to regress what we talk about in terms of queer sex as well. I don't know if sex education in schools is actually maybe getting worse. My sex education was terrible, but that was like 15 years ago um so i do think there's something so interesting as well about women always having had the ability to find more pleasure with themselves obviously obviously we have to hope that

as time goes on or just generally that women find pleasure in sex but i do think that like you said with the orgasm gap return it's when also I don't know it depends on the definition of celibacy because some people do define celibacy as excluding including masturbation as well I wanted to ask you Beth because I hadn't seen this could you expand on what Andrew Garfield was saying about his celibacy and Lenny Kravitz is this voluntary celibacy and did they explain why they were doing it I'd love to know more yeah so Andrew Garfield I heard on Mark Maron's podcast WTF um and he was talking about it I think it was six months he was celibate for a film role this was I think about eight years ago um so he's celibate for six months and at the same time he

was fasting so I think those two were very tied up together like the combination of eating very little and having no sex he didn't i don't think he said whether he was um self-pleasuring by assuming that was probably a part of it um and he was like it was a wild experience like you know as though it was like a mind-opening experience but really i mean short term obviously it depends on your attitude to sex that's probably for some people like a lifetime but lenny kravitz has been this was earlier this year I read this um Celebrate Film nine years I think so hasn't also had relationships in that time and I always thought of Lenny Kravitz and still do it's like you know very liberated very sexy like I saw his willy pop out of his

pants that time and I watched that gif again and again again do you not seen that he was on stage bless his heart and he likes he he sat down or like down, he kind of went on his haunches in a pair of trousers and he just split down the seam and his willy just leaps from his trousers. So I sort of associated him with free-balling, willy-leaping, like complete sexual liberation. And I read this piece where he talks about, and I think for him it's more about control and emotional like peace and energy levels because nine years is a very very long time that's more of a lifestyle change and i know julia

fox is like two or three years into hers that is the kind of thing i think to turn around on like you couldn't just so i think they come at it lenny and and Andrew from very different points of view it's like one was an exercise in I don't know like crafting a role for a film and like pushing your mindset but the other is like a full life it's kind of a kind of monkery also quickly talk about I just remembered something I read about how to bring up Tommy Fury I didn't know this but apparently boxers before games aren't meant to engage in sexual sexual activity so that they restore their testosterone prior to games oh wow sorry I don't know if that's true in any other sports I read that somewhere on a gossip website and they were like clearly he wasn't following that rule because obviously there's

been loads of rumors about him cheating and that I also think of him being a shit boxer yeah I also think it's interesting where women you can obviously get pent up sexual energy but I think that there's often lots of conversations if you ever read stuff about when people call a vagina a yoni if you I can't remember what it but that kind of spiritual idea of the yoni like it being your guiding force there's so much to say that a woman a vagina and all of the parts of a female genitalia is um it's it's the lifeblood of life it's like a house it's like a home it's so many things whereas with men if they don't ejaculate as like the incel community will say or like you literally hear like blue balls it's going to impact them it's going to be so there's definitely also just like a different kind of tension in terms of that restriction I think for women can feel empowering and it's almost like we take it in-house and we take that power and energy for

ourselves whereas with men it sounds like it becomes external like they want to fight and like I don't know how much of that is even true logistically or if it's just our socialized ideas of sort of like men are full of testosterone and women are not because as we know women have testosterone to varying degrees and some men could have less etc gender is not as binary as we perceive it to be yeah yeah yeah it's hard to unpick what is socialization at this point but i would i would go for it and say that i reckon that those two things are down to how we've been socialized and possibly religious scriptures kind of boiling down to how we live our lives now um one thing I'm really interested in as well is just

celibacy obviously was so rooted in the idea of religion and religious uh morality and what women should do in terms of living their lives and not do it's really interesting to see that there's been a new co-opting of celibacy to be explicitly not about religion and also be almost like explicitly feminist to de-center men and all of that kind of stuff do you think that do you think that that is true do you think that women are doing it and it's you know not at all to do with religion what what do you think is going on i would say people do get more spiritual with age as as a rule i would say it is probably about connecting to some sort of to see what life is like when you live it a slightly different way but everyone i know who's who's doing any kind of period of voluntary celibacy, or otherwise, who's a woman,

probably began it as a romantic exercise. So they were saying, I actually just don't want to have bad sex anymore. I don't want to have casual sex. I'm going to have sex only with men that demonstrably care about me and respect me. And the depressing thing is that actually ended up looking like no sex at all, because that was so thin on the ground. And I think I can see, and maybe I just don't know enough people that are openly kind of talking about their religion and their kind of relationship with God or higher power, but I've only really seen it as in kind of relation to the self and it's you know inherently feminist because it is it's related to the relations between men and women and the inequality

imbalance there it's like a correcting of that if society won't correct I think people are correcting it in themselves they're not fucking I agree I was going to say it's like every action has an equal and opposite reaction thank you albert eidenstein um and so with the rise of incel culture and with the rise of andrew tates and men very much wanting to take women own women possess them very obsessed with like virginality and just their own kind of body count etc i then see things like you brought up in South Korea, the women that are choosing to not have sex. It was making me think of, and I'm now on Wikipedia,

that other really good source. Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards fellow women rather than men and advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism is mostly influential in the 70s and early 80s primarily in north america and western europe which is such an interesting thing historically to look at which is kind of i think what's happening in south korea where women are kind of deciding that well we're not going to have sex with men i don't know if they're having lesbian relationships but it's also making me

think that just anecdotally again a lot of my friends are having queer awakenings in their thirties, whether or not those, I'm sure that those queer feelings and attractions existed before. But I think that the liberation to actually act on them is also being born out of the fact that, like I spoke about earlier, there is an exhaustion happening in heterosexual relationships, not everywhere. And obviously there are some amazing heterosexual relationships happening but I do think the exhaustion comes from maybe not even own personal experience but just conversations and also this huge rise in femicide and misogyny and and terrorism of like acts of violence against women are it's creating this massive rift

and I guess lack of belief in the love story between men and women that we were taught to and socialized to believe in for such a long time. And so I don't think that the people in my life are enacting their queerness as a means to, like as a cultural kind of fight against this. But I do think that a lot of my friends now that

have come out of relationships are going actually I think I'm going to date women obviously there's a level of attraction it's not just an act of like resistance resistance exactly but that is also really interesting I think and I don't know if you guys have noticed this as well yeah it is interesting I don't I can totally see that across the board and I can see that through my social media and maybe I'm just plugged into the right channels but um anecdotally for my friends I think it's a bit different and I'm not seeing that play out in the same way but it's definitely what I'm seeing yeah through social media and you know uh especially like in the last I would say three years I don't know what it is but it definitely feels as if

I'm seeing a lot more people talking about um having their queer awakenings and up until then having been in you know mostly strictly platonic not platonic sorry heterosexual relationships so yeah that is i think that is a thing for sure because we are encouraged now to explore or there's space now to reconsider romantic and sexual dynamics. Because people who begin their relationships heterosexually and then, as is quite normal, realise about themselves that's not who they are. I think because we're not meeting a husband husband at 21 marriage a little way down the line 2.5 kids later there's such a wide open space to do things differently and i do think considering how sex is sex with men is like wielded as like a tool of oppression like reproductive rights and

you know it is the tool by which men hurt us a lot of the time. I think it's a wonder a lot of people do stick with it as long as they do. And I do think especially like, celibacy to me, it's like kind of weird inverse of virginity, which is so exhausting to be like a teenage virgin. Virginity is like weirdly titillating to men. It's prized. It's like the kind of, it's a way that they hate us and suppress us and want to control us i think celibacy almost feels like or celibacy and um or celibacy from having sex with men almost feels like a protest i know that wasn't what you were talking about and only but it does almost feel like a fuck you to all the the kind of system of men who got excited by the idea that I was a teenage

virgin. The kind of idea of one day being a celibate older woman, like good luck getting titillated by that. I just think there's something that feels empowering about it, that feels like an act of rage versus something quite peaceful. That's not a fully formed thought, but I just thought of like virginity as a very stressful time in a woman's life of like when will i lose it will i lose it in the right way celibacy is almost like the grown-up sister um and getting to be like sexist in the right way the 4b movement in south korea is a feminist action advocating a boycott of dating marriage childbirth and sex um it's facing challenges and it as it gains international attention including

online harassment of activists risk of misrepresentation in the media and potential political exploitation all of which threaten to overshadow so it's literally women taking the power of their pussies and using it as a means to be like we can take this away from you and for so long i hope that didn't sound like I was undermining it, but for so long, even the fact that we call people like you're such a pussy as if it's really weak, and there's that really trite 2016 feminist thing that's like, how is a pussy weak when it lets you push the baby out, whatever. But it is this thing, it's that women have so much power over men

because of their, straight men, because of their sexual desires towards us. And for so long, like you were saying, Beth, that has been used as a weapon against us and actually taking it away. It just shows how much power we have. So it is one of my most powerful things. And I always find it so interesting when men like Andrew Tay or just using as a catch-all for that kind of man, talk about desiring virgins, because as a woman who's now single at 30 I don't know how old Andrew Tay is but I'm assuming he's older than me the idea of sleeping with someone who's a virgin it makes me feel physically sick the idea of taking of putting I don't know I just like just leave people who obviously that could be someone who's a virgin who's my age but even

that I would still find very uncomfortable like I think that I always grappled this whenever men date much younger or find that purity and innocence attractive in women I find it so alienating and strange because I find that quite upsetting and I feel always maternal to anyone who is much younger than me or is very sexually inexperienced I feel very motherly I feel very much like I want to educate them I just find it so wild when we talk about sex how how gendered and how much we are socialized to have these beliefs because for most almost all women that I know what we really desire is sexual experience um a really good language around sex a great understanding of consent like all of these things are what are important to women in sex and the fact that men are like yeah i want to fuck someone who's literally never ever been in that position before i find it so strange and so i completely think that

actually these movements which may sound quite extreme make so much sense because maybe we do have to go celebrate and take it away from them to be like look you're not running this conversation anymore you have no idea what you're talking about and your desires are really fucked up and and tied into some really gross things actually like an obsession with youth and youngness and so this reminds me of an excellent episode that actually i did not feature on of this podcast because i was away on a trip um where you talked about the bumble fumble when they did a campaign to recruit new users that relied on celibacy as a sort of punchline i think it was i might be

remembering this incorrectly them saying don't become a nun actually please correct me because this is definitely wrong don't become a nun join bumble something like that or don't it's not time for celibacy it's time for let me have a look someone help me yeah I didn't realize you weren't here of course we shouldn't have made you do this I agree then I did listen to the episode so it was you know full well, a vow of celibacy is not the answer. Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun. That's so offensive.

And I think dating apps are, I mean, it's quite rich for a dating app to sell themselves that way. Because dating apps are, even though they have been such a huge part of my hot girl summers of the past, they're such an imperfect vessel. They're the source of so much controversy, of so much misery. Earlier this year, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed by Six People Against Match Group, which is the company that owns and operates, I think, the biggest portfolio of online dating apps in the world, which includes Tinder and Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid.

And within this proposed class action suit were accusations that the apps contained features that were game-like and addictive, basically trapping users in this circular system of having to pay to play and gamifying the experience of finding love instead of doing what they were advertising, which was making love and finding relationships easier. And I don't want to linger specifically on this lawsuit, but I do think it is representative of a shift in attitudes to dating apps and attitudes to using them as a tool for love. That's something I have used a lot, and we can all talk about our own experiences if we feel like this is a safe space. But the more I talk about them, the more I read about them, the more I think about them, I'm finding them not so much like a tool of finding love, but more just

like another roadblock on the way. And I do think attitudes have shifted. And when my friends talk about taking a little break from dating apps, it's almost always a shorthand for I'm depressed about them. I need to feel better. Kind of like giving up sex. I need to breathe. I need to feel good. I'm not going to use the dating apps, which is kind of crazy when you think about what they once represented,

which was an open, like opening the whole world of dating potential they're now like a chore when so when i did my let's talk about dating the other day one of the submissions was which goes back to our cost of loving subject they were like people that can afford to boost themselves on these apps have better chances of like meeting the because it is also kind of hierarchical like hinge does that thing where it'll show you like pics of the week like the algorithms do figure out who the most eligible and potential users are so if you can afford to boost yourself or like pay that all of them now have these like premium subscriptions it's like that is not right we shouldn't have to be paying to meet people it's so fucked up um I guess it's the natural end game of you know late stage capitalism that we're

literally kind of paying to meet people yeah it it it feels so wrong but um what was your experience of dating apps for sure so I remember joining them I think I would say like 2016 was the first time I joined tinder and yeah all the classic stuff I've thought was really exciting couldn't believe that like all the awkwardness of meeting somebody and chatting to somebody had been eliminated you could just automatically know that somebody liked you and that for like you know socially anxious young data felt incredible. And then all the various transitions of Hinge during its heyday was like fucking brilliant. All the hotties were on there, was having the best time. And then right at the end.

So yeah, that 2019 year I mentioned just feeling so despondent about using them and feeling like a piece of meat and having to, you know, I guess sell myself and, you know, find pictures and look at myself through this like really gross lens of being like, well, what would somebody think of this? Well, what would somebody think of this answer? Am I funny enough? You know, what's a really quippy line to make somebody potentially fall in love with me? It's just a a horrible it's a horrible way to think and look at yourself and I just had enough so I quit them tried to meet people in person was lucky enough to be able to do that but yeah I fully fully fully sympathize with anyone who feels as if dating apps makes them feel terrible about themselves you know the constant messaging

the ghosting all of that kind of stuff I definitely felt that when I was on it for sure what about you Beth it's so mad that you said 2016 and you got on them there was a spirit of excitement then 2019 which like three years is not a long time and that's like the length of time it took for you to get sick of them for them to start doing like more harm than good I think that's the case for a lot of people but they do stay on them longer I downloaded I think it's my second year of uni and everyone was so I think it was just like the advent of tinder and we're all so excited about it and that is like maybe a decade I think that's a decade of my life no just under a decade of my life on and off the apps my whole adult dating experience has been centered around not it's not the only way I've dated but it's primarily has centered around the apps which I think I'm not particularly

pleased about and I kind of wish there wasn't a redo button for some of it do you know what same as me I downloaded dating apps second year of uni we all downloaded it there were seven of us or eight of us living in a uni house we all downloaded it at the same time but we used it in the same way that we use used to use our phones when we first got phones so we would download tend to be like ha ha ha oh my god that's that guy we saw in the club we'd match with them probably not talk to them and then because the university I was at Cardiff it was like it was you were kind of seeing people all the time so you would match with someone be really exciting because you'd probably bump into them like outside your lecture so you wouldn't actually talk to anyone

it was so easy to meet people and it would just kind of show you but we would then just forget about it for a bit and then we'd remember and be like oh let's go on tinder and we'd all like sit around the table doing it whereas now and it was like such a give or take thing whereas now it's like oh you're single what when are you gonna download the apps and I read a really interesting statistic which I have no idea where it was or when I read it. So I'm just basically mating it up. But the essence of it was the longer someone is on a dating app, the less likely they are to meet someone. The people that end up getting married from the apps are the people that have a breakup, download it, match someone, and then they get married. Very often when you hear people talk

about having married someone from a dating app, they'll be like, oh, it was the first person I've matched. Because it's often people that haven't been on them for very long that have maybe not used them before, have really good, like maybe really aware of like what they're looking for, find that person, manage to get off the app and then they get married. Whereas what even I noticed when I have downloaded them, like various points during my singleness, I'll download them. And the same people that came up four or five years ago are just spinning around and also on all of the apps, whether it's Raya, Hinge or Bumble, there was a point when I like tried to download all three. And I was like, it's the same people are just coming up. And that kind

of put me off as well. Cause I'm like, if you've been on this app for like five years, you're obviously not looking for anything or you're stuck in this horrible thing where you're going on dates you've got so good at it that like you've forgotten what you're looking for or even forgotten how to sort of really believe that this person could be the one because there might be someone else coming along yeah yeah yeah and I think there's a few things going on with dating apps one it's made dating slash connecting with people feel like a job I feel like the way friends talk about it is oh I've got to put in a shift you know on the dating apps you know oh shit I forgot to get back to this person give me like an hour I need to get back to my messages it like it feels like going through your emails in a way that's like very unsexy and very unfun which has removed the joy of it in a way and then also one thing I

remember from my time on apps for all I said about feeling like a piece of meat the way I you know viewed people on apps was like they weren't real they were just like these images so it felt like I could always find someone who was funnier or better if I just like swiped some more and like just went through a few more people it doesn't feel like anyone is a real person until you meet them and go on a date whereas when I when I you know ditched the apps and I was like trying to meet people in person you're I'm so taken in by charisma and riz and you know if somebody's really funny it's almost like completely secondary like I don't know what their favorite sport is or like where they went on holiday or you know even

what they look like to a degree because all of that stuff becomes a package in front of you and it's like so much more attractive it's so that's so true and I wrote about that in my book romanticize your life about that period which I mentioned at the top of the episode in 2018 when I was just like fresh out of a breakup and doing like quite chaotic dating and I was using the apps in I think quite cruel way and luckily I snapped out of it quite quickly but it was quite unfeeling I was I was absolutely collecting matches like swiping as though I was playing like a pokemon game or like shopping the sales, like add man to basket, add man to basket. And like, I would kind of like come to and be like hundreds of matches, no connections. And it was just literally was dopamine sensation seeking, looking for validation in the form of like a little number on the screen that says, okay,

I'm attractive to another man. Okay. He would consider having sex with me. And it just like filled a very empty hole. And I, because you can't tell someone's intentions a lot of those men probably were looking for relationships there was no like still sign on my profile that said she is here for bad reasons not like cruel not necessarily cruel reasons but she's you know they were swiping probably with good intentions and i was there like drooling on my screen just like trying to feel something and i do think they do encourage that bad behaviors you know they encourage them the same way that our endless um regenerative social media feeds do and i don't have the willpower necessarily to use them in a better way i think a lot of people other people don't and because it's love the thing that we kind of all socialized the the prize we kind of think okay if we put enough

into this that's what I'm going to get so it's worth it to spend 10 years on the apps whereas actually a lot of it I think is can be sunk cost and actually make us not very good at dating in person I think it sounds like Richard you got out at a good time and also Anonia it sounds like you the periodic downloading of them trying them out and then ditching them is the only way to do it that doesn't melt your brain a bit and I did I really stayed on them too long so oh god I have so much so much to say exactly what you said Richard and I don't want to say this gang because I did say this on my adult thing I said about dating, but the thing is, and I won't be the first to say it, but men cannot convey who they are via their dating apps. I don't know what it is. Women are so much better. I don't know if it's just we have more pictures of us, but

I find it really easy to ascertain a woman's vibe, her energy, what kind of personality she has. Even if her prompts are like nothing, it's so easy to tell. Men, all of us like zooming in, like, is he good looking? Oh wait, no, not in that picture. Oh no, he's quite good looking. Oh wait. And like, I don't know why, but it's so hard to tell what a man's like. So we will match people on the off charts that maybe they're attractive. And then more often than not, men are way better looking in real life than they are on the app. They're way more interesting. And we also have all these biases as women, I think, which is funny because first of all, if you've ever looked at women on dating apps, there are millions of

gorgeous women, like it's actually kind of upsetting. That kind of makes you feel defeatist because you're like, why would anyone pick me? But men, if a man says he's looking for a relationship, it makes me, even if I was looking for a relationship, I'm like, don't want to go out with them because they're obviously just going to go out with anyone. If they say like too much about their personality, I'm like, you're a bit embarrassing. Don't want to date you. If they say too little, I'm like, oh, okay. You think they're too cool. If they link their Instagram, I'm like, why are you linking your Instagram? If I can't, then if I can't find them online, I'm like, well, I can can't stalk you so I don't want to be with you like there's so many things whereas I I find that I've had amazing connections with loads of people

throughout my life maybe I just I do find it easy to find it attract be attracted to people I don't know but like when I meet people in real life there's a really broad spectrum of people that I will find attractive and could fancy and could kiss but on a dating app I'm like there's absolutely not one person here and then I'll do what you said Beth where I'll match loads of people be like great that will be sat in my matches and then one of them will message me and I'll be like oh I didn't want you to message me and I'm like well why did I match them then like I'll always be like oh it's not the one that I wanted do you think setting people up is the answer because I was at a festival recently talking to a single woman who was she was like i'm i don't do the apps i just don't do them never have never will i need to you

know go out in the world to snog people um do you have any single male friends and i think very highly of all my like all the men i know but i was sort of wracking my brains going like who could i because it's i don't think i've ever set two people up but I think it's such a beautiful idea also then like you're guaranteed to get like a good seat at the wedding because you brought all together I was like why did my brain think like who would I in the roster set up with who maybe it's because I think more highly of my female friends no offense I'm like oh no no no I couldn't possibly do that but it unless I'm like looking at the past with like kind of fake nostalgia, people did used to get set up.

That was a thing that happened. I think it's a really nice thing that we should maybe do more of. Would you get set up, Anoni? So if I said I know someone, would you go, oh God, who's our weirdo friend going to be? Well, no, I'd love to be set up.

I was going to say my sister was set up with her husband. But by a male friend. Because I he was so they were friends through rugby and he was like this guy said to my sister I got this amazing guy I think you're gonna love him she was like final go on a date with him but like saw a picture of him and she was like I don't really think I'm gonna fancy him and now they're like really in love oh perfect story so that's really cute but I would love to be set up but I agree I sometimes have women being like do you have anyone I can set you up with and just because I know my guy friends too well and know that they've maybe like goes to someone in the past whatever I'm not I don't want to be responsible I think it's a nice thing but I

remember actually talking to my ex about this because he had a single friend and I kept being like why don't we set up so-and-so with him and he was like I just don't want to be responsible for if that goes wrong yeah and like I know he can be a bit of a fuck boy and I kept being like why don't we set up so-and-so with him and he was like I just don't want to be responsible for if that goes wrong yeah and like I know he can be a bit of a fuck boy and then it's like what if that then impacts our relationship so I think it is a nice idea but I also just do think there's a dearth of single eligible men every single single woman that I know is clever funny really attractive beautiful very successful and then I have like two kind of hot single friends that are men that's it no I agree um my two cents on the setup thing is I have a different point of view me and another female friend was set up by one of our really good friends with

two of her male like UD chums whatever and it went terribly like we both really liked each respective person went on a few days and then it just ended like horrendously for me and then it ended horrendously for my friend as well so yeah we had to navigate the awkwardness of that friendship with our like bestie who'd done it and it was really fucking difficult um but yeah I agree about the death of hot men every single female friend I have who is heterosexual has said this for years and has said that it feels as if there is competition to I guess like this is horrible language but this is how they've said it feels to like nab a really great guy and it feels as if it feels it becomes really competitive at a house party when you know all the single female women I the eligible bachelor

in the room and it becomes really competitive to like charm the shit out of him and like it yeah it just the power imbalance feels really off again when we were doing that like let's talk about thing people were saying that a lot of the time women will stay in like not so great relationships because they've managed to find one of the good ones in inverted commas even though they maybe aren't like that happy in their relationship it's like well I've got one and it sounds like the streets are crazy right now so I'm just thinking I'm going to keep him and I think this is true of across the board all relationships where as you get older people do fear singleness so much that they will stay in relationships that perhaps aren't

working just because they think that's better. But then I think this means, and I made this statistic up and I said it on my dating podcast, I think this means maybe like 20 to 30% of people in relationships are in them because they don't want to be single, which means that probably loads of people's loves of their lives are married to like the wrong person. Oh, devastating. That's absolutely devastating to think about i think that is true as well because some people will know that but you know be quite happy because the trade-off is okay but i've got security and i've got you know some great compatibility and i've got i can build a life with someone at this age rather than you know rolling the dice on and i think being single is fantastic and you can, every moment of it can be kind of

mined for some kind of like self growth and joy, but there is an element of, I've got to roll the dice and, and hope for the perfect person. And I do think there's, maybe we pass through the, the time of like loves of lives and, you know, the fairy tale and people went, this is pretty good. And I'm going to stick with this because, yeah, the stories that come out. And I was single for such a long time. I was telling the stories. They're not for the faint of heart.

It can be quite bad out there. We'll say, though, that there is a round of divorces coming up where a lot of great men will be back on the streets after um you know 10 year marriages in their 20s so you know it is a pool that will refresh it fresh itself because those divorce statistics do not lie that's what i was gonna say speaking to single friends who are women who date men they've said the exact same thing they were just like i'm just gonna enjoy however long i have to because i now just feel confident that like if there is somebody for me who's in a relationship, they will probably will just come on the market and I'll just have a good time in the meantime. So shopping for houses.

If you listening are a user of a dating app or a hater of a dating app or have found a way to date without using the apps, we want to hear from you at everythingiscontentpod. Send us your stories, send us your tips. How are you having or how have you had a hot girl summer that involves love, sex and romance without using one of the dreaded apps? We need to know. Maybe let us know if you think this is the end of an era with hot girl summer. Maybe the seasons are changing. Maybe everyone's doing cozy girl winter, cuffing season, demure autumn. Either way, we're coming up to the end of summer. So let us know, what are you looking forward to? Are you keen to cuff?

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