Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - The “Mating Crisis” Unpacked: Singledom, Societal Pressures, and Shifting Dynamics

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

What is the “mating crisis,” and what does it really mean? In this episode, we unpack the complexities behind this increasingly popular term used to describe shifting dynamics in modern heterosexual relationships. We challenge its implications, questioning whether it reflects a genuine societal issue or simply perpetuates fear and blame—particularly targeting women. We delve into the evolving concept of male loneliness, especially among straight men, and how it has been reframed as a "mating crisis." Our conversation explores how societal changes, including women’s growing autonomy and empowerment, have disrupted traditional relationship expectations. We also discuss the backlash women face, such as being labeled “childless cat ladies,” and how these narratives pressure women into relationships while ignoring men’s responsibility to themselves to evolve and adapt. Dr. Sue and Charlie highlight the importance of embracing paths that align with personal desires and values, free from societal pressure. With a focus on rethinking harmful language and fostering honest conversations, this episode invites listeners to challenge outdated norms, redefine relationships on their own terms, and celebrate the beauty of autonomy and self-discovery. If you’re in crisis and need to talk to someone you can call or text 988, or you can go to this website to chat. If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions If 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 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 are going to talk about what has now only recently been branded as a meeting crisis. But before we dive into the nuances of all those words in that phrase, I'm here with Dr. Sue. Hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. So the laughing is the face I'm making it really is yeah while while charlie's saying the mating crisis that just the phrase itself

just evokes a very heavy eye roll but sorry to quote one of my favorite tv shows archer phrasing yeah um anyway dr sue would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself before we get started yeah let's see how do i do this one um because i try for those of you who haven't listened before i try to tailor my history to what we're talking about um i guess i'll go the academic route on this one so i have a phd in human sexuality i'm a certified sexologist i primarily work in academia um teaching college students returning students whoever it may be um and then i also do a lot of work in the community and so the mating crisis ever air quotes sorry yeah i'm gonna just roll my eyes and you get to see it um sorry charlie not

you at home um the mating crisis is actually one that came up for me from friends who were like are you going to talk about this thing um so a lot of what i do is actually outside of academia i do a lot of work in the community talk to basically whoever wants to talk to me about sex and and sometimes our show topics are directly directly from our friends being like please talk about this um but we'll get more into that in a minute um charlie for those of you who don't know charlie or haven't heard Charlie's intro in a while. Charlie is our curious co-host who is always ready to explore the ins and outs of sex, relationships, and all those taboo topics around sex and sexuality that we so rarely

talk about openly in this country. Charlie, you want to tell us a bit more? Yeah, and I think I'll take a cue from you this time and try and tailor my intro to today. I am someone who enjoys unpacking the psychology, sociology, and just social conditioning that goes into all the messaging we hear, how we consume things. I have a bit of a psychology background from school, from college, and so this, I'm excited about today because I know what we want to focus on unpacking. um and then on top of all of that dr sue and i have been friends for many years and we have found

that no subject um has been too taboo for us to talk about together to have conversations around um and so we find ourselves here trying to working to illustrate to people even people who are comfortable talking about these topics can fumble um can can disagree but still have a conversation about it and, and have epiphanies, maybe, maybe that's too strong a word, but just a good conversation, a good back and forth, and then helping people find language that maybe they didn't think about surrounding some of the topics that we talk about on our show. And I think I should throw my students under the bus. Yes, I love this. Let me let me grab my Popcorn. So the way this kind of started, I mean, I've I've I went through a crisis of

conscience a few years ago where I realized I was only getting through to the students who happened to be in my class, the ones who were privileged enough to be in college and be in college and have room in their semester or in their curriculum to be able to be in my class. And I'm starting to get really frustrated. So I was kind of struggling with the how do I how do I talk to more people? Because I think what I I think what I say is important. And so I've been looking for ways to do that and then a few years ago i started doing hey dr sue which is where folks and this this is for anyone who's listening you could submit a sex question that i will answer on social media i post a new a new one every sunday at night and um we'll we'll include the

link in the description but well that was kind of part of my let me reach more people but then my students would come in you know that kind of before class chatter or even during class repeating some of the stupid crap that they were hearing on social media and in podcasts and I was like wait like what are you listening to and why are you repeating it like that was the thing that was bugging me more was that some of them were starting to repeat it as if it was fact and it wasn't even one of them several of them over the semesters were like well you know where's your podcast like you don't like what's being said where's yours and yeah challenge accepted and and i recruited charlie and here we are the reason i bring that

up is that the show is never just about charlie and i i mean sometimes the episodes are for us like the state of sex education that was all my my i needed to say that out loud but a lot of what we do is is really in response to what people want to hear or are asking about so i know a lot of things that you and I have done in some of the earlier episodes before we were having interaction with the folk who are listening was really kind of based on things that were coming up in classes for me. And there is a way for you to tell us if there's a topic you want us to cover, please. We'll have a separate link to that in the description. So we're getting ideas from what I'm hearing in my classes. We're getting some from the feedback now that we've been on long enough

to have folks listening. The other way that we kind of get ideas is that our friends in real life who listen to our podcast are like you need to do an episode on this and this that's how this one came to be for at least on my end was that my friends my friends were talking about it and of course as soon as there's conversation around me suddenly my social media is filled with it because I hadn't heard the term mating crisis and then a friend of mine was like why aren't you doing something on the mating crisis and like because I don't know what that is so this show is this one is definitely in relation to kind of what we were hearing people say because the last thing I want the show to be is clickbaity. I hate clickbait. And so I feel like even when we use

that term, mating crisis, like I feel like we're feeding into it. But this is something folks are talking about. And I think it's we both think it's important that we kind of do this. So just a little background on kind of how shows come to be. But yeah, absolutely. And I try to push back a little bit on Dr. Sue's reticence to do clickbaity things, because my argument is, that's how we're going to get more listeners. Because that the reality is that that is our world today. It is those quick catchphrases that pique interest and then gain traction. And so we are going to lean into it with this episode. Some of us again, I want to say some of us against our will, but there's a real consent piece to that. So I'm not. Yeah. And I am. And our listeners who

have been with us know that we do check in with each other to make sure we're each okay throughout the episode and even before each episode topic that we decide on we check in with each other to make sure we're we're both ready okay so you ready sure so dr sue what is the mating crisis i have no fucking clue no i do and here's i do i we didn't come into this unprepared because i feel like as soon as people start asking me about it in the world around me like i just start i don't my phone started showing it to me on my social media the reason i say i don't fucking know is because i i mean i do know what what it what it is about is the fact that men are not finding female

partners as readily as they used to but the reason i say i don't know is because i don't really know what that term is supposed to mean a crisis implies that there's some kind of threat or some kind of like horrendous thing about to happen and i don't i don't see this as a crisis and then the other part of it for me is i don't know what mating means i mean i do i should hope so with my background I have Dr. Sue but I don't know what it means here so so and I'm pushing back on the phrase because I think the phrase is problematic like when people say there's a mating I don't want to say crisis problem issue something there's a mating something when they say mating do they mean that people aren't finding partners so like mates that way because that is not

necessarily true outside of the straight world or folks who appear straight. We are not seeing the changing in dating patterns in the LGBTQ population. So I want to point out that a lot of times when we're talking about this mating thing, it's not about finding a partner. It's about straight men finding a partner. So I feel like that's important to say. Because the other part of me wants to say, well, if it's a mating crisis, are you talking about like mating and having babies because that's that's not new that's the birth rates in the United States have been going down pretty much since COVID like I have to go check the actual numbers but that I don't know steadily right yeah so I don't know why suddenly we're calling it a crisis so for me just the

language makes me want to push back and be like but what does that mean and of course there's no one person I can call up and be like hey you keep you came up with this term what the hell does it mean right but I want listeners to really think about what that term is supposed to mean because crisis implies that this is new and it's some kind of threat and what is made is mating procreating because you don't need to be in a relationship to procreate um or is mating finding a partner because that's not everyone's goal and we're finally talking about that openly and i would add not only what when you hear that term um questioning what it means and what it's really trying to uh identify but what reaction internally does it elicit in you does it elicit

anxiety does it elicit like i don't give a fuck and does it elicit like this is why my son is having trouble or or something like like what does that elicit what reaction do you have because that phrasing is designed to do something to the people that read it listen to it hear it to get them to buy into a fabricated threat and so you and i as we were preparing for this episode um we we had done an episode of um a little bit ago about dating and the impact of covid post-covid yeah and yeah post-covid and at that time they were identifying loneliness in straight men is that correct yep okay so that was just four or five years ago yeah i mean they were running articles on this like to like up to like I think 2024 2023 I was still seeing posts about this this male

loneliness epidemic and the fact that men are dying not from being single you do not die from being single but straight men do die at a younger age than partnered straight men so men what straight men who are married will live longer than single straight men and so it was it was first it was just the loneliness piece and now they're tying it into like this death piece and now we've changed it completely yeah yeah and that's where i think you could tell where i was going is that just as recently as i don't know the early part of last year between covid lockdown to us working in our new normal um it was lonely male loneliness and now it is a mating crisis a crisis about mating and i think um it is important as important as it was for us to

point out that when we're talking about this phrase we're talking about hetero relationships um or hetero interaction hetero dating i guess um but we also need i feel it's important to point out that we're looking at the word mating in the way that we use it here in the u.s because i know in other countries mate it just means partner it doesn't it doesn't have anything to do with reproduction but here in the u.s largely when we use the word mating um and the ing implies the act of which to me means sex to have a child um we're talking about reproduction i think that's the piece that's getting lost right now and i agree and but i think that's the piece that's getting lost like a lot of what i've been reading about the i feel like i want to change my my sound and be like

the mating crisis. I feel like right now, they're not focusing on that out loud. I think that's the next piece. I think the out loud piece right now is that people are choosing not to be partnered. But that's not even how it's being phrased. It's being phrased as men can't find partners. But I think that's the subtle piece. I think it's men can't find partners. And here's why women are at fault subtext I think that's a piece that's going to come up next and it'll be interesting to see how they brand it yeah and wait oh go ahead I know go okay so I think part of it too is if we're phrasing it this way and we're giving that implied meaning of men can't find women to be with. There is, we're recording this in 2025. There has been over the past three and a

half, four years, a lot of campaign and legislation against reproductive health for women. And so I think you, I think we have these two things happening in tandem. We have the legislative piece and the regulation piece that is starting to strip away women's bodily autonomy and then we have this piece over here where men can't find women and so you can now merge those two to your point just a moment ago like what's next up in this you can now merge this crisis with this is why we need to legislate against reproductive health yeah yeah let's focus on the partner piece because i know we're going to get into some of the reproductive health piece with other episodes sometimes we change the episode release order so this may be after the episode

you know the episode i'm thinking of that's gonna i do i do yeah so we're gonna we're gonna focus on this piece for the finding a partner i do because i also do focus in men's health i do want to go back to that loneliness piece, even just for 20 seconds, and say that men's loneliness is a really big deal because men do die by suicide way more often than women. And so when men are lonely and they don't have that emotional support, that can be life-threatening. And so for men, if you find yourself in this place where you're feeling really lonely, I know it can be hard. I'm going to ask you to reach out and find someone to talk to, either professionally or the crisis hotline, or a friend or family member that you trust.

So I do want to acknowledge that that's a real thing. What I don't want to do is make women responsible for that happening to men, which is I feel like, yeah, and I feel like that's a shift. So I do just want to acknowledge that because the rates are really terrifying when you take a look at death by suicide for men versus women. The loneliness thing was important, and I really wish we as a culture had hopped on that more seriously to talk about that. Stuck with that.

Yeah, as a public health issue. but it never got traction even though people were trying to and now we've shifted the focus so i did want to just that's a that's a legit thing if you are lonely i don't care what your gender is if you're lonely please find someone to talk to whether it's friend family or crisis sudden or crisis number which yeah i want to i want to stay here just for a moment longer because i i do want to acknowledge that we we do have this podcast from our perspective and we try to be as inclusive and and neutral as possible but you're still you're still going to talk from your perspective and I think to that piece as well is I I wish we had as stuck with the it's man male loneliness

and what and the thing that popped in my mind was back in 20 at the beginning of the pandemic or during the pandemic and maybe a year after i can vividly remember commercials during football season that were advocating for men recognizing their emotional and mental health i don't see those commercials anymore nope and i nope and we could do a whole episode on this though we can do a whole episode well i think we are going to do a whole episode on this help maybe if for no other reason that will allow me to talk about i'm going to try not to every time i try to say this phrase i trip on it it will allow me to talk about men's sheds it's harder to say than it sounds but i think those are important and i would love a chance to talk about it so yeah i think that's very

important because i want i want our listeners who have been with us from the beginning and those that are joining us to understand that we do see that perspective and we are also men's health advocates but what we see largely with legislation is that it's about regulating women and that also leaves men in the in the dark and in the dust and that is a gross injustice to everybody because when we find out focusing on women we have a national office of women's health we do not have an oh see now i'm already getting on the wrong episode get another wrong soapbox but we don't We just have a National Office of Men's Health and that deserves to be said. This will be a future topic.

But we do – what we want to talk about is why shifting it to a meeting crisis and why that centers women in a conversation that's not really about them. And why that puts the – Blame. It blames them. Yes. It centers the blame on women. And it's trying to scare women in a lot of ways into the things that we finally started outgrowing about the this this idea that like if you were single, you were going to wind up being the crazy cat lady or you were going to wind up dying alone or you're going to be this old spinster that no one wanted or no one was going to come visit you in the nursing home. Which is always really funny to me because also working in the aging populations, most of the people I see, a lot of the people that I see who never get people visiting them do have adult children.

So it has nothing to do with having a partner and having children. But we want to focus on that because that shift is is concerning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we see that language just as recently as again, I mentioned we are recording this in 2025 during the election last year. I, the vice presidential candidate at the time, um, coined childless cat ladies in one of the debates. And, and I think that did something. I mean, many, many women leaned into it and it was like, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I wonder how naming it again on that platform did induce shame and doubt and insecurity in, in certain communities and certain individuals. Um, and to, to go back

before that comment, what, what we have talked about, Dr. Sue and I have talked about in a previous episode is again, the dating post COVID. And what was found there is that because we were forced to isolate um and stay home and figure out how to exist and stay as mentally healthy as possible under extraordinary circumstances that the world was going through um what we found is or what was found was that women were like you know what i'm okay yeah i can do this on my own feels feels good I can do this on my own yeah yeah I don't I don't need I don't need and a partner to pay or I don't want to tie it to that but I don't need a partner to be with me for me to feel peaceful and fulfilled and um like I'm doing all right in life

yeah right and so that continued that was one of the great things i think that came out of covid was that women were really able to sit back and say what do i want for me do i do i even want a relationship which is something i mean i know my generation like that was what we were supposed to do you were supposed to get into a relationship do i even want a relationship if i do want a relationship what does it need to look like for me not just like somebody who's doing the bare minimum not just someone who can't meet my intellectual stimulation or like whatever it may be that turns you on and and now that I know I can live without it like sure maybe I'd love someone in my life who can do those things but I'm okay without it changes what you're willing

to accept from a potential partner and I actually think that's one of I know now it's it's what's led to this crisis but I think it's one of the greatest things that came out of COVID was women being able to take their power and say I know what I want now but then it and then fast forward it is now being branded and weaponized not even branded weaponized because anytime we hear some kind of crisis get some new crisis some war war on something or crisis enter our modern zeitgeist it is a way to condition an attitude so that things become easier for those in my opinion it becomes easier for those in powers in power to legislate and control there is a crisis we must get this done which is fascinating because we didn't quite react that way to the pandemic

which was also a crisis but that's a whole that's a that's a different podcast um but yeah i think i want to go back to your your comment that was made about uh kamal harris about her being a childless childless cat lady um what i love was and i don't think we would have seen this even 10 years ago people like yeah like owning that and and i think that was what shocked people and maybe that's what's led to the crisis was like they threw out this old like we're gonna throw out this term of childless cat lady and that's gonna scare the crap out of people and said what happened was and i do think there may be some girls and women who are like oh i don't want that to be me but more than we've ever seen before where people like yeah that's me

you saw yard signs you saw yard signs yeah yard signs sticker earlier yeah it became people's identity and here's the thing that i think is left out of this conversation and i just want to throw it out there she has stepchildren and and so when you make that comment that she's a childless cat lady like that is really saying something about bio children versus stepchildren which is horrible and never got attention that that basically he was limiting child to you had to be the biological parent which is insulting um to thousands of people who have kids who are adopted or kids who are stepchildren or however it may be so right um but it was so interesting because it was such a weapon that a lot of people didn't stop to be like whoa like you're not just

going after the woman there you're going after her kids that you don't think are good and like it was just it was a moment that got missed because he was so busy trying to use that as a weapon but I it was interesting to see people it was interesting to see the him go back to what would have been a very powerful label and now it was just kind of like yeah and yeah and what else you got. Yeah. Um, so I feel like we're going to stay on theme here with this. So when we were, um, doing our pre-show chat, chat. Yeah. Um, I Googled the term mating crisis and what I found interesting. Sorry, I don't know if listeners just heard that growl. I know. I'm sorry. Every time I hear that phrase, like it just turns my stomach because there's no reason to use it.

But I'll try not to make that noise into the microphone. Sorry, folks. All right. Yeah, you get one. So I googled the term. And what I find interesting is some of the top results are citing like for instance the mating crisis among educated women oh yes those educated women i know it's horrible um professor warns of mating crisis in u.s as fewer men go to college so and there's i mean there's even in the ai overview that google does the very top one is gender imbalance in college enrollment women make up a larger percentage of college students then the second bullet point is women's preferences for educated partners and so what i find interesting is that all of this is centered around women doing exactly what they were told to do

growing up get good grades go to college all of these things but now it is being cited and the fact that it is the top results and those are the first few sentences in the results women more women are going to college than men women prefer like it to me again is centering this air quote crisis on it being women's fault for wanting to be educated for wanting an intellectual partner that is at least equal intellectually emotionally what have you and I find that very disturbing because these are all the little ways that we as a society get conditioned to buy into these made up wars and crises so two thoughts on this um yeah one is that it is i agree that we're focusing on women and how they've evolved and men haven't which is really what it's about

it's about that men have not evolved and we we started to we were so ahead of this game we talked about this months ago we did um we did in the episode if you haven't seen it listen to it please go listen um it's that it's not about that men have not evolved which is scary when beings do not evolve um that really what this is about is that women evolving and the other thing i wanted to say is like this is totally on brand for the united states let's figure out how this is a problem that women have created let's pin it on them and then like it's modern witch hunt it really is and it's it's on brand for us as a culture and we've been doing it for hundreds of years so it's not surprising what i find offensive in that so much so much do i find one of the top few

things i mean i find it offensive that we're we're we're basically going after women for for becoming educated which is an empowering act for women and is not new we have been seeing this gender imbalance happening in higher education for a while. It also tracks really well with the recent attacks on Ivy League education. Not that I think everyone needs an Ivy League education, but sometimes it's not easy to see how the two are related. If you haven't been paying attention to the news, there's been a lot of things coming out about how Ivy League education isn't worth the money. They're not attacking the Ivy Leagues, folks. They're attacking educated women. That's really what that is. The thing that I find

offensive is this idea that it's about education because some of the smartest people i know never went to college like yeah it's about opportunity and even that has nothing to do with school well schooling in some sort like i'm i'm a big believer as much as i've worked in higher education my entire adult life sorry that just hit home how long that actually is um as much as i have worked in higher education my entire adult life i'm a very big believer that we we put too much importance on that and that we should be sending and encouraging more and more people to go to trade schools i think trade schools do not get nearly the attention that they deserve and i think that skilled laborers are they're brilliant they're absolutely brilliant in what they do

and so what to me is really offensive about this you like especially if i was a man i'd be like well i went to trade school or i went to work i didn't even maybe i didn't go to trade school maybe i went to work straight out of high school because that's what i needed to do to help my family to insinuate that they're not educated is insulting and instead of men going whoa like you calling me stupid they're like yeah it's women's fault and I'm like you just you just missed the point completely but I do I I find that really offensive that we that we equate school and education with intelligence because I just said it like five minutes ago two minutes ago I'll say it again some of the most brilliant people I know never went to school for whatever reason but

they're brilliant yeah and so like yeah i if i was a guy i would be horribly offended as someone telling me that i'm lesser than because i'm uneducated yeah and traditional sense yeah i i hear you in the kind of in in a world where we in a world where we where we prioritize credentials and being a credentialed um society at large you know it's not it's not always the most important um and then those of you listeners uh just caught my you know first vocal actor audition so there you go just kidding um um the the other thing that stands out to me with these search results and the things that are the first, you know, 10 outside of the AI overview. It is difficult for me to not believe that if this, if the ratio was women having

trouble finding male partners, one, it wouldn't be a crisis, would absolutely not be a crisis. and it would be why today's modern woman isn't desirable or enough or insert whatever qualifier why can't women meet the needs of today's man yeah it is difficult not to to think that way yeah because i i can absolutely see it wouldn't be identified as a crisis it would be how modern feminine movements damaged the modern woman for man or something like that for modern man i mean i could see it i can actually see that timeline now that parallel universe right now yeah and instead we're here and we're blaming women for the fact that men can't figure out how to be better partners for women they can't figure out how to up their game which is really

what this is about so instead of as we do with violence against women we don't focus on the people who are the problem that the men not that it's always men but that the men committing the violence against women it's always about oh women who are attacked instead of saying men can't seem to adjust to a new dating paradigm it's women are the problem and there's a crisis yep yeah I want to shift a little to just normalizing being single yeah that's how do you feel about that yeah yeah and I think that's big and I think I can I skip a little bit of how to I want to answer your question but I want to make sure I don't forget it and I don't know where my pen is to take notes well first of all I didn't ask a

question other than how do you feel about shifting so you're fine no because one of the things I want to come down to is is one of the things that i'm seeing happening with this current issue is an intergenerational support of women that i haven't i don't think i've seen in a while because if if we want younger women to understand that they don't have to be in relationships to make their way it it needs to be the older women not giving them permission but sort of like supporting it yeah queuing it and supporting it and like when you're in college doing these amazing things or in your first job doing these amazing things not having the first question be so when are you going to find a boyfriend and i am i am seeing this and i'm seeing it on social

media and i'm seeing it in my relationships that i have with women across generations that we are seeing this intergenerational support which is amazing um can i expand that yes yeah i just want to make sure i said that because it is so often we pit women against each other even if it's not real that seamless support for each other is is amazing for me yeah and i you were talking about how we need the older generation of women to to support the younger but what i what i think and what i have witnessed and and experienced a little bit from the younger generations in my friendships and family is these younger generations are challenging the the messaging and they have actually given the older generations permission to

accept and acknowledge and accept something that they may have always inherently felt mm-hmm there have been a lot of challenges by millennial and and younger yeah the that are like why why i saw how miserable this made you you don't have to anymore and i'm gonna help challenge and i you know me and my friends don't buy into it and so mom auntie grandma if you don't want to anymore look guess what you don't have to and we'll be here and i do think we need to do a little bit of a yes all of that and we're just going to yes and each other i think all day today i think so we do need to keep in mind especially for boomer women that if they wanted to be able to survive they did need a partner

they couldn't get credit cards in their name they couldn't open bank accounts in their name they couldn't open a mortgage in their name um when they were young teens early 20s it was still legal for them to be fired for being women. I'd say be paid less, but that's still happening. So a lot of that older generation, I do just want to acknowledge that a lot of that older generation really felt like they didn't have a choice. But what's happening now is that generation is losing partners either through death or divorce. And now they realize it. Now they realize they don't have to. And they look at their nieces and their granddaughters and their daughters and the girls around them, like you're saying, these younger generations, and they are

seeing them succeed but i also want to say that it's okay to choose to be in a relationship what i what i don't yeah what i don't want to see is let's create this world of like you can do it on your own you go girl you got this oh you want to be in a relationship what's wrong with you i don't ever want to see that happen i think it's okay for people to take a look at for themselves where they are and that might change next year that may change in 10 years um may change in a month right yeah but I think it's important that we give people freedom to really look at their lives and say what will what do I need for me right now and I think that's that's an incredibly empowering thing to give people power to hate to keep saying power but to give people the ability

to say what do I want how do I want to do this maybe it is having a partner maybe it's having multiple partners maybe it's not having any serious partners maybe it's just having friends what benefits like whatever it is for you and i i do i do think that's a really important step and i like if we could rephrase this i'm not calling i'm not using the term if we could rephrase this thing that we're trying to shove down people's throats as an issue or reject it reject the phrase yes so if we just reject the phrase and just talk about the subject of this of this episode um i think one of the really powerful things that can come from it is women going mm-hmm this isn't about us this isn't about us this it is but and helping men recognize it's

not about women either yeah i mean it is it's about women finding a voice when they never had one before it's about women finding but the blame right women finding happiness on their own but this is not a problem we caused no so i would like if that's what comes out of this that would be great. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I agree with that. I think an understanding that there, this is not a problem that women created and that autonomy, human autonomy is beautiful. Um, so if I may go to this notion of singledom and um i think sounds like a place to go singledom yeah singledom come to this utopia of singledom how's that for subliminal i don't think it's so subliminal for those of you that needed to know where i stand

um that in this rejection of this this very recently branded term um that it's okay for both men and women yeah to choose because i think what happens with this very tricky intentionally strategic divisive phrase is that it might also have an impact on men who didn't want to to begin with but then it's also like well then what's wrong with me if i don't want to right when are you gonna find a nice girl and settle down i'm contributing to this yeah crisis um so i in in the interest of it is just if you don't want it don't yeah yeah i think the pressure is different like but i have heard my male friends get that the when are you gonna find a nice girl and settle down and sometimes it's like i'll find a nice boy and

settle down um but because it is the whole thing is heteronormative to begin with but i do think that there are some men who are like I don't really want to be in a relationship like for whatever reason like you know I'm getting my other needs met however they're getting me met and I really want to focus on my career or I just don't want someone in my space like like I just it's just not something I want I think you're right I think it's I think it can be freeing for everyone to take a look and say what is it that I want what is it that I need and again with the idea that it may change over time as you evolve as a human it may change over time yeah yeah and i say that because i'm i guess by the time this goes to air i'll have already done it um i know i'd

mentioned this to you offline uh that i'm doing a dating workshop for senior citizens on how to create an online profile you know and i'm not going to walk in there and be like why do you want to do this dating is bad it fills a need for them and i and i think we need to keep that in mind i think we also need to keep in mind culture the role of culture and religion and that in some religions it is not okay necessarily to not be partnered or in some cultures there's a lot of pressure to be partnered and um so we don't we don't want to say that there's a right answer or wrong answer to whether you're partnered or not what we really want people to do is find something that works for them and and go on from there and just give them permission to kind of do

that. Yeah. And we are evolving throughout our lifetime. I, I can, when I was a little girl and in my late teens and early twenties, definitely had that, that vision of, uh, of wearing a white dress, walking down an aisle and all of those things. And now I'm just like, no, no, thank you. that's not it and then and that actually kind of took root in my late 20s and that piece has stuck as far as marriage white dress all of that it's it's not because I couldn't find someone to do that with it was about centering my values and my priorities as to what I wanted if I was going to have a partner it's not going to be someone who expects me to be um a stay-at-home domestic partner it is someone who is in in my definition of partner we get to have our individuality

and supplement each other's lives and then and then that even evolves to well I have people in my life that i get to enjoy experiences with so does a romantic relationship really add to my peace to does it truly supplement my life not just my experiences but my life so it evolved those those feelings evolve and i think making space um to acknowledge our individual evolution through humanity regarding the pressures of being partnered getting married having kids whatever let it go be Elsa and let it go I knew you were gonna say something like that it's interesting because you brought up something that I wasn't sure I wanted to go to but as usual you have crawled inside my brain um because one of the things that we're seeing with with men

is that they don't really want a relationship they want they want to cook and they want a live-in cleaner and they want someone to do their laundry and they want someone to make sure they're making their doctor's appointments like they want someone who can do these things that could be just outsourced to professionals because when you and it's not all men and I need to make sure I'm saying this and not unlike the violence it's not all men because I do know men who I think are fantastic and single and wish they weren't and just for whatever reason can't find a partner like it's just a compatibility issue whatever it may be who bring all the things to the table that i think we would want to see modern men do um but a lot of the men that you hear especially those on social

media who do not always reflect reality are basically like i need someone to do my laundry i need someone to cook for me because i never learn these basic skills because we don't teach them anymore um they don't really want a partner they're not looking for an emotional partner They're not looking for someone to share their lives with and their interests with. They're looking for someone to basically be a housemaid. And if that's what you're looking for, I would encourage you to go find someone that you can hire to do those things. Because you can hire cooks and you can get pre-ordered meals and you can get someone to come in and cook. And you can put an Alexa on your countertop to tell you about all your appointments and when it's time to make them.

Yeah. But I think I think when you see that kind of thing in social media, it kind of points out what women are, again, huge sweeping generalizations here. But like what women are looking for is someone to be a partner, someone that they can share their lives with and grow with and maybe grow a little together, but also grow separately and still be supported and have someone who's who's going to fully share their lives. And then you hear these men talking and it's like, I want someone to cook and clean. That's that's not a partner. That's that's hired staff. But my heart does break a little bit because I'm thinking about someone very specific who really is trying to find a partner and just for whatever reason can't make it work. We do understand that, but that dating frustration has always been there for people of all genders. It's like, I'm a great catch and I can't meet anyone. And generations, not just all genders. And generations, yeah.

So I do want to throw that out in case he's listening. I see you. I see you. You're valid. We see you. I do. your experiences matter but i do i think a lot of times what we're seeing and hearing is that you know this this i don't want to get into the trad wife thing i had a friend of mine and you

know who you are because you're probably driving to work as you're listening to this um who encouraged me to read a book on trad wives and maybe we maybe we have this conversation another day maybe um but i do think that there's a relation to that and this i think this whole thing that they're trying to create and it's like oh well here's this trad wife thing that would solve so many of these problems i think we're going to start seeing the intersections of all these things being mushed together um to justify control yep absolutely yeah i mean that's to me that's the bottom line terming terming it a crisis or a war on first helps so you hear the word crisis and you go okay who is this who is causing this yes who who is the other that is making this

happen because i i'm not making i i wouldn't contribute to a crisis so who is doing this to us so it automatically plants the seed of an enemy that you need to control or um you know get them to submit and that there is this horrible horrible thing that's happening instead of just like some people can't find partners it's this horrible momentous thing that's happening yeah and then it just continues to morph you create the fear you create the the divisiveness and then that lanes that lends itself to so this is why we have to do these things at the legislative level and then it lends itself to this is why we're in this group over here supporting this movement and you have it all wrong over here when it's just like can't we all

live man can we all just like support it can we all just love yeah peace and love apparently not we're all we're all we're we all have the same finish line in life we're all going to the same place um we're like the same finality and so why not i'll throw the caveat out there that is not harming others, why is someone's relationship choice something you feel you need to exert your control over? And ascribe blame to someone for why someone in your life can't find somebody, make something work, etc. So just ask yourselves why when you hear these kind of click baby terms especially centered around people's choices life choices and I think that's where I'm gonna leave that yeah and I think it's the why like why are they using that term and I

would again encourage people to push back on the term what does that mean mating crisis what does that mean why is it a crisis what does mating mean like push back and reject push back and reject there we go. Perfect ending. All right. Well, everyone, I want to thank you all for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos, candid conversations about sex. We hope today's episode sparks some new thoughts will open up conversations worth having. Remember that your curiosity asking why is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this. Got a question or a topic you want us to dive into? Reach out to

us via the link in the episode description. You have thoughts on this episode or any other episode that you've listened to, please feel free to leave a comment. We want to hear how what we talk about is resonating with you or any thoughts you have on things that we've discussed. So we want to engage with you please leave a comment we want to give a very special shout out to ali o'brien our incredible for our incredible theme music thank you so much ali i smile every time i hear it and then until next time everyone please keep the conversation going keep unzipping those taboos and take care Thank you for watching!