Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Dating After COVID: New Rules, Challenges, and Opportunities

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

In this episode of Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie, Dr. Sue and Charlie talk about how dating and relationships have evolved in the wake of COVID-19. They also explore the pandemic’s impact on emotional connections, communication gaps between men and women, and the rise of new dating standards shaped by shifting social norms. Dr. Sue and Charlie talk about the prevalence of online dating apps and the challenges of transitioning from digital to in-person interactions, as well as the pressures of navigating a world where dating expectations have transformed. From ghosting to misrepresentation and the resurgence of in-person events, Dr. Sue and Charlie discuss the ups and downs of modern dating. With a focus on empowerment, effective communication, and setting personal standards, this episode offers insights into the current dating landscape and encourages listeners to reflect on what works best for them in this ever-changing world. If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Today, we're going to talk about dating post-COVID, post-pandemic year. But before we dive into that, hey, Dr. Sue.

Hey, Charlie. Would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Yeah, I don't know where to start, though. usually I like to tailor this to the, to the topic. And I feel like it's a little bit of all the worlds I live in. So by day, I'm a, I'm an academic. So I teach college level. I've been doing that for a while. But I also do a lot of work with people in the community. I sometimes do live events, sex trivia, all that stuff. And that's, that's where I get to hear a lot of the stories that people are telling about, about their dating experiences. So that's me and Charlie,

our curious co-host who's always ready to explore the ins and outs of sex, relationship, and all the taboo topics. Tell us a little bit more about yourself than what I just said. I'm curious and ready to explore the ins and outs. Just kidding. Dr. Sue and I have been friends for many years. We find that we have always felt comfortable having candid conversations together. And given some feedback Dr. Sue got from students over the years, we decided to bring our candid conversation specifically around this topic, or not topic, but this subject area, I don't know, to the podcasting world so that others who, as I said at the top of the show, might be curious, but too shy to talk about or too embarrassed, can just hear a couple of

couple of pals talking about it yeah and actually it's a great intro to um a little bit more about kind of how we got here so let's blame my students a little bit more because that's that's something favorite pastime yes no so so what happened was i was i was critiquing some of what was being repeated from what my students were hearing on tiktok and instagrams reels and podcasts and um there are folks out there who are talking about sex who just kind of talk about sex and have no background in it don't necessarily know research which is fine you don't always need to know research about sex but they weren't really grounded sometimes in education and and so after complaining quite a bit all the time my students were like well where's your you know where are

you where's your tiktok where's your podcast and i was like yeah yeah that's a great point and a lot of folks right now are going through the changes in the dating scene that have been happening in general and so but we don't we can't we can't always trace it back to where it came from, which is, I know how we started this conversation. People think that the dating scene changed out of nowhere and that we're seeing this completely different dating scene now than we did 10 years ago, but it really does go back to what was happening from COVID. And sometimes people aren't really drawing that line from point A to point B. So here's a good place to do it. yes absolutely so uh where where to begin it was the year 2020 it was the year 2020

the 10 000th day of march 2020 picture it the world 2020 so it's interesting because i was i was recently at a conference where we're talking about sex research and they were talking a little bit about changes from covid and it was like half the people who were talking around covid were like oh relationships are going to get stronger people are going to spend time together they're going to reconnect and then the other half of people were like yep they're going to see a lot of relationships ending and i'm like well someone's going to be right like yeah the boomers in 70 years are going to be the covid boomers um and what's interesting for relationships is that some relationships did actually get stronger

and some as soon as like divorce was possible post post pandemic not that COVID is not a thing but the pandemic phases so so as soon as it was like feasible for them to do it or safe for them to get out of the environment they were we definitely saw an uptick in divorce but we weren't always talking about kind of what single folks were going through like there were no mass predictions about that everyone who was talking anywhere during COVID was talking about either strengthening of partnerships or dissolving of partnerships once it was over but there wasn't there wasn't as much conversation about what what solo folks were going through so i think maybe we start there okay you were expecting me to keep talking

sorry yeah i was just i was curious when you were talking about divorce i was like oh divorce googling divorce rates post-covid there was there was a little bit after and it wasn't like immediately after it was like after we started going back to the world but then people needed to get their feet under them before they made that big life decision to do that the other problem is maybe not problem isn't the right word the other issue with the data when we look at that is that fewer people are choosing to get married we're definitely seeing the rates of people who are choosing to be in long-term relationships but not married we're seeing that number go up and so those partnerships developing uh those partnerships ending are

not always picked up by the data if we're only looking at divorce rates but here we are talking about partnered people post-covid but we wanted to focus on we wanted to focus on the solo yes because let's go there because because like the people who are partnered but not married really not in marriages they also often get left out of the data collection so um i do know there was a There was a bunch of studies that were happening around COVID because, you know, what else are you going to do? What else could we do with our time at that time? What was interesting, and I'm going to make gross stereotypes and generalizations based off gender. And I want to own that I'm doing that and own that I know people who did not fall into these.

But that's kind of what we do when we look at numbers is we make these sweeping generalizations about things. What we found with a lot of solo men is that they were struggling. and not so much from a dating perspective I mean dating got weird like real weird real weird like do you ask for like how do you date outside especially if you live in northern environments or cold environments like can you do outdoor dating and then and if you're interacting with someone on an app who doesn't believe air quote that the pandemic is a real thing and then the interaction there and do you you know so many so many additional layers right do i mask meeting a stranger from an app right on top of the ones that already exist yeah um and then after vaccine

started like do you ask about their vaccination status i know tinder asked about vaccination status i believe that it's on hinge um that's where most of my friends are so i don't know Yeah. I think it was on Bumble as well. Was it? That they added a back status. Yeah. Yeah. So then it's, I mean, that made it easier when it was just a status that you could click a button. But yeah, dating just got really weird. But on top of that, what we were finding about men was that, again, gross generalizations here, the men didn't have the emotional support from their friendship networks the way that women did. because men tend not to just sit around and talk about life they do things they tend to do things they tend to watch sporting events do sports themselves go out and like be active um again

not that all men watch sports but but they they tend to be much more active with their with their friends and it's less about like oh this thing is happening in my life how do i cope you know this is making me sad um they just kind of are with their friends and that didn't it didn't get substituted well with zoom it's men just struggled more keeping connection and getting emotional support from the people around them whereas most women do tend to have more of an emotional relationship with their friends and an easier access to language to talk about it which I really we'll have to do a whole episode on men's stuff just because that's also one of my areas but yeah like I do wish we would give men the length you know the ability to use the language of like

I'm frustrated I'm sad this is what I'm going through but they didn't have it and they weren't going to develop it overnight and so you had a bunch of people who were trying to connect on zoom and it just wasn't it just wasn't natural so what happened with guys was they struggled they struggled on a lot of like they struggled with loneliness they struggled with isolation like lots of people women didn't face the same emotional isolation so already we've got people handling single folks handling it differently what happened with a lot of women was that before covid it was always about finding that person or person right because

otherwise you'll wind up a spinster yes cat lady spinster it was like the thing we used your purpose wasn't fulfilled yep yep it was it was the thing we used to scare women and i don't know if we realized it as a culture i mean i god knows i heard it and the older i get like the more i hear it like oh you're gonna wind up this old lady with maybe cats or you know hundreds of them um but it was it was used as like this weaponization of you have to find a partner or else or else you will suffer this horrible fate of being lonely and not having a purpose stigmatized and ostracized from society because you don't have a man in your life right and so what happened during covid was that a lot of women when it was when it was not safe or not

possible or not comfortable to find partners kind of took stock of their own life and realized I'm actually really happy like I have these friendships that give me me that give that give that give me the things I need from my relationships maybe not the physical aspect of it but they found that they didn't feel as isolated in the same way that men were they found that they were actually really happy with their lives and they started setting new standards like well if i'm gonna date if you're gonna make me leave my house and put clothes on and makeup and the whole thing you're gonna make you're gonna make me people in public exactly if you're gonna make me people in public it better be worth my time because otherwise i could do all these things

that were keeping me happy or spend time with my friends who keep me happy and so the bar started getting raised after covid and after we started going back out into the world because women were no longer willing some women were no longer willing to accept the subpart dating because they didn't have to anymore and they realized they were gonna be okay and and so suddenly they're changing the rules but they forgot to tell men they were changing the rules and so the men thought that once they were out and about and peopling it would be the same it would be the same and suddenly they started running all into this like what would what do you mean I have to ask them questions like what do why do I have to carry my half of the conversation like why can't I just do

the things I always did I want to just jump in I was gonna say you look like you wanted to say something yeah I just want to jump in real quick there was um some phrasing you used where women forgot to tell men that they changed i know not the rules and i just want to throw out there uh the burden is not always on women it's not but i think it i think it i think when people do change the rules in any relationship a friend relationship um relationship with family when one person is suddenly changing the rules it can be a little shocking to the person who didn't know the rules were about to be changed. So I don't hold women responsible. Yeah, I wanted to put that out there. But I want to yes and that. Okay. Because I in during that time, I personal

personally didn't know that I was necessarily changing the rules with how I was interacting with dating so I I knew that for me you know the the thing that I wanted was my my space I enjoyed my space and then I enjoyed my friends and I enjoyed not having the pressure of potential conversations with people are like oh what's your dating life you know all those kind of things and i think also i i wonder if there's studies out there like social uh like a sociology not sociology but some kind of study where during this time it became safer to say no explicitly as a woman in some ways i should tell people i have my thinking face on uh i don't nothing is popping to mind. Yeah, I don't think there's studies, but I wonder if that environment of, you know,

having to isolate and social distance and all of those things kind of made it safer for women to feel more comfortable saying, I don't feel comfortable meeting in public because of what's going on. And so it just became easier in that first ripple effect to say no. And then, and then that no became, well, you don't really align with me. It just, it personally, for me, it felt safer to, to, to say no. And that's why I'm kind of wondering, you know, it, excuse me, that just the circumstances and the realizations of our you know we we get to protect our peace in our in our space um so that that would be a fascinating thing to dive into yeah that perception of being able to go you know i know we've been chatting on the app but no

go ahead and add that to our list of things we it's in the parking lot okay cool but getting back to it yes and the turn of phrase that i just got tasked on um but i do think it was hard i think it was hard for men who expected a b and c and then suddenly a b and c didn't work and no one told them no one explained it there's no there's no like hey the world has changed and here's how it's changed and And and so I think it became this challenge. And now they're getting on the social medias and they're talking about these horribly high standards that women have for them. And obviously we're talking about male female relationships here. We saw different kinds of changes in same gender relationships. But but suddenly things have changed and they do. And there is an anger and there's an anger because they didn't they don't understand why what worked 10 years ago, five years ago doesn't work now.

And I can understand where that frustration is coming from if you don't get that the world is working or the world is working the same way and the rules have changed. What I what I am struggling as someone who watches these videos is the but when is it going to dawn on you that things have changed and how do you change that? And I think that's where some of that disconnect happened. But but it's interesting because I'll hear people say, oh, women now have this new standard. Yes, they do. But it didn't just appear overnight. It was because they suddenly lost that threat of you're going to be alone forever and you're going to suck because you couldn't go out and meet people. Literally, it was life and death to like meet strangers and breathe air or their air.

And I think that women have had these times to develop and change. And we as a culture have kind of parts of our culture have changed with them saying like, yes, it's OK. It's OK for you to set these standards. We're seeing more messages about women saying, you see these posts about a man saying, how many guys am I in competition with? And the women are like, you're not. You're in competition with me as a solo human. You have to do better than I can do on my own. And so there is something about female empowerment there that happened to happen. That's a great sentence. after covid so so this the changes that we're seeing now they're not happening in 2024 they've been happening now for four years and i think sometimes it's easy to lose track of where that started and i would i would again yes and i think the um the the me too social movement as well like women being able to name to name the ways that they have been made feel made to feel

uncomfortable in certain situations and then you add the layer of the pandemic and the ice you know having to isolate and social distance and all of those things and you just there seemed to be a collective I I think like a collective calm like exhale among among the among among women because you got to talk about so from the me too to the pandemic we're able to talk about the ways that we have to navigate in the world and that is being received in a way it hadn't really been received before and then you have the pen and then four years after that you have the pandemic where we get to sit with our space and our autonomy and um and the and really diving into the things that we value and um as individual women and it just going back it just kind of it

felt safer to to say no I want to be alone in many ways so that's kind of my anecdotal correlate timeline correlation gotcha whether it makes sense or not I mean I see who's like no no I I see where you're talking about the me too movement and how that that worked I just I don't think the me too movement had this broad reach that many people were hoping it was going to because we also saw folks whose career was slightly taxed by being named but then agreed right like we all think cancel culture worked and it really didn't the way we thought it would um yeah well and i and i think more so what i'm talking about more so is that it brought conversations to the surface and allowed women gave women the space to say to say the things

out loud instead of kind of internalizing it and suffering with it until you found another woman who had experienced the same thing. Now we could talk about it publicly. And then the evolution of that is, okay, so we can talk about these things and how we have to navigate the world. And one of the ways that I talk about it is kind of constantly thinking like prey. And then we get isolated for social distancing and health and life reasons. And then we go, you know, this is really relaxing. I get to be in my space. I get to say, no, I'm not out walking, getting cat called or stalked or told to smile more, you know? So it was just, that's kind of what I meant is more that the conversations were daylighted and became mainstream rather than, oh, they're just after

something that's why they're saying this now right not to take this episode to that time we're talking dating post-covid yes so to bring us back to topic um dating post-covid the things that i have noticed are what you've been talking about earlier are men struggling to uh understand even even now you know four years later um to understand okay but what are what are the rules now and then um a faction of of like content creators that resent that the rules have changed and then a faction of content creators and i'm talking male content creators um and then a male content creators responding to those who resent and are angry and are like no we need to go back to the way it was and um and kind of responding to that and and echoing what and

like amplifying what women content creators have been saying the for the large part a large part of the women content creators um and so i think i want to zone in a little bit on this resentment of here's the new rules post-covid post-pandemic when is it going to go back and kind of do you have any thoughts there yeah i think i don't know if it's going to go back i mean we don't know what's going to happen the next i mean after covid i always say to say next year will be fine um we never know what's going to happen from from from moment to moment but i i do think i don't think we're going to start to see changes in the dating world for a lot of people i think we're going to continue to see women saying here's my standard if you don't meet it that's fine

have a good day like so i think we're going to consider to continue to see women feeling more empowered to set the standards and maintain those standards for themselves and i think that and again i i i'm going back to what you were saying before about not telling men the rules changed um if if we don't figure out a way to communicate that to them we're not going to see a lot of improvement necessarily across the board. But I'm also making a lot of gross assumptions, by the way. We do know that women sometimes have to be in relationships they don't want to be in because of finances or for safety or for lots of reasons that I don't think we're going to necessarily get into now. But I do. The more I'm talking to, especially some of my college students

and that age group, what I'm hearing more and more is women saying they're not doing enough. men are not doing enough they're not trying enough they're not putting the effort in and I'm hearing this across the board also like for women in their 20s 30s and 40s this idea that they're going out on a date and dates feel like interviews like women have to ask the question the man answers the question and then waits for the next question but that there's no reciprocal curiosity. There's no, it's not conversation. It's interviewing. And I don't know how men are going to learn how to not do that if that's the skill they've been taught their entire lives. I mean, if you've been taught your entire life that that's how that interaction is supposed to

work, how are you suddenly supposed to A, realize that it's not, B, realize it's not necessarily personal to you. It's what the other person wants. It's not like there's a deficiency in you that you can't fix. You're not saying men are broken. We're saying that men are not living up to the new standard we've set them. And then how do you fix it? How do you teach someone? How do we learn that? Especially if I go on social media and there's all these other guys being like, what's wrong with women these days? They want everything. So I think we're going to continue to see this challenge for a while. And I think it's both being hurt and helped by social media. Yeah, I would agree with that. And then I would just, you know, there has to be a curiosity for changing and adapting to hear how the rules have changed.

um instead of going down certain you know wormholes where where the rules changing are well that that's on them you know fuck them for changing the rules stay you you know men stay in your masculine energy and alpha energy and all of that listening to to that kind of content and then we know where the content we consume is driven by algorithms based on our interaction with certain content so there has to be mindfulness by everybody on what they're consuming and um and a curiosity for you know okay this this used to work it's not working can i find out why um, without necessarily burdening a woman or a person you're on a date with, you know, it's that it's gotta be that curiosity. Um, because that signals a desire to evolve

and adapt. If you're curious about the changing of the rules, because I would venture to guess that many, many women feel like they are communicating what they need and what they want and how it's changed for them I and so and so then then then there's that there's the communication styles and being explicit rather than implicit and just saying it in black and white um because because you're communicating with someone that has a different empathy level or emotional intelligence level um so maybe they're not inferring what you think you were being explicit about so there's two problems with this yeah yeah i agree with you for the most part but being curious requires a vulnerability that we don't teach men is necessarily acceptable i i

mean i think it is i think it's acceptable for all humans to be a little bit vulnerable um but if you're looking at like traditional masculinity it's not acceptable and so being curious requires being able to do that introspection and being vulnerable and that can be hard especially if you've never been taught how to do it and then the other problem is the language piece like we just men and women don't communicate the same way right i hate to go back to that like thousand years ago you know the men are from one planet and the women are from another but we we differ in terms of how much we talk and how much information we share and whether we're we're sharing information or are we trying to solve problems? Are we establishing dominance

or are we just trying to bond? And so I think as clearly as sometimes women say, I need you to carry your end of the conversation. I'm not always sure that men realize that what they're doing is not. They, you asked a question, I replied, how is that not me carrying my end of the conversation? So I think even sometimes when people try to be straightforward and say, this is not this is not making me happy this is not what i want your communication pattern isn't working for me um it's still read as either blaming or or it can really read as unclear well i texted you yeah but i texted you like a whole like hey blah blah blah blah and you text it back k like that's not but in and for some people that looks like they're putting in i don't

want to say equal but it looks like they're they're actively communicating when it's really not what the other person is looking for. So I think saying, this is what we're saying in black and white may feel like black and white, but may not be perceived as black and white just because of how we've learned how to communicate. Yeah. Absolutely agree. Yeah. And I think that's a very important point is if you want, you can't, you can't read other people's minds. what I know it's a groundbreaking concept um but that's one of the lessons I learned early in life from my dad you know it was just I can't read your mind and I don't expect you to read mine so if there's something you need I need you to tell me directly and as directly as you can

And if I'm not getting it, I'm going to I'll ask questions till I do. But again, that's the vulnerability piece. And that's a father daughter interaction where that's a little safer than, you know, you want to put your best foot forward and you want to seem like a great partner. And and then. All so everything that we've talked about with those challenges and then later on our current state of affairs you know where being a single a childless cat lady became a soundbite in the in american politics and this kind of um swing back to these air quote traditional

air quote values um which i think just meant means you know gender roles um so so then you've got content creators espousing that and reinforcing that and and maybe men single men um who are already frustrated because they don't understand and they don't have the language or the tools to make themselves vulnerable to be curious will go down those wormholes yeah and i think that's part of the challenge is how do you learn like okay i realize there's a deficit okay the same three women i've gone on you know three different women i've gone on dates with have all said the same thing but don't know how to fix it so i'm probably not going to talk to my friends because that's going to feel a little weird yeah if i have if i'm a guy and i have female friends maybe i'll ask

them maybe i won't um so i'm going to go online right that's that's how we get all our information we go online and and i do i think they're they're going to find people on social media who are going to blame women and just say you know you keep your standard you keep doing what you do it's these women's fault and they can't figure it out and they need to they need to go back to things that worked and that might feel comfortable to hear because it requires left less work um i don't like i i i'm trying to think of the things i see on social media so there's one with these two guys in the car and so one of them's like i'm gonna say the things that men say and you're going to translate it for me. And it's designed to be funny. But when that filter is

always working for you, when you always have to run it through the, well, I say this, but I mean this, that's still not open communication. And so it can make it really difficult to learn how to just say the words, I'm trying. What do you need from me? I thought I was communicating. How do I make that better? If you've been taught your whole life that you have to speak in code and hide what you're truly meaning it becomes really difficult and we don't teach people this we don't even in the best of circumstances we very rarely teach people how do you communicate before it becomes a problem you know so many of my friends who are therapists it's like the heart of so many problems is a communication issue and so maybe they'll learn it in therapy but maybe they maybe

they don't or maybe they're not going to therapy and they're not learning it there and so i think that's I think that's still where we're falling short for everybody yeah is is teaching people how do you communicate around this stuff how do you how do you hold your ground and say this is what I want and here's what I'm trying to say and how do you then make sure it's getting through and is it your job to make sure it gets through it's there's so many layers here yeah I think um another thing that i want to add is some of the the different ways that um on social on social media um sorry i just i had a little brain fart there um some of the different ways that social media um like content creators on both sides are interpreting each other's content

so those are always interesting videos to watch the stitch videos um and you know there are a number of incredible women um that i follow on instagram and when i actually saw one of her videos today where it was just like you know i don't i don't want to know don't ask me about my favorite color don't ask me about this i want to know when was the last time you've been to the doctor do you have a therapist you know do you own things in your own name legally like it was just kind of this test um to me a testament of the current dating culture for both sides this is not exclusive to just women dating men i think they're um it just it it happens in the dating world. So, so there are certain things out there that where we can get kind of a temperature check

on what people are valuing in potential partners, like, like therapy. I've seen many videos on from both men and women, like, are you actively in therapy? As you know, kind of one of their first date criteria um so there are things out there but it still is such a shifting paradigm and then on top of that we have people in mainstream who are saying no we can't keep shifting that way that's everything that's wrong with the world so we need to stay where where we were because gosh weren't those great times watch all the movies about it i think one of the other really big challenges i'm just going to turn a little bit if that's okay absolutely i think one of the other big challenges is that the majority of people are meeting their partners online

across all age groups which is fantastic um because because we were leaving behind some some age some of the age some of the age groups we were definitely leaving behind for a while on the online dating but the data that's coming out now is saying that most of us are meeting our partners online and online dating is where it's at and online dating has always been in some ways problematic because i'm there's always someone who's going to be better and if i just keep swiping whichever direction it is to say no left right left whatever yeah left is no right is you know eventually maybe i'll find someone who's perfect in their picture or um there is a it's like a catalog effect if I have too many choices if I have too many things to look at that I'm

eventually going to become overwhelmed and you're not getting anything about the person necessarily from photos so there's I understand this is this is the thing right now is online dating it's been a thing for a while this is not new since the pandemic but it is one of the places that we see that people are majority people are meeting their partners and when you're trying to communicate online there's so many issues like tone or lack thereof um as someone who is fluent in sarcasm that does not always work well intended tone and then the level with which the receiver receives that tone yeah yeah sarcasm doesn't always work in text um in text messaging and so i i i feel like yes we're going to continue to meet our partners though interestingly i am seeing more about people

who are going trying to go back to in-person events like much more dedicated to to let's have some people meet in a space um but but having us still dating online and having that be the majority of the conversation and yes a lot of the dating apps have have um you can now do video calls through or like phone calls so i don't have to give out my phone number yeah um there's still not a really easy way of judging i mean someone could be really funny on text because they had an hour to think about what they wanted to say or they they like workshopped their response with their friends like hey hey like what if I say this or how about I say that and then you have this person who seems really connected and seems really into it on text then you meet them

I mean this and again this isn't new this isn't since COVID this has been a thing since online dating it's like a completely different person when you're in person because they didn't have that time to say the perfect thing they didn't have the time to like google the information or find a joke or find out what he's saying or whatever it might be yeah and so I think that that's continuing to add to the problem because now when especially when women go out they want to really they want to have a good time they want to enjoy themselves they want to have that conversation they want to have those experiences you know there's a lot of back and forth right now and and some of what I'm seeing on social media about whether walking dates are acceptable

have you seen this I have I have I've said yeah I've seen some videos where it's women shaming the guy for taking him to Starbucks on a first date and it's the those to me are problematic videos yes because okay so we agree a hundred percent for the proof that we don't talk about this it's yeah it is your first in-person meeting I'm not you know we wouldn't necessarily shame a woman for saying, no, I just want to meet for coffee because it's in public. It's quick. There's not, you know, there's no, I'm not committing to a meal. I'm not committing to a meal, a potentially expensive meal, which can have implications for the person, the person paying, if the person is paying for the date a hundred percent, what they might expect for paying for the date, you know?

so yeah i those videos um to me are problematic you know if it's really about getting to know the person then get to know the person if they enjoy cheesecake factory you just found out something that they enjoy right take that in and if you don't enjoy cheesecake factory just know that maybe every once in a while if you guys click you're gonna have to take them there on their birthday because they love it we're not sponsored by cheesecake factory no we're not yeah but I think it's difficult because I do think you're you're suddenly and again we've seen this I mean I used to teach a class on sex and technology and I would talk about kind of what happened when you moved offline into the um sorry I moved off online wow we're gonna try that

sentence again when you move off of online and I hate to say in the real world because for some folks their entire relationship is online and good for them yeah um but just you know now now i'm sitting here talking to you in person and i you know there's not 20 minutes between responses and now i have to like maintain conversation and and now it's super awkward and i don't know where we're going to go next and so i do think that the online the fact that we're so heavily relying on online dating sometimes does make it difficult for people to express themselves um and to really get a sense of who they're going to be when you meet them in person um i also think that with the amount that we're seeing people ghosting like that's that's happening at a rate i shouldn't even

say it's happening at a rate it's never happened before because we never really collected data on this but it's so easy to just disengage from a conversation when they've waited too long whatever that means um yeah a friend who's online dating and she was i don't know she was going to i don't remember what it was she was going to she was having a conversation with someone i think she was going into a meeting and she didn't respond like in a timely fashion timely by that person's standards right and so when she got out of the meeting there was and i don't understand why the person just didn't disconnect um but apparently there was like obviously this isn't important to you and so yeah she i'm hoping just disconnected i don't actually know how that story ended um

But but I think that the I think that the online dating does sometimes make it difficult. And I think that it's going to continue making the challenges be challenges. Yeah. Just a note on ghosting as well. Sometimes that's a safety thing. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's very much a safety thing.

And sometimes it's easier to walk away than say I'm bored or I would never meet you in person because you can't hold a conversation. it's also a thing a bit about values like how much how do I say this how important to me is the online communication versus the in-person it may be that I'm slow to respond because I I second guess everything I type or I may like look at our conversation and try to figure out the witty thing to say but I may be brilliant in person but we don't get to see that because we're cutting people off before we get there idea i do think people are more likely to just engage faster than they were before because it's not perfect and there are quotes around that but oh this person they they took too long that's it or yeah they they use this word instead of that

word and that's so i do think we're seeing people disconnecting because they think there's always something better or that they haven't been perfect in the communication and i think that can be detrimental to getting to meet people. People are flawed. Just a question of whether their flaws work with your flaws. Well, not only getting to meet people, but going back to what we were focusing on, getting the feedback of why this wasn't working or not only why, but what was it that didn't work so I can be informed of how the rules have changed and I can adjust accordingly or seek uh potential matches that are more in line with kind of my expectations absolutely yeah absolutely so dating is fun everyone in the 21st century i think dating

is just challenging i think it's i think it's hard and it's been hard for a while and i think any every generation has thought it was hard and it's been hard for a while like i don't I don't think that what we're facing in terms of the frustration is new. I think that the technology has both made it better because now you can find like there are definitely apps that if you're in a niche community, you can find people who have similar interests, similar backgrounds, similar religions, similar whatever. ours. Yeah, I think online has made it both more challenging and easier for some people to try to connect. I think it's going to continue to be a struggle for some folks as these rules about these rules and expectations about what it means to be single, continue to change. You know, the more we accept women being single, and I'm not really sure we as a culture have completely accepted this idea of that it's okay for women to be single. I think there are parts of it that

have, but I think so much of our culture is based on the traditional idea of partnering up, probably having kids, maybe a pet or two thrown in there, that while we're seeing areas where women are feeling really empowered and saying, I'm okay, I'm okay single. I'm posting videos about how I'm okay and I'm okay single. And if this doesn't change, I've got a great fulfilling life with friendships and family and all that I don't think it's as big as we were hoping it would be I think women were hoping it would be like a sweeping cultural change and I think in some places people are like like you were saying before like let's put the brakes on this and go back to more traditional values yeah so I think it's going to continue to be a challenge for everybody for

men and for women I think people are going to continue to seek ways of meeting offline but I also think that we're still gonna we're still gonna hop on those apps and kind of see what's out there yeah i think technology definitely introduces a layer of of both ease and complication and more information and introduced to that the multi-general generate generational interaction with technology you know you a little bit ago you used referenced um certain demographics being left out of the online dating world well that's less and less so as the technology generation ages and then how technology behind kind of the generation x and um millennial generations you know there's talk of augmented reality so then what's that gonna look like

you know when when that generation starts dating um more mainstream and is that that demographic that that apps and other technology platforms and media platforms cater to that sweet spot demographic fun yeah i think people who are listening no wonder i value my peace i think people who are listening to this episode is like but what's the answer right there is none unfortunately um you know i think i think the thing we always tell people is kind of you do you and whatever that looks like and if that means that you actively date because it is important to you for to be in a partner relationship then you do that yeah if you're willing to give on some qualities that maybe you your friends are encouraging you you stick to your

you know don't change that like don't accept that but you are then that's good on you like I think it's really important that we also keep in mind that we're all going to be coming at this a little bit differently now. Some folks who may have been in really long-term relationships or a series of long-term relationships who are like, I'm finding my peace now and I'm okay single. And maybe that'll change in five years and maybe it won't. There are also folks who are going to be like, I'm willing to partner up and I don't really care what I have to sacrifice because for me, that's important. I think we need to just kind of keep that open-minded and open-ended, this idea that everybody's looking for something different some people are looking for right now some people are

looking for long-term relationships some people are not really sure what's going on with their lives and trying to navigate themselves as well as partners so so if you were looking for an answer i'm sorry sorry yeah there's there is none but if you're wondering why it's become difficult hopefully we answered that i think or gave gave some uh some food for thought yeah right um because there it just it constantly evolves with what we what we're exposed to what we consume messaging out there where our cultures are at in whatever political climate they're in um so it just it constantly evolves so you get to decide how you want to wade through that so with all of that and all the very clear answers we gave you

on this. I want to thank you all for joining us on this episode of Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We do hope today's episode sparks some new thoughts and maybe opens up some dialogues worth having. Remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed our episode, this or any other episode, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with someone who might need to hear this or any of our other topics we've shared in the past. If you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into or any feedback on what we talked about today, you can reach out to us via the link in the episode description.

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