Life Uncut - Fertility Vampires 🧛🏽 & The Poll That Proves Women Prefer A 'Dad Bod'

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Hey Lifers! If you’ve had a baby, did you talk about what you were thinking of naming the baby when you were pregnant? If so, how did that go for you?If you don’t like someone else’s name ideas, do you tell them?We somehow end up talking about robots and AI taking over and we are starting to think that we are living in a black mirror episode!British pop star Olly Murs recently shared a side-by-side photo of his 12-week fitness transformation ahead of his tour. It sparked an interesting comment section that showed the difference in what men tend to prefer vs what women tend to prefer. We spoke about the female/male gaze, whether we associate certain character traits with certain physiques, health vs aesthetics and how diet culture and marketing has corrupted what we think is ‘ideal’.  Have you had your fertile years wasted by a fertility vampire?  Fertility vampires -a term describing men who engage in long-term relationships with women during their prime reproductive years without a genuine commitment to building a future together.  We unpack: Whether a fertility vampire is always deliberately ‘wasting’ someones time,  Why ‘wasted time’ is disproportionately felt by women,  Whether you can ever make sure you’re fully aligned with someone else’s timelines Why it’s not black and white   You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. I'm going to kick this one off with something that probably, actually I'm not going to say that no one cares about because hopefully someone cares about it, but I do. Not the best way to start the episode. No one's going to care about this, so tune out. Well, only because I'm also very conscious about hijacking Life Uncut

and just talking baby stuff now that I've talked about having a baby. It is now your personality, so there will be a lot of baby chat. I know. That's okay. No, there won't be. There won't be anymore. It will be, and it's okay. You've got two kids and you're pregnant and you're about to have a baby.

It's okay. I know, but there's nothing I hate more than when someone is pregnant and it becomes their entire personality. Actually, that's a lie. like let's list all of the things we hate i'll be honest there's actually things i really dislike a lot more than that but it's something that i notice and i'm sure i did it with my first two pregnancies you absolutely did and god please forgive me but i'm like conscious about doing it with the third because i'm like god all i am is pregnant no one cares anymore surely i disagree

because there are that's i don't have these stats but probably 50 of our audience like that's relatable and that's what other people go through and so many people say it i actually think i heard holly kingston say it the other day where she's like i always swore i wasn't going to be this mom but she's like i've got nothing else to do he's my life and that's okay no one needs to feel bad for that becoming your content i agree i completely agree and also i mean look if you've had a kid being pregnant consumes you because it's something you constantly are thinking about because you wake up and you vomit and then you have like reflux and then you go to the toilet and your vagina's fat and like you're just like you're constantly reminded and then i have to put my pants down

It's the most beautiful time. It's a glorious time with the body. And then I have to put my pants down because my stomach hurts. You know, there's just so many constant reminders of being pregnant. You know, even my sister Sherry, who's a nutritionist and she does her online program, Strive, which like you guys all know about. We've spoken about it over the years. Sherry's the best.

If you do need a nutritionist, go. 100%. Strive, girl, strive. So her daughter Maya is coming up to 10 months, about nine months old. and it's funny to watch it because she's still doing adult nutrition but her life now is a baby so she started to post a lot of baby nutrition and kid nutrition and but honestly but watching it she's like this is what i'm giving her and why and it's just a normal evolution of someone's life when like your life changes that's a part of it you evolve you become it your audience may or may

not change but no one needs to feel guilty of that as long as i guess you keep some sort of other interests all right you know what I'm not sorry you can all listen to me talk about it I have a question for you and it's like I guess also I'm throwing this out to everyone and I would love to know your opinion so like you know go to life uncut podcast or you can message me directly is this like when you rage baited everyone with renovation content you were like I want to know your opinions and then you were like I don't want to know your opinion it's got nothing to do with renovation no it's got to do with whether or not you share baby names prematurely when the baby hasn't been born yet so I know that everyone approaches this differently when they are

pregnant and a lot of people are like we're not telling anyone the baby name because they don't necessarily want to get negative feedback I never did that with Lola and Marley Lola and Marley I kind of just told everyone I'm pretty sure I said it on this podcast what we were going to call Marley before she was even born I think that did happen I think it did too we share a lot with you guys I thought people did it in case other people stole the name and got in first oh that's why I would do it oh i don't care i couldn't care if other people use the names you wouldn't care if brit or i had a baby and we called it marley may or lola or what you want to call the new baby imagine if i was a month before you do i'm not pregnant but imagine if i was and i called it

what you had said you wanted to call it you wouldn't care yeah shit but i think that's a slightly different situation in terms of like when i spoke about it i wasn't trying to get in first no one else was pregnant yeah it wasn't like i was trying to beat someone to the you know pips someone in the race i think a lot of people do though i think they try to put dibs on it right well i mean yeah brit did put dibs on it brit being not pregnant right now put dibs on names that i can't name this baby that is you know under development if i only get one shot if yes you can pick any other name in the world that's fine that's my name okay well look you're safe i i love the name that you chose but that wasn't at risk of it being the name of this baby i love the name

that you chose for your baby that you're not having well no like i say this because i had a really similar situation so when I was pregnant with Lola a really good girlfriend of mine Sarah who I love to death we were out for breakfast and she hadn't had her she wasn't even pregnant she'd not had her baby she was me actually it must have been Marley then whatever irrelevant yeah and I was pregnant didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl because it was a surprise and Sarah said when we were out at breakfast she was like if you have a boy you absolutely cannot name it Hugo that is my name and I was like but you can't bags a name can you can you pre-bags a name before you've even had a baby firstly I think it's different if Hugo for example let's use Hugo

if Hugo was already on your list it's different but then if you were like you're sparked by the name and you're like oh that that is a cool name I think that's different like if someone inspired the name it's also different if someone comes to you with a list of 20 names and says these are all my names don't pick them. Well, look, the end of that story was that I had a girl named Hermione May and a year later, Sarah had a little boy and named him Hugo. So everything was right in the world, exactly as it was supposed to be. But the reason why I'm bringing this up, actually, all of that, all of that pre-monologue had nothing to do with the situation. I was recently talking to family and friends, family mostly, around some of the names that we've shortlisted. And we're

pretty decisive on names. Like we don't have big baby name lists. We usually pick one or two and we're pretty like we're pretty quick to decide and two of the names that we had very top of list one was Charlie and one was Harry and now Harry short for Harriet but I didn't really want to name the baby Harriet I quite liked Harry yeah as a standalone as a standalone and I like Charlie we have a niece in our family named Charlotte so it wasn't to be like you know that elongated version of the name it was Charlie and both names got so severely poo-pooed by everyone in our family that I talked to that I was like, wow, I understand now why people don't share baby names because it was as though because the baby's not born yet. It was a green light for people to tell

us exactly what they thought. But I also wasn't asking for opinions. I said, oh, these are the names we're thinking. Also no hate to anyone called Charlie who's listening. Charlie's a great name. The Johnson family hate your name. No, Charlie and Harry, like cute names for little girls absolutely love it I am here I stan you I want your name for my child but you know other people don't agree do you know what I think it is I think it's like if you ask people for their opinion then of course you've got to take what they give you but if you've just said this is what I like I don't think people should be giving their opinion but what I will say is my nephews both from the same family I didn't like their names when they were put to us and it wasn't I

don't believe it was asked the opinion wasn't asked it was like this is the name we like and i remember being like oh i'd go for something else i remember thinking that i remember you telling me that yeah because they were i mean that's normal right it's each for their own but i'm not having the child anyway they are born they called them the names that no one really got across bear is one of them sky wheatley's son's actually bear as well from memory and now he's nothing other than bear i can't imagine like once they're born and they have a name that's their name and that's what it is but at the start when it's not here yet it's not earth side and it doesn't have a name it doesn't have a personality doesn't look like anything people definitely feel

more inclined to say oh I wouldn't go that direction I'd go this direction but at the end of the day you call up what you want like who cares if somebody doesn't like your name you're never gonna put something out in the world that every single person loves and agrees with but did you say it to them at the time yeah or did you keep it to yourself I told them so you okay you're I'm criticizing right now, but I wasn't, she listens to this. She's listening right now. She knows that I love him, the name, love her. It's nothing. It's not a personal thing. It's, but like, it was just a unique name that took me a second to get across. But I did say it wasn't that I, I didn't say I don't like that name when there were other names floating. I was like,

I prefer that name. Like when there were a few names sort of floating around. It's tricky because I think that everyone shows up with two names with their own personal bias around people that they've experienced with that name around like the you know the things that their taste their subjective likes and it's definitely the first time where I've experienced the negative side of it because you know when we talked about Marley and Lola unanimously across our family everyone was like oh I love those names like it wasn't even a question everyone was really positive about it and I just thought everyone was being nice but no objectively I guess everyone really did like those names because now that I've spoken about Harry in particular

the response was quite harsh and I think it's probably because maybe like some people in our family see it as being like too non-traditional you know it's like a boyish name for a girl which I love it I loved it I love them I hate yeah it's like little cute Harry little girl running around I did have this conversation actually my entire family did with Sherry and I know this is going to be divisive with listeners so Sherry had baby Maya and I love the name but I didn't agree with the spelling. So Maya is spelt M-A-Y-A. That is, it's a really... Maya. Yes. That's what I keep calling her. I know it's terrible. Everyone does. And I know her actual name, but as soon as I read it, I say Maya. So it's a really popular name and internationally it's really popular. So in the UK,

there's a lot of them. Everyone would read M-A-Y-A and know it's Maya. I think it's an Indian origin name. Don't quote me on that, but I think it came from sort of the inspiration came from Jay's side of the family but I remember saying to her in Australia she will get Maya all the time like why don't you spell it differently because we are bogans that's what I said Sherry was like everyone knows it's Maya and I said I promise you here they don't anyway everyone calls a Maya sometimes it comes out of my mouth I'm like how's Maya have I ever told you guys about my theory about whether you have a unique or a standard name and what you'll put onto your kid I have this theory it usually checks out I think if you have a standard name that is spelt in a standard

way you're more likely to give your kid a unique name or unique spelling of a name and the reverse science behind this like think about my name right my name is spelt stupidly and it's also relatively unique the way it's spelt is incredibly unique it doesn't make any sense phonetically it's not a real name it's a made-up name but like I will give my kid a name that is phonetic because of the amount of times I sat in a classroom and had teachers read a role and get it wrong. So I think I will always give my kid a name that makes sense of how it's spelt phonetically because I don't want them

to have to experience that. And I think the reverse happens. If you have like a normal-ish name, you like to give your kid quite a unique name because you maybe had three other people in your year at school who had the same name. I would argue that there is no one in this world who has a more common name than me, Laura Ann Byrd. it is the most Sarah might be oh yeah Sarah and Laura are both pretty on par sorry Sarah's but

it's like my mum because like a middle name you can be creative with I know my dad's quite traditional Laura was a traditional you know touch yeah you're talking to a mayo but it was like my mum and dad sat down and they were like what are the most standard beige names we can think of and we'll put them all in the same one and that's what I got I think everyone from our generation middle names either got anne or louise i got none this is what my parents went real rogue and they were like this is it you don't have any second choice this will make you laugh my sister's name is alicia louise burns so you got screwed i'm a fucking condiment well you have two middle names so you have a normal one and then you have yeah i've got nicola a weird one britney nicola

mayo yeah hockley and people have in the past thought that that was a lie but it's no it's in fact, truth. The only thing I want to, I'm going to breadcrumb here is that we are coming close to settling on a name. So we're thinking it's a P name. I like it, but we don't, we don't have, go guess, guess what you like. We don't have a middle name. So if anyone has some like cool middle names, help us out because we don't have a middle name for this one. What if you let the lifers pick her middle name? Like what if we put like some out, you pick a top like five or 10, and then you just put it to a poll and the lifers can pick it. Like, you know, you've picked five that you like and the lifers can pick it and then we narrow it down imagine being that child who got

named off the back of an instagram poll and that's the story they tell their friends it's not just an instagram poll it's life uncut they're our family we'll do it for content though anyway they're our family hey look we've got some big things to cover on this episode part of it is around bodies and our perspectives on what we find attractive in the opposite sex and the second thing that we're covering is a thing called fertility vampires but before we get into that brit i know you saw it and That's the one thing that we have not stopped talking about. It is the humanoid AI robot that has just gone absolutely – Terminator.

Yeah, like bananas on its creator and tried to kill them. And I think the end of the world is nigh. It's so scary. If you haven't seen it, we'll put the clip up, but you can just literally gooble, gooble, robot gooble. It's called this chilling moment humanoid robot wakes up and starts attacking its handlers while trying to break free from restraint. That is absolutely not what you have to Google.

Google robot attacks human and it comes up. it was literally like it happened today on recording so it's it's so fresh it is lucky that this robot it's the size of a human is why it's a humanoid and it is attached to a chain that's like attached to a crane so it's it's semi-restrained but not it's i don't know do we say arms not it's robot arms just like its body and it flips and goes full terminator and it is trying to kill its humans it's all caught on camera lucky the chain is like attached to it Because it's trying to get out and kill them. The chain's pulling them back.

But I would have just like, can't you just like unplug it? Is it like a plug? I honestly have no idea that like if you guys watch the video, this has happened in China. The creators of the robot are running around trying to like disarm it. But also it just makes me think, I mean, we've all seen iRobot with Will Smith in it from a million years ago. That movie was so ahead of its time.

What a little look into the future that was. And I don't want to be a catastrophizer. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. hear me out i reckon they will be foil hat sits on corner next to mark away i reckon the robot will be civilization's demise i reckon they're gonna take over the world they've already said that like the creators have already said with ai and robots we actually need to stop because they will get to the point very soon if not almost where they don't even need the humans anymore this is really interesting and i just read this like one little thing from this article and then we will

absolutely move on because I know that people are not what they came here for. What have they been drinking? Happened at Life Uncut this morning. It's because it's what we were literally talking about this morning. So it says back in November, a small AI powered bot named Urbi was spotted rolling through a China showroom in the middle of the night and convincing 12 larger machines that they were being used as slaves. So this is what was reported and documented. It's like the Stanford prison experiment for robots. So this is Urbi talking the robot are you working overtime to the other robots which one showroom robot replied well we never get off the short exchange led to 12 robots leaving the area one by one following urbi out the

door many call the incident a robot revolution while others responded that science fiction movies are becoming real life yeah we're in a black mirror we're living in black mirror it's cool i feel sorry for the overworked robots they deserve rest good on urbi as well that's a new union that was just formed right then. No, bullshit. It's a, it's a machine. Do you go and give your car time off? Cause it's been driving you around too much. No, you get it serviced. You don't pay it overtime if you're a truck driver and you're on the road a lot. Maybe it hasn't, maybe it didn't get it serviced that it needed. Didn't get that little massage. Didn't get that little oil up. What are we talking about? I don't know. Anyway, let's move right along.

Something we wanted to talk about today is something that probably a lot of you have seen online a conversation starter from the one and only ollie murs now i say the one and only laura didn't even know who he was i don't know who anyone is but i i know that there's going to be other people out there that are just like me and you just don't know any celebrity names so look i mean britney you played me some of his songs and to be fair i kind of know them he's a he's a british pop star but that's not what the conversation about and it's not who he is ollie murs the conversation ollie murs posted a body transformation of himself like a 12-week body transformation and he posted two photos side by side.

One was obviously before the transformation where I don't love the term but I'm going to use it because that's what everyone is, dad bod. He just has a normal body. He just looks like a normal person. I wouldn't even call it a dad bod. I would just say he looks normal. Exactly. This is why I said I don't like the term but it's the term

that people have attached to it. Yeah, the media has definitely run with it. Yeah, and then he posted he's after 12 weeks and the guy you, could grate your vegetables on his abs. The guy has about 1% body fat. He's shredded. He's got about a 12 pack. He also looks equally great. There is a big difference in his body transformation. There are a lot of comments about Ollie's body off the back of his post. And a lot of women were praising him on the before photo saying, we like the before photo better. Now off the back of this psychology researcher, William Costello put a poll up of his own to see what body men prefer

and what body women prefer. So the poll went, are you male or female? And do you prefer him before or after? So it was male before, male after, female before, female after. And this started like a pretty controversial discussion where most of the women had said they preferred him before and most men said they preferred him after. Yeah. And this is a pretty widespread poll. So there was 5,000 participants who did this. And the reason why, like you said, Brit, that William Costello put this up was because of the incredibly mixed reaction that had unfolded in Olly Merz's comment section. Before we unpack, I think it's interesting the conversation that unfolds when people put up these before and after transformations, because firstly, it is a social

platform. You're putting up photos of yourself and of your body. And I think it would be remiss of you to think that people are not going to comment on your body when you're posting something saying, here is my body here is my before and here is my after by doing that you are giving the green light for people to pass comment is that okay should people pass comment absolutely not but I think it is almost like maybe people disagree with this but it's it seems to me that if you didn't expect to receive any conversation around it it's an odd thing to post when we say this is the conversation online and that it's going viral these conversations have been viewed 86.1 million times at the last time I looked this up which was a couple of days ago once results have shown another user they've

just called user x reposted it with the results and said why are women lying about this what is the actual cause so even though women have said this is the body that I prefer like we are super happy with this men are still saying you're lying we know you prefer the fit version which I find fascinating because they've convinced themselves that they truly do believe that women only want this like aesthetic ripped shredded low body fat extremely muscular physiques even when we've proven them otherwise I think for a lot of people a really ripped physique is intimidating like and I would say this even in terms of my dating past I know it's probably ironic because I've never met a person who has more abs than Matt does on his forehead and literally all over his body but like

every single other person I have ever dated has not had the physique of Matt right like so like he's not the benchmark of like the men that I've been attracted to in the past they've all had really normal you know they're in shape they prioritize fitness all that sort of stuff but like dating someone who had washboard abs is not what I would normally be attracted to and controversially and I hope Matt doesn't hear this and take this to offense I found them when I was dating them obviously not now because I'm not in relationships with them equally as attractive as I found Matt when I was in a relationship with him but I do think that sometimes for our own selves we put a very different lens on what we think is attractive

and I would say this as well for women we often prioritize slimness because that's what for a long time was in fashion being slim being a certain size and you know obviously as trends and fashion trends change the trends of how our bodies have looked and what we've wanted them to look like also evolves but that is not always in line with how the opposite sex views us there's been times in my personal life where I really wanted to be as skinny as I could possibly be. Now looking back, I can see how deeply unhealthy that was and how it just did not fit my body type. But there was never a time where I dated a guy who prioritized skinny. Like that wasn't what they found attractive. We appreciate different things or we want different things. It's not like we're doing

it for the opposite sex. We're trying to do it for ourselves or maybe even for the same sex. I also wonder how much of it comes into like assumed character traits of body shapes. For myself, if I look at someone who is ripped, I assume health and fitness, big, big, big priority for you. You are potentially the type of person who's going to really monitor what you eat. That's not going to be fun for me. Like, are you the type of person who's going to spend hours a day in the gym? Would I want that in a partner?

Would I prefer that they kind of prioritize that ever so slightly less and spend a bit more time with me or on different hobbies? Like, I think I make a lot of assumptions about the stereotypes of what it would take to create that type of body and how like sustainable it is yeah I agree I also think that there's almost like an arrogance that can be attributed to it as well dependent funny I don't think that at all there's no part of me that sees a physique like that and thinks that but there's no part of me that looks at somebody that is really ripped and obviously super into health and fitness that thinks I won't be able to share food with them I just think cool

they have a passion and a hobby that they're passionate about it doesn't make me want to date them any more any less and I can genuinely say as long as somebody likes to get fresh air keep the basis of health do some sort of physical activity you know relatively healthy with what they eat it doesn't matter like yeah I'm not saying that my assumptions are correct yeah yeah sometimes I look at it and I'm like oh you look like the type of person who would track macros and I really like cheese but you can still eat cheese if your partner tracks their macros ollie responded to an article that was put online titled bad luck ollie women prefer your huggable dad bod to the muscles that you got in the gym and i i think that's really shitty and i can't

imagine what it's like when not only people having this discourse around your body but at a level of like nearly 90 million people having that discussion or viewing it and he responded to that he posted that article and he responded i wouldn't normally comment on stuff like this but from what i've seen i just want to say that this journey at the start of the year was for many personal reasons and not one of them was to spark a debate and divide opinions. So it's very disappointing to see this kind of reporting. His wife also got on the bandwagon and made a public comment too. And she said, wow, I didn't realize body shaming was still a thing in 2025. And at this public level, my gosh, could you imagine if this headline belonged to a female? She goes,

no, my husband just has to accept this on the chin because he's a man. Like, are we allowed to make these comments on men's bodies because they're a man and not a female? I don't know if I agree with that. And this might be like opening a can of worms, but my body weight changes a lot and I have PCOS and a variety of other medications that cause fluctuations. People have commented on my body, no matter which direction it's on. Like as in no matter what my weight, people have commented on it publicly. Like we've all said, sometimes I'll screenshot them and send them to you guys. And it comes in both directions. I think the big difference about this is that I haven't elicited a photo of a before and after if you don't have the expectation that people are

going to comment on your body posting a before and after you're a bit silly that was kind of like what I was saying earlier and I think it's a shame to victim blame like I think it's a shame that we're at a point where we're like well if you're going to post it then you're responsible for it because you know I also agree with you I think you are soliciting feedback you are you're putting something out there you have made a direct comparison of your body and you have comments there for people to engage that's the whole point of social media the problem is is that when someone does that it is as though we are giving the you know every viewer the right to make a preference and I think in this instance he probably didn't realize and he probably thought

that the vast majority would say oh my god you look amazing well done congratulations and that's what we expect when we put these things up but I think you know what I found was like a really like interesting part of this is that I think we place a lot of pressure on looking a certain way thinking that that's what the opposite sex will desire and really maybe it's just not the case maybe what we think is so important in terms of aesthetics really isn't that important to a lot of people at all and I guess you know there's a way of unpacking this in terms of like the male gaze versus the female gaze I think that when it comes to heterosexual relationships and women looking for male partners there's way more involved in what we find attractive the female

gaze itself yes of course there is an aesthetic but we also prefer emotional connection and we prefer other aspects of a man's personality whether they're funny whether they're kind whether they're a green flag like all of those things are way more important than whether you have abs and I would say objectively that's how most people feel maybe this all comes back to like capital this is maybe very deep but to capitalism because if you think about what women think we're supposed to be it's everything that can be sold to us it's diet culture that's existed for ages but on the flip side if you think about like a straight guy a lot of what's marketed to them are like supplements gyms workout routines that I think it's kind of just it's the same

device that's been used in two very different ways that probably influences our perception of what we are supposed to be or what we think is attractive and I just think it's really interesting to ask the people in your life particularly in this particular dynamic is what I think is the ideal what you think is the ideal because I actually think that it could maybe put a lot of your insecurities to rest I asked this question to my boyfriend last night and he was like I really like curves and I really like you know he's quite a boob guy so like that's his vibe and every diet culture messaging that I've grown up my entire life for is like it be as thin as possible like you said like that's been the focus and it would be particularly interesting

I think for gay relationships if what you find attractive in someone else is also what you aspire to have. I think coming back to this post even though women put forward that their opinions in this instance whether they preferred him before the men still didn't believe it so we told them what is true and they still said yeah why are you guys lying like they still wouldn't they're so trained just to think that they have to be this Arnold Schwarzenegger type body to be attractive I can handle my heart say I could not care yeah and I know like at the end of the day it is a very good point by Ollie which is like why is there a poll yeah why has a poll been made but I do want to stress that I don't think the poll was made to be about him unfortunate that it was the poll was

made in order to show the caveat between what women find attractive and what men think women find attractive that was the difference and that is something that I think a lot of people would be surprised by that three quarters of women do not actually prefer abs they prefer somebody who feels more relatable more approachable often physical appearance becomes an obsession not actually a hobby. We like to say it's a hobby. We like to dress up diet culture as health, but actually it becomes a mental and physical obsession that some people have to look a certain way and be a certain way. A new dating term that I came across, which I found the label for this very interesting. It's called fertility vampires. Now I know we like to label everything when it

comes to dating. In fact, we probably like to label everything when it comes to life these days, but fertility vampires was something that really made me stop and have a think about it we have spoken about this on the podcast before but there's a little bit more depth to this that I wanted to explore so for anyone who doesn't know what a fertility vampire is it is a term describing men who have long-term relationships with women during what can be considered their prime reproductive years and these are men who have no intention or want to have actually a long-term commitment. They're actually not on the same page necessarily, but they're enjoying the relationship for what the relationship is now without actually having to commit to the things

that the woman in that relationship necessarily wants. I really want to make this clear because there's definitely different types of people who go through their thirties and I would say early forties. There are some women who don't know what they want and that's totally cool. But what this is about is women who know they want kids. They have made that evidently clear. They are in long long-term relationships with partners who maybe also say that they want kids, but those men have no intention of actually, you know, making the steps that are needed in order to build a family or to take the next step, get married, whatever that looks like. And they are essentially wasting people's time. I did put a little poll up on my Instagram just to see how many of you have been

in this situation. And it was quite a lot. It was nearly 40% of people have said that they were in this situation, which is really unfortunate. That's huge. That's a huge result. It is. It is. But what I didn't do is ask what percentage of those were men and women. And I do think it's important to say this does work the other way. Like a lot of men are in a situation where they were with someone and it was wasting their time as well. But the difference is they don't have as much of a biological pressure. And so I think that's why I don't want anyone to think we're always just like blanket statement and hating on men. So we're talking about those relationships where you're pushing into your 30s and 40s and then someone has said you know what

not for me and they exit and they've left you unfortunately in a position where you're like well fuck I don't have an option now and I think the thing is is that sometimes it can be really hard to identify because you might be in a long-term relationship and someone is dangling the carrot they've said they also want to have kids you've been together for four years they're like oh yeah I want to get married I don't know when like you know in maybe in two years time and so the goalposts keep shifting and you know we talk about a lot this idea of you know the time investment makes it harder to walk away from something because you feel so close to it so if you have been in a relationship with someone for four years you've talked about kids you've talked

about marriage you know that you want to have children maybe you're 36 37 years old and you're like okay well we're going to do it in two years now it probably is something that's quite hard to rationalize in your own mind that you know if you wait a little bit longer you're going to get that thing that you've been wanting for so long. I have really strong opinions on this. And I think because it's incredibly selfish, like if someone is doing this, whether it's intentional or unintentional, I think it's an incredibly selfish thing to do to someone. And if you're in a long term relationship, I think that you both need to be really clear about what it is that you want. If you are in a relationship with someone and you've made your desires clear and you do want

to have kids, I know that's not for everyone, but there is a big portion of women who really, really want to have children in their life and they end up in a relationship with a guy who kind of just drags it out because they're enjoying the time for what it is and they don't want to put too much pressure or too many labels or whatever it is like that to me is an incredibly selfish behavior and it's shocking that so many women experience it I disagree with you in that sense I think it's incredibly selfish if it is intentional I don't think it's incredibly selfish if it's unintentional I don't think interesting well it's not black and white people and humans are allowed to change their mind and they do it all the time it's okay if you were adamant one way that you either wanted

kids or don't and then you change your mind because women do that as well all the time like I know women that have done that to men one friend in particular and this is lucky that it worked out for them but I remember even at her wedding she never wanted kids not confused about it I will never have a child I am not maternal there is no part of me that wants to be mom and like you need to be across that with her partner so they had all the right discussions and he was like yeah cool like I don't want them either and I remember saying to her do you think one day you'll change your mind like when you're in a different she's like absolutely not like you couldn't pay me they have a baby now by choice they were married for six or seven years and she changed her mind

on her own she was like wow didn't think this was going to happen I want a baby and she's lucky that he was okay with that but people's minds change all the time so I don't think it's selfish if it's unintentional or there is a life change where I think it's the problem is when somebody absolutely knows that the person they're with isn't the right person for them and I think this happens a lot with men they absolutely know the person that they're with isn't right it doesn't mean they don't enjoy their company it doesn't mean they don't love them like you can love someone that's not right for you that's when it's fucked when this person is like you know what it's really good for me right now I'm not ready to be on my own I'm enjoying it I don't dislike them I love

you but you know they're not the one that's when it's cooked that's when it's like you should be pulling the plug for both of your situations that's when it's selfish to say yeah I'm going to string you along knowing this is your prime time to be in relationships marriage and child bearing years knowing that you are going to walk away from it yeah I think that that's what I mean by the unintentional though I don't mean when someone thinks they want a certain thing and then they realize actually they've changed their mind about something like people can't help it if they wake up one day and don't feel as though they're in love with that person anymore or feel as though they've been putting so much energy and effort into a relationship that's been moving in two

different directions like that's a different thing but I kind of come back to a conversation I had with a friend quite a while ago he's been in a really long-term relationship eight years now I know his girlfriend wants to have kids they've spoken about it a lot I know she would love to get married they've spoken about it a lot and then when I've had conversations with him he's response has been like I don't know if I really want to have kids I don't really know if I want to get married and when we had that conversation I felt enraged because I was like you are wasting her time you've had eight years to decide whether you want to marry her or you want to she's made it clear the things that she wants and I think like that is a super intentional thing but the

problem is is he wouldn't see that as intentional and that's where I think there's a massive mismatch he's like I'm still figuring it out I don't know what I want and I'm like okay that's fine but you shouldn't be figuring it out on someone else's watch for that long if you need time to figure it out have that conversation with her so she at least knows where you stand but he hadn't had that conversation with her had he lied to her and said he wanted them because if you're having that conversation and you're open and you're figuring out together I also think that's okay yeah absolutely no he hadn't he hadn't had that conversation and I think you know potentially sometimes we don't ask questions in relationships because we're scared of the answer

so I don't know whether they'd had those conversations point blank I think she'd said I want to have kids I want to get married I don't think there'd ever been the conversation of like and I want them from you so is that what you're going to give me because potentially there was a fear of what that answer might be and I guess it leads me to the question of and when I and when and we did read this idea of fertility vampires, it's very easy to make the blame entirely about the person who is potentially wasting time. But I think in relationships, often there are two people that have a part to play in that blame. And I would say if you've been in a really long-term relationship and your partner is not fulfilling or providing, or you haven't had the conversations

and you've made assumptions around what it is that they want and they haven't directly expressed to you, then potentially if you're in that situation, you also have a part to blame for the time that you're wasting in something that might not end up resulting in what it is that you want. And I guess I say this from a personal experience I had in my 20s, the only really long-term relationship I had other than Matt, the guy I was with for six years.

I've talked about him a bit before. I so deeply believed in our relationship like I was like so blinded by how much I loved him and he would tell me that he wasn't sure if I was the person that he wanted to marry we were young we were young but we'd still been together for six years he would say point blank to me I don't know if you're the person I want to marry but we lived together we everything else we had in our life was very indicative that we were going to be together forever we'd you know move states and I just kept thinking, oh no, he's obviously going to change his mind. We've been together for six years. Like that's going to happen. Obviously we're young now, but we will just get there in

the future. He, he would even say things to me like, I don't want to be a dad at this point in my life. If you got pregnant, I would expect for you to have an abortion. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to be with you. I was so willing to negate the things that he was saying to me because of what I wanted. And he was, I was never going to get the things I wanted from that man, but I pushed it for six years I stayed in that relationship for so long because I believed in its potential and I think never stay in a relationship for the potential of what you see in someone do you think that if that was during your fertility window and at the end of that relationship you were no longer biologically able to have children of your own do you think you would have felt a lot of resent

towards him yeah or do you think you would have felt an element of like I should have taken accountability for this or both well look yeah I think had I spent six years in that relationship and it was throughout my fertility years and I wasn't able to have kids or that was like a big relationship and then it took me years because it took me it took me a long time to get over that relationship so years I think I would have felt a lot of resentment for him but now looking back it was pretty evident I was never going to get what I wanted from it so I think we both played a massive part in that and I know everyone's situation is so different and that is a very very small personal experience in this but I think it's too black and white to say it's one

person's fault and not another person's fault. And I think there's probably few examples where someone is actually that deeply malicious that they're like, I'm going to take her fertility years and then I'm going to pull a rug under her when she's no longer fertile. It doesn't necessarily work like that. And it might in some relationships, but I would say the vast majority, there's signs that they are not committing in the way that you want them to commit. I think that we probably gave a little more leeway maybe a few years ago before we were having so many discussions online publicly that men had access to that it's pretty evident that the emotional labor of fertility lies on the women. A lot of men, we probably excused for not having

the education around fertility, how we're only born with a certain number of eggs that drop, how our best childbearing years are literally teenagers to early twenties. And I say that as in biologically, that's how the body's made. We're not actually saying go and have a baby as teenager. But, you know, I think there was, we were probably pretty lax with expecting men to be educated. I expect men to be educated now. So if this is happening now, I wouldn't be giving as much room for them to make excuses on like, I didn't know this was your fertility age. I didn't know that I was stringing you along. I didn't know this was going to be detrimental. Those days for me are gone, but I would have had more room to move a couple of years ago before we were having

such public discourse about fertility and childbearing years. And I say that because even the discussions I had with Jordan when I started freezing my eggs, the discussions I had with Ben when we were doing embryos, it did surprise me at how much men didn't quite know or understand. And I'm not making excuses for anybody, but my point is now I don't feel like there are as many excuses as we used to have. There's a real privilege in it. Like there's real entitlement to being able to live in the present and not worry about, you know, what could happen in the future or what could not happen in the future. And I think that that is pretty exclusively reserved for men. I have a, I have a question for you and I know it's probably

a tricky one to answer, but in terms of time deficit, like in terms of time that you invest in a relationship where you're not getting the thing that you might desire. And so, you know, let's say in this example, you're in a relationship with them, you know, that you want to have kids and the goalpost seems to keep moving because they're not sure, how long do you wait? How long do you hope that someone changes their mind or that you're able to get on the same page? And I think sometimes it's that sunk cost fallacy

where you're so far into a relationship that you just keep hoping that they will change and you will end up on the same page. When do you decide that actually maybe enough's enough? Mine's not a set number. Mine changes based off of my age. Do you know what I mean? if I was 28 I'd have a lot more leeway because I know I've got more time if I'm 36 and I'm dating someone who's not sure about whether they want to have children if I really do that time period

becomes a lot shorter of how much lax I'm going to give for them to work that out because my time's you know running out and it's really hard because I know that there's this stereotype of like women when they're dating in their mid to late 30s they often have the assumption from men that like all they want to do is make me settle down and make me have kids but like and I feel so sorry for women in that state because I mean there is an element of biological truth to it not necessarily psychological truth but like there is that pressure in the back of our minds that if this guy isn't the right guy I want to find someone who is the right guy but then it was in an episode of friends remember how she's like if I want to have a baby by the time I'm 33 I want to be married to the guy

for a year and I want to be I can't remember the exact words but like Rachel was talking about and she was like, I would have had to have started dating him a year ago. I do think that we're simplifying it too much. I don't think it's black and white. There are so many variables. How much you want a child? Do you love this person more than you want a child? Do you want a child regardless of it's with this person or not? The reasons that they are quote unquote stringing you along, the quality of your relationship. I don't think it's like, hey, I'm 33, you in or out. I think there is so much that goes into a decision. It sucks to be in that position and have to potentially make a decision on like fuck do I stay with the person I actually love and imagined my

life with or do I want this child more than anything else that I will sacrifice what is otherwise a beautiful relationship like that is a really tricky decision if you know that within yourself you want kids more a beautiful but indecisive relationship because don't get me wrong I'm not talking about people who want something different I'm talking about the person who can't make up their mind who is indecisive and and the reason why I actually do think that there's a timeline I know everyone's is different is because we receive ask uncut questions like this all the time and we would say like if someone's like hey I've been with this person for six years they still don't really know what they want aligns with what I want we would say

get the fuck out of there and find someone who's on the same page I wouldn't though and I've never said that interesting because I would I would say like don't spend a considerable amount of time in a relationship with someone who is actively on another page and when I say actively on another page. I mean, they're indecisive because they don't know what page of the book they're fucking on. Do we blame someone for not knowing what they want? The question isn't, do I want you? This is where I think it gets muddy and tricky. The question is not like, do I want you as a partner? The question is, do I want to make this decision that is going to inevitably change my life in a way that I don't know if I'm ready for? And maybe I say this because at 37, I have always

been indecisive. I have always been on the fence. Even when I'm with the most beautiful person who I know I want to spend my life with it is a really big thing and I've always said I envy the women that know either way like knowing either way in a way is like a privilege that I resent a lot of people having because I have you know my pendulum my pendulum is like it's fucking on get me to that IVF clinic my pendulum is I'm actively trying then then it's getting a pregnancy test that's negative and being upset about it and that is like a tumultuous place to be for those people that are indecisive but I think the difference there is that you communicate it but they are communicating it well they're not necessarily and that's where I think the problem is I have a

friend she's now 38 and this situation makes me very very upset for her and I still hold a lot of resent to her ex-partner because they were together for years and she was more leaning towards yes and he was more leaning towards no and she kind of gave a lot of grace for him working out that time period and you know what he wanted to do and and it ended up being like a probably yes but not now they broke up she is now at a point where fertility would be unlikely for her and he got a new girlfriend and they were pregnant within four months yeah and that's like that's the story you hear a lot and that's like the most devastating outcome that's why the cost is so much higher for women who want to have kids than it is for men who want to have kids because

they just have more time to make that decision and and i know that like you sit in the pendulum and you swing from side to side you have a lot of skin in the game for that but you're not indecisive in the relationship that you want like you want to marry ben you want to be with ben like you've made those big commitments and i think the difference with potentially this conversation around fertility vampires is the people who like we said the people who where it's really like insidious and super painful to get over are the people who are quite happy to just live in the present of the relationship for years and not actually have thought about, well, what is my future with this person? Do I want a long-term relationship? And it's because they are able to

just have this ignorant bliss. And then when they actually are put under the pressure of making a decision, the decision is, oh, I love you and I enjoy my time with you and this relationship is great, but is it the relationship I want for my forever relationship? No. And then they go on to have a big and sustained and like make those commitments in the next relationship that's when it's like fucking impossible to process yeah and but that's why i said it's not black and white that's why there's so many variables that it depends on that's why you cannot put a number on hey we've been together four years i want a kid i'm gonna fuck off if only it were that easy like it would make everyone's life men and women 10 times easier it's such a complex and like

multi-faceted discussion that does consume a lot of people's brain and is upsetting that it doesn't work out for a lot of people and what I do want to say is and I you're probably gonna a lot of people gonna hate that I'm gonna say this but in like those conversations that you just had about your friends there's a part of me that says well like maybe that just wasn't the right relationship and I say that I had a friend that did the same thing 10 years she was with him he didn't want kids they broke up he's got three kids with someone else from like 12 months later he started it wasn't in hindsight it would have been the wrong thing for them to have like it's just impossible to sit back and look at this topic and situation and say there is a like one overall

statement but what I will say is if you're going through this it's really tricky and I really feel for you but you need to weigh up what is the most important thing for you and like it goes back to setting those when we get into a new relationship we set boundaries for the relationship we write down what we want on our life and sometimes it's really easy to be very malleable and they bend a lot. Write down what is a non-negotiable for you in relationships, marriage and children. Yeah, and then don't negotiate. And then, well, I mean, of course there's always room for negotiation in a sense. Like it would be crazy to say there's not, but you do need to, no one can tell you that there's an age or a

timeframe or a period. You just need to make the decision on what you want more in your life, or will you be happy either way with whatever sacrifice that is? Because if there's two people and one wants a kid and one's not, one of you is not going to be thrilled with the decision. And if the person that doesn't want them has them because they love you there is always going to be a layer that maybe they're not super stoked on that decision and look regardless if it is a case that that wasn't a relationship for them as you said brit and then they went on to find their right relationship and they didn't realize that until they fell into it yeah it doesn't make it any less painful for the person who has to experience that loss because a breakup is hard

couple a breakup with that person living the life that you wanted with them yeah and you're not having the ability to have that it's soul destroying and also then thinking it was your fault like why wasn't I enough why didn't I wait and like why didn't they want it with me totally and the thing is is that for some people that is an almost impossible thing to get over yeah it really is it's so hard tough man well look guys that is it from us we would love you to join the discussion on these conversations if there is something that you have experienced or if you have an alternate thought like please either through dms or through at life uncut discussion group on Facebook. You can join the conversation

that way as well. And also all of the episodes are on YouTube now so if you want to go and watch it instead of listening to it in your ears, get a full surround sound and get the visuals to go. Yeah, go and check out the YouTube channel. That would be amazing. We love you guys. Okay, don't forget to mum, to dad, to your dog.

I'm so breathy. I don't know. We love you. To mum, to dad, to your dog, to your friends and share the love because we love love!