Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - The Mating Crisis Revisited: What’s Changed—and Why It Matters

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we revisit the “male loneliness epidemic” and the so-called “mating crisis.” Since we first talked about it, something important has shifted: women are finding a voice in this conversation and… men are having a reaction.We talk about women naming their worth, setting clearer boundaries, and no longer organizing their lives around being chosen. We explore how that clarity is reshaping the landscape of relationships and exposing expectations that were long treated as invisible or inevitable.This isn’t an episode about dating tips or diagnosing loneliness. It’s about what happens when long-standing scripts start to break: women stop shrinking, expectations are named clearly, and men need to adapt to a changing landscape rather than be centered by it.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversations. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, we have partnered with jackandjilladult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code unzipping20. So go check them out. Go into the new year with something fun, with a buzz. Now that I've got the business out of the way, today we're unzipping the air quote mating crisis, male loneliness epidemic. Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend topic? But before we do,

I am here with Dr. Sue. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you, Charlie? I'm doing all right. Thanks. You want to give our listeners a little bit about your background before we get started? I do, but I want to own that my friends were right first. So my friends, if you have not listened to the show before, I always do an intro and I usually speed through it. And my friends offline have been like, stop. Stop speeding through it. You need to give your credentials your credentials are important and i'm like yeah yeah yeah i just kind of want to get to the thing and then um charlie in exciting news we've had some publicists reaching out to us because they want their people to be on our show and the first thing we do is

drop my title which is in the show description and in the beginning of every show so if you're a publicist who wants to pitch your person maybe make sure you uh you address those emails correctly but then i'm going to spend a minute and do this so my name is dr sue i have a phd in human sexuality education um i am certified in all sorts of ways which i will not necessarily list here but if you want to see them you can always go to my website and we'll have a link to that in the description and so by day i do the professor thing i teach graduate classes undergraduate classes i research i co-write textbooks i present nationally and internationally and then in my spare time um i'm a really big believer and this is actually where this podcast

came to be i'm a really big believer in the idea that the information that about sex should never be gatekept and it shouldn't be behind paywalls and it shouldn't be limited to people who are at an academic institution it should be for everybody everybody's interested almost everyone's interested in this everyone should have information about it and so in addition to this podcast which we've been doing now for over a year and change the time just flies yeah yeah um i also um have a space on my website we'll include a link to that in the description if you have a sex question you want answered you can ask it anonymously submit it every sunday at 8 p.m east 9 p.m eastern i post all over social media and then if you have an idea that you want for us because this is really about

answering questions you folks have or talking about things you want us to talk about there's also going to do a link in the description for how to send us a show idea and if you're not sure where it belongs just pick one and uh we'll figure it out which is the best platform for it or both you never know sometimes we do both and that is me dr sue doctor doctor um reminds me of a yeah that reminds me of something for another episode about medical practitioners anyway so i'm gonna let charlie finish drinking there before i throw it over to her for those of you who do You're welcome. We do and do not know Charlie. Charlie is our curious co-host who is always ready to talk about all the taboo subjects that we really cover on the show and more in a very open way. And I don't want to say non-judgmental because I feel like today we might be a wee bit judgmental. A little bit.

But before we get into that, you should tell everybody about you. i am charlie i have been friends with dr sue for many years and i am someone who from the earliest times that i can remember has always just kind of thought well why though why why kind of like a three-year-old but why why but why um surrounding uh the messages you know that we're being conditioned to hear and adhere to. Um, and, uh, and just my role as a woman in society, like challenging those expectations, that conditioning, and really trying to dig into why, why are we getting that messaging? But more importantly, what does that messaging serve and who does it serve if we comply with that kind of conditioning or don't question it? So I like to

question it. So that's, that's really me. And then I, the thing that I've added to my introduction most recently is much to the chagrin of mental health professionals, I am sure, and my apologies, but I have coined myself a psychology hobbyist, just because reading psychology articles and, and just that, that tendency to question why, why are we getting messages why are articles written a certain way why are news pieces put together a certain way um i i just have this kind of knack for um an interest in understanding the psychology behind it um and i want to just want to give a shout out to mental health professionals who had the wherewithal to make it their career because i certainly didn't so i appreciate and admire and

am in awe of the work that mental health professionals do so dr sue yeah mating crisis part two mating crisis part two loneliness epidemic part two so this is embarrassing to have a boyfriend part one i'm not going to do the last line so this is the first time we've decided to revisit a topic and and i we were joking in the pre-show that like we hadn't been on long enough before to be able to revisit things because usually we get wrapped up in a topic and we may do a second episode but this is the first time we've really done this um and i think we came up when we were doing our year in review like a wrapped episode we're like we should revisit this yeah so so we

first talked about the mating crisis let's just assume air quotes folks every time i say that just assume there are air quotes there we first talked about the mating crisis i think in february last year so it's been almost a full year since we tackled this and and i think what's been interesting for me is watching how the concept is played out so for those of you who aren't familiar it's well go watch the episode and come back but or we can just recap for you so the problem was we realized that men were finding it some men were finding it difficult to get and maintain relationships with women and so it first started being dubbed as a loneliness epidemic the male loneliness epidemic and then going back to what charlie was saying about how we brand

messaging and who it serves suddenly it went from the male loneliness epidemic to a mating crisis because that makes it a female problem because women aren't meeting and then it kind of changed in a way that i didn't expect and i'm still seeing the change now which i think is the really exciting part um so yeah that's the if you and if you haven't seen we're really careful about not doing clickbaity stuff and so we were we loathe to use that term um because we knew it wasn't accurate because what the male wellness epidemic and the mating crisis didn't get across was that women were choosing to not be in relationships that did not meet their standards which is a far cry from what our parents went through like our parents got into relationships there was no

questioning yeah i don't want to say no um but there wasn't really a lot of questioning of this this make me happy does it live up to my standards now women in a way they have never done before saying wait wait wait I don't want to be treated like crap I don't want my life to be more complicated because I'm with a partner not that there's not complications in relationships right because relationships take work it's not like plug and play and then a relationship boom it's been 20 years relationships take work but women are like this is more work than I want to do like i'm taking on an inordinate amount of work i am doing all the invisible labor i am and this is not what i want and so instead of it just going away women have really taken this as a rallying

cry to be and some men as well to be like hey we need to talk about the invisible labor um we need to talk about the things that we haven't talked about before and like that term mating crisis has dropped out of the language which i think is fascinating but the conversation is still happening It is. It is. And there's another part of the conversation. So right now, for the majority of the year, it was really centered around this loneliness epidemic, as you said, and how men are having trouble. And how do we help men? And a couple of months ago, an article came out with the title, Is It Embarrassing to Have a Boyfriend Now? And it was it. It was an op ed piece. And it was just a really interesting question. I think it caught both of our eye. And the question in there is just the article is it kind of goes through this interesting journey, because at the beginning it there's a sentence in there about women want the part the clout of

being partnered um let me find it actually so i don't butcher this um women don't want to be seen as needing being all about their man but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered this is from the british vogue article with the title is having a boyfriend embarrassing now by joseph um and we we can link it in that episode if we decide if we want to um but so that's the other interesting thing the other side of the conversation was published later this year and i find that entirely fascinating and then there's always the reaction to silence the response yes isn't there yes but before we get to that can we spend a little more time talking about the invisible labor and why people make the choices the women are making the

choices that they are and kind of how we're seeing it pop up on social media yeah yeah because really that's that's what this is about this is about the script shifting yeah so i think once we start talking about the responses to that piece we're going to be in angry land and that's going to be very different conversation yeah the script is really shifting to my women's hetero women's worth or women's worth is no longer centered around being partnered and in many ways how it shifted is that there is there is an idealism and um and clout to use that word in being single being a single woman and and being comfortable in your singleness and there's a romanticism around it that there wasn't yeah um in in the mainstream before i'm sure it existed in pockets throughout

the ages because i'm thinking of this our victorian time article where um they the editors asked spinsters to say like the best thing about being spinsters and their responses are classic it's amazing um so i'm sure it existed in pockets but it's hit a volume in in the mainstream zeitgeist now that i think is fascinating so the invisible labor well i think what's really for me what was really fascinating about this was that first it was the male loneliness epidemic and i remember talking about this in my men's health class like let's have a conversation about men's loneliness because men do not always form bonds in the same way that we see women forming bonds and then this came out after covid when men couldn't find oh some men a lot of men couldn't really find ways

to get the emotional support from their friends because they physically see them so it wasn't like hey let's go out let's you know play some ball you go you know do whatever we do i don't want to be too stereotypical and be like literal poor or poison basketball but a lot of it a lot of what men do when they're together is things like that their activities that they're doing and when that was taken away during covid they suddenly didn't have that emotional like support system and so we were having conversations about this in my men's health class like this is important because we also know that for men isolation is not great and their mental health can struggle and they're not going to ask for help and that includes you know that increases suicide rates and then some

reminds a change to a mating crisis and when we've done this in the past where we've taken problems and like nope this is the woman's fault the women have in a lot of ways been like okay we'll fix it and this time they're like no fuck you fuck you you want a partner like unpack it yeah yeah unpack it and do better be better yeah and so i know i it's funny because I think in a lot of ways, you and I have very similar social media feeds and then oftentimes it's radically different. But I know I've been seeing a lot more men and women. So it's not just the women, it's the men going, hey guys, we need to do better. It's talking about the invisible labor, talking about all the things that go into planning. I mean, we just passed

holiday season. So all the things that went into planning holiday season that don't, most people don't recognize the effort that goes into it, but they recognize when it's not there anymore. And so like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like it was one thing in the sixties and seventies if mom was a stay-at-home mom and that was all she was doing. But now oftentimes we have two, you know, double income households, mom's going out to work and now she has to come home and do all those things too. Like this is not equal partnership. And it's about, it's about the financial. It's absolutely about the fact that women are able to earn their own pay and don't need men for that piece as much or at all. okay i want to make sure you're holding the table in the conversation um an interesting thing do you know about the term spinster and where it came from uh yes okay should we share with the audience though just in case they didn't yes that kid always is the answer do you want to or would you like me to sure i i can do it so spin so the term spinster was

actually coined at a time where women, and again, this is back in a day and age, which could have been 20 years ago, but this was probably closer to 80, 90, a hundred years ago where women were expected to get a partner and be financially dependent on them. And then women who were working as spinsters. So they were spinning, spinning yarn, spinning cloth. I'm sure it's one of those and I just got it wrong and someone will correct me. People were spinning and they were earning their own income and they'd gotten for those of you just listening their air quotes coming too old to have a partner but they weren't as worried because they were financially set because they had their own careers so spinster was a sign of like i made my own career i don't

necessarily need a partner and in our language it has turned into this where you don't want to be a spinster it's something to avoid it's this bad thing and that's what we've done historically is we've done well you know ladies you've created a problem or you're the cause of the problem you don't want to build these things so fix it and we didn't do it this time um so we're having so it's really about the financial freedom if i don't need to rely on a male partner to pay half my bills then why am i relying on a male partner who is many ways making me take care of them okay now i'm gonna stop talking because i feel like i'm talking for a minute there yeah um that that really is the the crux of this is the the labor piece and um

and and then the realization as we talked about in the in the first episode that we addressed this there there was this realization that for uh for women for many women that our peace and our and our environment we're we're just fine without dating and without seeking to date um and then and then there's the other side like if you want to date and you want to find a partner that's amazing but for you that's amazing for you uh in the words of alexis rose love that journey for you um and and without any sarcasm um i just i heard the tone of my voice registered at like a good second after i said it um but that there there's also an amazingness to staying

single and being committed to your emotional peace your mental peace your um your environmental like your home and having things the way you like it. I remember seeing a, uh, a, a trend on Instagram, which likely came from Tik TOK, but of girlfriends, um, going to stay the night at their boyfriend's house and taking a picture of their space and then getting to their boyfriend's house and taking a picture of their boyfriend in space. Um, and so really it is, it is that piece. I had an aunt who was a homemaker, and I remember that she was sharing with me an argument she had with my uncle years prior, and she quite literally got quotes for all the things that she does around the house while he's at work.

Nice. housekeeping chef babysitter all of these things bookkeeper got got quotes for what that would cost monthly and threw it in his face and was like okay well if you can find somebody who who does all of this here here's the prices um and so they he never insulted her again about all the about him having to go to work all day and she's at home what's interesting what i never thought i would see um because i am seeing a lot of like oh you know i'm in my own space i don't have to worry about it i'm actually seeing the trend more with women who got divorced which is something we don't usually talk about is that post-divorce life

and it's like oh now that i'm divorced i know i'm not going to come home and find the house a wreck because I left it a certain way. I know that this is going to be taken care of and I don't have to wait for someone to be sitting there watching me do chores. I understand the requirement, especially if now I'm a single mom. I understand the requirements, but I can plan how best to do that. And I feel like that's also one of those things that we have never really talked about as culture. It's like, oh, you got a divorce. Instead of like, yeah, I got a divorce and it was awesome. And my mental health is so much better. I do want to pause here and just reiterate something that charlie you said if you want to be in a relationship good for you and if you

financially have no choice but to be in a relationship we get it and we understand we're making the best choice for you um we we know that that for some folks especially in some religions and cultures and areas of the country being single may not financially be an option and we don't we don't want you to think anything less of you like we get that that's not everyone's option yeah um and so maybe what was really happening was like men were like oh they're not living up to the stand women aren't living up to the standard anymore um there was something i was watching on social media and it was a guy being like well i had this girl come over and she didn't clean my house when she got here so she's not girlfriend material and i'm like

okay i think i just sprained my eyeball but yeah that was like the girlfriend test was would she clean up unasked if she came into essentially a pigsty and that if she and and my like you know people are having this outrageous reaction to that like you hurting your eyeball there um and people were like are you kidding me to me i was like hey sweet own it own that that's what you're looking for like own that you have these expectations that you cannot keep your space clean as an adult and you are going to expect your partner to do that and then there was an interesting backlash from both men and women this whole phrase and i don't know if you've heard it the whole you don't want a wife you want a mother yeah yeah that

so we're seeing that come into like the the phrasing that we're using which is basically like you need to admit that you are not looking for a romantic sexual partner you are looking for someone to be your mama who's gonna cook for you and clean for you and do your dishes and do your laundry and and do all those things well then we get and then that goes into high value right the high value partner oh your eyeball are you okay i know it's let me get stuck today so i don't know if you have any thoughts about that before i roll into the high value aspect of this i have a couple i have um just a few yeah uh surprising so one of the things that comes to mind is is the phrasing and how that reinforces that all those tasks are women's labor yes yes you don't want a wife you

don't want a romantic partner you want a mother nobody says you don't want a uh a romantic partner you want parents right nope it's a mom thing yeah so that so those are the things going back to my introduction that that trigger me and i want to unpack because that keeps reinforcing throughout the generations that the expectation is essentially once you become if you're a woman and you get married especially if you become a mother then you are expected to do all those things but what if you're the breadwinner what if you make the higher income what if you have the better job what if you have the better career so so i want listeners to just be cognizant uh when they hear that phrase i know it's meant tongue-in-cheek but the subtlety of it reinforces the expectation

throughout generations um and then and then just the other thought of like you can't take care of yourself what romantic partner wants to be with someone who can't even do performative hygiene right well and that's like so i'm trying to figure out which of the 18 ways i want to go with this um we do have a plan before we start resolve the rails that's why these are candid conversations that's right candid conversations um and i'm talking a lot about social media and i do separate out social media from media because and i had someone say that they're like don't you mean media and i'm like no no media is planned media is a group of script writers or group of whatever or how can we pitch

this will we get the um sponsors is this appropriate for this time slot am i going to get censored by the person who's creating the show are we going to get censored for political reason like there's so many things that go into that you don't just write a tv show you don't it doesn't it's not like oh we'll write this at three and go in the air at four um there's a lot of thought there's a lot of storyline as well but that is very different for me than social media social media is sometimes not thought about at all sometimes it's the wild fucking west remember people who post it and they're like oh oh consequences oh i shouldn't have been i was really angry so i picked up my phone and recorded and didn't think for two seconds about the long

yeah and the fact that anyone can do it and so i mean you and i are different in that way because we have conversations about what this means and how it's going to look and and making sure that we're protected from like outside forces and um but for me there is a difference between social media and media that media and media often serves like you were saying at the beginning it's it's it's messaging is serving someone and it's serving sponsors and it's serving owners yes and a general idea of what they think we want to hear where social media is driven by what's going to get you likes and right now in a lot of ways what's getting you likes and views is this is the condemnation of some of this behavior, which is, again, fascinating. And I don't think we're going

to see that in traditional media. So I do separate out traditional media from social media. But one of the things I saw on social media, but then after all that, going back to one of the reels I saw, was a man who called his mom to complain about his wife's behavior because she refused to do his laundry. Now, I'm not partnered, and I'm trying to think of how that would react if i called my mother and said that my partner wasn't doing my laundry and the amount of laughter that would come through the phone in my face um but the mom's reaction was oh she's just not a good wife i'll come over and do it for you and i'm watching and and and the comments i mean you're never supposed to read the comments but i do sometimes and the comments i mean half

of them are like laughing at this guy another half were like your mom's right you should have you are obviously not looking for a partner though you're just looking for someone to fill that role with caretaker yeah yeah live and help yeah that video was i'll have to send that to you next time it pops up in my video no that's okay with no warning yeah i don't need to see it it's okay yeah well because i don't need to see it because i did have a partner um many years ago where we both worked um I figured out the menu for dinner I did the grocery shopping for dinner often every day after work because I just that's kind of how I do how I did things I would cook dinner and I would clean the prep dishes as I went but when the food is ready there is still

a pile of dishes because all the food that has been simmering and um cooking is now empty and the um the indignation and frustration that he would demonstrate towards me um in arguments about well when you cook the kitchen is always messy that's hyperbole and also it's like the finishing dishes but why isn't your impetus to be like you spent time figuring out what to eat you bought all the groceries and you cooked it all you rest i'll do the dishes yeah because it's not a partnership right i mean and it's all it's very um pulling out from that example of my past relationship um it's just it is very self-centered in in a different kind of way um with many with many men looking for these types of partners that

will do that will be the career woman and the trad wife air quote no i don't want to piss you off okay but dot dot dot i have a tiny bit of sympathy for the men who were not taught better because that doesn't piss me off oh damn it yes yay and damn it at the same time because it goes back to that messaging and conditioning piece yeah yeah i mean i i feel a little badly for a man who's been taught that that's what they should expect from their partners like they they're gonna have to go through some serious self-reflection and think about why can I not maintain a relationship? My partner is telling me this. Am I hearing it or am I just reacting with the same line over and over of it's your job or it's your responsibility? I do feel badly when people

who have been social conditioned one way suddenly have the rug yanked out from under them because the world has changed. It doesn't give you a pass, but I do feel a little badly for them sometimes and like we changed the rules and they didn't know the rules were changing and they're going to have to do some effort to fix it it's the one who has that happen and been like oh these women just suck and they're horrible instead of being like oh my last failed relationships they've all been saying the same thing maybe i should figure out how to fix that but there's that moment for some people where it's like i mean women went through this very differently where women were like whoa everything i was taught is not i don't need a male partner in some situations i can do

this on my own bucking that system being the one who for years myself included for years would go to family gatherings and be like well where's a partner and i'm like why the fuck do i need one like the women's also had to do some of that work i think they did it faster but for some of them it's like wait i don't i don't have to live this life i can choose to not conform to these standards so i think we all went through this period of like wait the world is changing and it's changing pretty quickly i mean this is like a generation or two change i feel like many women did it faster but i do feel i feel badly for the people who keep following the script not knowing that there is an alternate ending i do just want to throw that out there i do i can i can make

space for that but you have a choice now yes because this has been widely this has been widely reported on yes this has been talked about dissected um so now you have a choice because the information is out there it is mainstream it is being it is it is a conversations that are happening right now. And if you double down, then I no longer have sympathy for your conditioning because you are digging 20 toes in to concrete that is going to drag you down, unfortunately. But those are choices you're making. It's going to impact your lifespan. it's going to impact your mental health because you're adhering to something that the majority of the population is no longer adhering to. Yes. And that's, so let's talk about the response.

Yeah. So one of the responses, sorry, I had to do a really deep breath there. Dr. Sue just took, yes, big sigh. So one of the responses has been men saying, well i'm a high value man and whatever that means sorry i can't do that without laughing and as a high value man as a high value man i should have a partner who wants to do these things for me and what i find really fascinating when you have and this has been from a lot of like podcasts i've been watching and um clips of videos that i've been watching so i want to say for those clips i did not see the entire context i am seeing the clip um what happens is oftentimes and it's so different to watch how what happens when the other person speaking is male or female

obviously there's going to be a difference but some of the men are coming back at these men and going do you have a job i'm in between jobs do you so what do you do all day i'm playing video games you know so how are you a high value man because i'm a high value man and so instead of sitting there and taking that reflective moment and being like wait every one of my relationships in the last five years has failed maybe this is someone about me because they're all saying the same thing as they walk out or i can't find a partner or whatever it may be and instead of being like okay let me do the dive like is it me is it something i'm doing should i change my ways like you were saying like now that we're having this discourse as a country instead what they're

Joan is being like, but I'm a high value man. Sorry. I just want to make you laugh again. Do you have thoughts on high value? It's just such an innocuous term or ambiguous or whatever. Like, what is it? So to go to the social media of it all, I remember seeing one clip where it seemed to be a podcast And it was this man saying similar things and doting out these expectations, didn't look particularly healthy physically. So there was that part. But his female, I don't know if she was co-host or a guest, she said, okay, you want me to be this traditional wife. if you need to make traditional wife money, like you need to bring home the money for the household

if these are the things that you want. Kind of going back to my aunt countering to my uncle, like here's what it costs to have these things done if I didn't exist in your life. Or you would find a way to do it yourself because you don't want to spend that money on a bookkeeper, a house cleaner, a personal chef, all of these things, a house manager. So if that's what you want, then you need to figure out how you're going to make the money to support that if that's what you want from the person who is your partner. But then what does that introduce? Because I'm just kind of in real time, everyone seeing this ripple effect. So you make that money.

So now this relationship is no longer romantic. It's transactional. strong reaction to that. Hold on. I got to make a note. Keep talking. Because then, because now you're saying in this, in this scenario, you're the man who says, okay, I make all this money and I make the money to support. And so now I have these expectations because I do that. So now you're creating this kind of weird dynamic that is not in my mind, my intuition emotionally or physically safe for the partner because what if she has a sick day is she allowed to have sick days is she allowed to go like so that that becomes concerning when

you carry that through line of you want a traditional wife make traditional wife money so that you can um so transactional you had a reaction there yeah i did and i actually don't know if i want to do it here because i think this is a much longer conversation than i'm prepared to have right now and i don't know if i want to be that angry today um but i do want to point out the language traditional wife high value man those terms traditional like don't buck the system get in line follow the script high value when really you're just being a traditional so i can't even say that without putting in their quotes yeah traditional man so again we're seeing that language kind of persist which yeah yeah um yeah i think the judgments the value judgments on

each role right are you okay if we tabled the transactional because i'm not a hundred percent i just wanted to make space for your i saw the reaction so i wanted to make space for it yeah i yeah i have to go back to another day so so one of the other reactions and then it's watching it from this outside perspective. I mean, I'm living in the culture, but also watching it from this outside perspective. So the men said, we're having an illness epidemic. No, wait, it's all your fault. And what's happened traditionally, oops, what's happened historically is that the women have been like, oh, okay, we'll get back in line. And now what's happening is that they're fighting back. They're pushing back. I don't even want to use fighting. They're pushing back. They're

changing the script. They're changing how we're having these conversations. And so what I've been waiting for is to watch what the men are going to do right and and so part of it was this whole high value man yeah and then the latest thing is quite hysterical so this came up a few times from a few different influencers and then just people are mentally seeing my in my algorithm the newest thing is well if you are a straight guy and you're with a girl that makes you gay and and i had to stop for a minute because that in my brain i'm a very highly logical brain made zero sense yeah so unfortunately i had to go down those reddit rabbit holes and then i took a shower yeah that was bad so there were two ways that this was coming through one of which is very

concerning for me from someone who cares about men and men's health so the first way let's should do the men's health one or the funny way for, I don't know. I don't know if it's funny. So the first way was that if you are having sex with a girl, you are somehow having sex with every guy she's been with. And so then you're having sex with men and that makes you gay. And I'm like, I still don't, I still don't understand the logic of that. And if you really want to hurt your brain, go do a Reddit dive on this. It is, it is disturbing to try to understand this logic are they using the language girl yes oftentimes yes or female yeah never a woman of course not um and it was i mean there's a part of me like the sex educator when i was first

becoming a sex educator it was you know talking about all the really bad sex education we've been through before and and we've i've heard this rhetoric before right um they'll have people there were these horrible in-class exercises where it was like well if you're having sex you're having sex with every person they have and they were doing it from a disease prevention so like if person a has sex with person b and then you have sex with person a and they have a disease from person b god i just feel like i walked into a math problem um sorry who gets to the train station first and we're both traveling in opposite directions of 45 miles an hour um but i've seen this but i've seen this before in really bad sex education

with it and it makes sense like this idea of that if you are having unprotected sex you are being exposed to everyone that person was exposed to trying to follow that logic into how you are now sleeping with that person that makes you gay i really don't understand them so i'm going to throw it out to you and if you want to be the brave person who does that that rabbit hole please go and send me some findings and i'm sorry for your time the other thing and this is the piece that actually does concern me from a men's health perspective is what they are saying is that if you are in a healthy relationship with a woman, though they don't use that term, but that's what I'm reading into it. If you are in a healthy relationship with a girl, not a woman, if you're

in a healthy relationship with a woman and you are being a good partner, you are being respectful, you are being supportive, you are pulling your own weight, you are being a partner in all sense of the word that makes you effeminate. And my concern from a men's health perspective is that what we were telling young boys is that being a healthy partner, being someone who is supportive and as much in this relationship as everybody else's is less than. And that's where we start pushing into that toxic masculinity. That's where we start pushing into, if I want to be a real man, i have to be a dick i feel like we summed up almost every episode in the last few months with don't be a dick um but don't be a dick but there's concern when when the messages that young boys are

getting is if you are in any way being a healthy supportive partner that makes you less than and that's bad and so you know the first time i heard that clip my brain hurt and then i was like all right let me go dig into this and then i saw these two different things that is that is setting up a generation that's going to be i'm trying to even sum it up in one word sorry folks i'm trying to do this in real time those messages are setting up men to really struggle and be unsuccessful and have very poor relationships and that's concerning because these boys are getting that information and they're internalizing it without having that literacy piece of whoa whoa whoa what am i hearing what does this mean and so it's almost like well then we can't be in a relationship

So I'm going to take my ball and go home, which is very much what this feels like. Well, if women are demanding that, sorry, if girls are demanding that we're going to be good partners, we're just not going to do it and like walk away. Girls are like, okay, bye. But the boys aren't learning the skills that they need. And what's dangerous is that they're learning that being good partners is unhealthy. And I fear what happens with that, with that logic. yeah i that those two takes to me are are the the manosphere responses of oh you think having

a boyfriend is embarrassing well we think being with you is gay yeah and the fact that they think being gay is still an insult and i'm sure it is in many um like sub circles this manosphere being one of them um but it's that thing of like i i know many stories where um women are on dating profile or on dating platforms online dating platforms and a man will reach out to them and they'll say oh you know they'll politely decline that's okay i was lowering my standards talking to you anyway that's what this feels like to me this article about is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend comes out by a female journalist a woman journalist and the manosphere reacts with well whatever we didn't want to be your boyfriends anyway

yeah yeah it's just it's the and then and then the men's health part of it because there has been such a push recently I know over the last five years of mainstreaming men's health and healthy male peer-to-peer relationships for this mental health support emotional peace and to have it kind of get disrupted by this perpendicular pendulum that's like no you're doing don't do that we're gonna knock you off off course um that is that is very concerning because then what it leads into is continuing to point the finger and what what i think we find when that happens is a rise in violence yep yep in um to towards many people yeah and so women which is another episode that we keep pushing off

so yeah i i think it's you know i had someone once say that words don't have power if you if you write a word on the wall is the wall gonna fall down you could guess the man it was a man who said that did i ruin the punchline boy it was a boy it was a boy who said that um words do have power and these thoughts have power and um it is concerning that we are now saying that the last thing you want to do is be a decent partner you don't want to be in a partnership that's fine you want to be single that's fine I have no problem with that I have a problem with saying that telling I have a problem with telling others that being a decent partner makes you less than because that's what they're learning and that's that's dangerous that's dangerous to

everyone long term it's not just to men it's to partners it's to society so so the words do have power and we need to be aware of this and if you're a parent and you're just hearing these things you need to be aware because your kids are probably hearing some of these phrases the it's gay to have a girlfriend or you know a high value man like you need to start being aware of these um because they are creeping into the the everyday language and that has an impact that's it it does because because we don't really ever know how the the listener is internalizing it because we can't read minds newsflash um but we just don't know how they're internalizing it and how they um how we each then um let that seep out into our everyday practices habits

interactions things like that i mean i can i can be cognizant of if my algorithm is a certain type away for a while, I have to pause and go, oh, wait a minute, I'm not seeing a whole lot of difference here. So I need to pause and interact with other content or just pause from the content overall, which seems to make the platform go, oh, she's not, she hasn't logged in consecutively. Let's, let's throw some different things to get her back in. So it's, it's that awareness, i think as well yeah um and and that overall this isn't a mating crisis this is people taking stock of what their personal values are and and choosing women choosing to find partners that amplify those values or complement those values together and not looking to have a job

away from the job yeah and i think it's home away from home job away from job if that's not coined it should be um and i think it's also for the first time women having a financial freedom that they've never had in this and when i say this culture i'm talking about american culture um they're having a freedom they haven't had in american culture before they have the financial ability to stand on their own and then they can take a look at okay so if i'm not taking that piece about i need to be a traditional life if i'm not going to take that piece into the rest of my life what else can i leave behind and that's hard um and again if your culture your value you know your culture your religion you are the pressure from the people around you cannot make

that an easy choice we get it we're not condemning you we want people to make the decisions that are best for them but i think we also have to recognize what a huge piece this is and like what this is saying for women like you for some of you you have the financial power for the first times in your life to say i want that which makes me happy and that which does and leave it behind that which does not and i think that scares the crap out of traditional men yes so yeah and those and those cultures around them right because going back to that primordial roar kind of thing i think that's a little bit of what this is too is that there is no longer um this i'm going to pull this term from that british vogue article there's no longer or there's less

and less of a blind allegiance to heterosexuality and i think that this is what we're seeing we're seeing people say i want these kind of healthy things and the people that didn't want anything to change going no no no no no you know because it's dying yeah and and that's it's not i want to change that. It's evolving. Society's evolving. Things are dying. We are evolving. We are changing with our environments, with technology, all the influences into our environments. That's what all of this is a result of. It's just evolution. Which is what a healthy society should do. Exactly. Exactly. If you stay stuck, you're going to stay stuck. Yeah. So if you have to cling to a past or an ideal system that no longer works for those people around you, but it's still important for you to cling to that and you'd rather say, I'd rather, you know, I'm going to take my ball and go home. Go home. Go home. The rest of the world's going to move on without you. And that's okay.

yeah and at the at the the bottom line is that we all have choices yeah we all have the agency of choice well ideally yes yeah i want to make space for for those that um that don't have that luxury yeah because we we even have that in the in the we have a parking lot of ideas that we want to do shows on and i'm pretty sure there's one in the parking lot where i was talking to a student who suddenly realized they didn't want to go down that path of like getting married having kids and doing all that and like that was a crisis moment for them of oh my god i want something different and i don't know what to do about it and that's a real moment for people and instead of and it is scary but i think that we as a culture need to look at this as a okay like we're moving

forward like you said we're not dying that piece is not dying though i'd be happy for it to be dead been buried um but the culture is moving forward and so the question is are you going to move forward with it or are you gonna continue to just throw a tantrum yeah yeah honestly yeah thank you i was looking for a nicer way of saying that so thank you yeah you're welcome i'll own it um so you know lean into your choices lean into making healthy choices for you and those that are around you and meet moments with curiosity and love i think is really what it is and don't be a dick i feel like we have to throw that in yeah yeah don't be a dick and don't be a dick Yep. All right. Well, everyone, I want to thank you for joining us on Unzipping Taboos.

We hope today's episode sparked some new thoughts. We'll open up conversations worth having. And remember that your curiosity is really the key to breaking down these barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review. Share it with someone who you think might need to hear this or any other episode. and if you've got a question or a topic you want us to unzip reach out to us via the link in the episode description a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting unzipping taboos don't forget you can get 20 off your order with code unzipping20 we want to give a very special shout out to ali o'brien for incredible theme music thank you so much ali and until next time

keep the conversation going keep unzipping those taboos and everyone take care We'll see you next time.