Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

0:04Elliott:Hello and welcome to To Be A Boy with me Joeli Braley. And me Elliot Ray. So today we're going to be talking about an article in British Vogue by Shante Joseph called Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? And this article's been out for a few weeks now I think. and it's sort of picked up pace. Lots of people have been talking about it. It's got attention. It was written in British Vogue. Shantae Joseph is a British writer. And it's been published, I think, in 20-odd countries now. Shantae was on CNN talking about it. It seems to have really hit a nerve with a lot of people. And we thought it would be a really interesting topic.

0:57Elliott:for this podcast and Elliot and I would like to chew the fat a bit on it. So I'm going to have a little go at a little summary of what it made me think. Go on then, go on.

1:14Elliott:The thing I took away from it actually is that, I mean, firstly, Shantae Joseph, I think is an amazing, amazing writer. She has this knack of hitting on something very current and doing it in a way that is so accessible and always fun. She's just a fun human. You can tell she's a fun human, but she makes everything really accessible. And yet what she's talking about has so many layers and is really complicated and nuanced. and that's one of the reasons why I think this has really taken off is because it's made people really reflect on lots of different aspects of male and female heterosexual relationships and you know we've been talking for a long time about the fact that heterosexual relationships don't always work for women in the vast majority of cases they're more unhappy in a heterosexual relationship they don't live as long I heard Scott Galloway saying on something this morning that the research shows that when a widower's husband dies, she actually is happier after he's died than she was when she was married to him.

2:33Elliott:And so, you know, we have known for quite some time that relationships aren't necessarily working for women the way that they are working for men and so the first thing I thought when reading this is go on women like you're kicking back against the thing that lots of women of my generation have pushed to one side and pretend it isn't happening and you're saying enough now I'm not going to stand for this. Yeah so did you feel were you celebrating the article were you celebrating the idea or did you also feel sad as well I felt both of those things at the same time somewhat part of me felt proud of women for not standing for this anymore and then another part of me you know I'm raising boys as well so I have a personal investment in this another part of me felt deeply sad about the fact that we are being driven further and further apart men and women and that we seem to have got to a position where we are blaming each other for lots of our problems and I think that is also part of why this article exists is because it's not just about the fact that relationships aren't working for women it's about the fact that men and women are getting really good at blaming each other and making each other the enemy and we're not each other's enemy we need to find better ways to work together to find solutions to many of the problems that we're experiencing so what did you think about age because obviously we are i don't want to say mature but we've lived a little bit of life right we've lived life experienced might be a better word what do you think in regards to how this article resonates translates to different women at different stages of their lives for example what is the impact or feeling on younger women who are maybe just finishing university early 20s just starting to date is there a difference between how this article resonates with them to someone who is in their 40s with a partner and a couple of kids oh definitely there would be some women my age who won't understand it because when I was younger it definitely felt that having you were worthless without a partner there was and I know that when In my 30s, I broke up with somebody and I thought, oh, I'm going to end up lonely.

5:18Elliott:Nobody's going to want to be with me. That's it. You know, I'm sort of on the rubbish pile now. I'm going to be a spinster. Oh, like there's nothing worse than that. You know, nobody wants me. And I look back on that now and think, oh, my word, what was I doing? Why did I think that? that you were definitely, it was projected onto you by others. And I remember people saying, oh, well, you know, you could just marry somebody who will have some money. And so you don't need to worry about it too much, you know, as if, you know, that partnership was all that should really matter to me. I don't think girls growing up have that same messaging.

6:04Elliott:I think that messaging is different. So their experience of relationships is different from mine. I mean, I don't know many girls, you know, more than me growing up. And I have very few interactions with teenage girls at all. Sadly, I'd love to. I'd love to talk to them all. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what they're thinking, but I would expect that the messaging they're getting from society and from their parents is not, one day you will get married and you will have children. The messaging is more, sisters can do it for themselves. Do you know, like you don't need a man. You're going to be okay.

6:43Elliott:A man is a nice addition to your life, you know, if you're heterosexual, but it is not a necessity. Whereas it felt like that for me. yeah yeah so listeners I'm going to um speak my thoughts on this but please don't cancel me because I am very very conscious that I'm a man and I don't really make a habit of trying to tell women how to feel but I'm going to talk about some of the thoughts that I've had since so let me start on reflecting on acknowledging that yes I think as you said relationships and marriages long-term partnerships are much better for men like I think we live longer yeah and women live shorter yeah so there's obviously something going wrong there and there is obviously something we need to as society and also individuals unpick and work through to make our relationships as a whole just work better for women and for everybody so acknowledging that but I was thinking in this narrative is it another example of telling women what they should do and what they should be because I feel like years ago it was you're shamed if you're not married with children at this age yeah and then now it's like it's embarrassing if you've got a boyfriend so it's another version of this is how you should live your life.

8:19And I also thought about where's that embarrassment coming from? Because I don't think it's coming from men. Like I'm assuming here the women that are embarrassed about having a boyfriend are not embarrassed by men looking at their social media and thinking they've got a boyfriend. So it's coming from men. I think they're embarrassed or they feel like other women are judging them for having a boyfriend. yeah and so is this another version of telling women how they should be living their lives versus you can just be whatever you want to be and if that works for you then that's okay

8:57Elliott:I think that's a really interesting thought I guess when you push back against anything that's had a like anything that's culturally normalized you tend to go to another extreme before you find a middle ground and I wonder if that's what's happening here their younger women are going screw that for a bag of peanuts I'm not having any of it and they're going completely the other way to the absolute extreme that they can and eventually we'll come back to the middle which will hopefully be a place where we can find more equality in relationships than what we've had historically so I think yes it you know it could be another form of telling women what they should and shouldn't be doing and women policing other women we're really good at doing that really good at policing each other and that's not healthy or helpful but I do think that something did need to change that relationships couldn't carry on the way they have been doing and we've been having the conversation for a while about unpaid labour, in particular women doing the vast majority of the unpaid labour.

10:20Elliott:And still very little is changing. We know in the UK that women do almost one hour per day more of the unpaid labour compared to men. That's data from the Office of National Statistics and that doesn't include the emotional labour and it doesn't include the mental labour. And I do think for some women, they're recognizing that you get into a relationship and you essentially giving over your time and energy to somebody else rather than yourself. And women tend to, in relationships, give their whole selves and then beg for crumbs off the corner. Please just give me something, a little bit of love.

11:01Elliott:And that just couldn't continue. Yeah. And two positions that I was considering is... Are some people reading it and their takeaway is they are against the concept of having a boyfriend? Like, you know, the men are trash kind of movement narrative. Yeah. Is it, and I think it's both. I think it's partly the concept of having a boyfriend or partner is corny and goes against a lot of women's values as a whole. Politics, I would say, as a whole. but also there's the individual like I know a lot of women have posted their boyfriend on social media and that boyfriend's has another girlfriend so it's like that particular boyfriend is going to embarrass me and what um Zoran Mamdani responded he was asked about the article the new New York mayor and someone asked him about the article and he said you know if your boyfriend's embarrassing you should probably find a new boyfriend yeah I thought that was interesting him because I think that talks to the whole yes some men are not good right some boyfriends are not good some girlfriends are not good but in this instance some boyfriends are not good and so we I guess we have to be careful about introducing people onto our social media and standing next to them because yeah that is inviting them into our life as part of our identity and that footprint as we know now doesn't go away we can delete the picture but someone's gonna screenshot it save that picture so that person is potentially in your life story now forever yeah with social media and I think there is definitely something to be said for getting to a level of trust as much as you can with that person before you do that so my wife and i we met in a band many moons ago now 2008 and instagram wasn't around like it is now but facebook was around and she was very careful about not announcing our relationship to the point where we were doing gigs we like touring the uk do lots of stuff right people didn't know we were together until we put up our one year wedding anniversary picture on facebook she waited until a year after you were married she waited into our first anniversary of our wedding to be like yeah this guy's all right i accept him now oh that is brilliant for me i wasn't too bothered like i probably would have introduced earlier but you know i'm not a massive picture taker anyway so it didn't it didn't bother me either way and i was you know I didn't care I was like wherever we're happy in our relationship I don't really care if people don't know and actually it was quite nice that people didn't know because we could turn up as professionals and they weren't then like looking at us as a couple they were just looking at us as band mates and we're working together so for that actually worked quite well and it was quite good but I remember we posted the picture and some people were like what the hell you guys are together i've known you for like eight years you're married and then some people were like congratulations on your wedding we're like yes it's a year ago sorry you weren't invited but you know and so i do think there's something in um in keeping that quiet like protecting your relationship you know like not everything has to be out there for a variety of different reasons it may be because it's very new and you don't know that person yet it may be you know a lot of people believing evil eye and people looking at their relationship and wishing bad on it and stuff like that some that's some people's beliefs so there's that too um but the bigger thing i took from the article was more about i think a lot of a lot of views and politics now a lot of narrative that i think has been prevalent over the last few years for women has been a lot around independence obviously recognizing as you said all the negative statistics around relationships or the negative things that men do or don't do in a relationship and the freedom to be able to be single and not be partnered up which is great and we should celebrate that and I think there are some like influencers who who were featured in the article or have spoken around the article who have built their brand if you like on being I don't want to say a feminist because I think that's too too narrow but being quite anti-man and building their narrative on girl boss yeah and I've kind of made it on my own you know and so the concepts then of being partnered up doesn't match because if my narrative to everyone else is you can do it on your own you can be independent yeah men are trash or we just don't really need them anymore and let's do it together as as girls and as women cool then having a boyfriend who may pay half the mortgage who may have paid for that dinner who may have supported you emotionally and mentally and physically as good partners do i think part of that is then taking away from the narrative of i did i did this by myself and i think there was one influencer who was commented either that article or another article that i read who said um they didn't want to tell their followers they had a boyfriend because they will then be seen as they haven't achieved their success by themselves so i think there's this kind of idea of real success is that you've you've done it by yourself and if a man's helped you that's corny and it kind of takes away from your value if you like and then also the original point in regards to as a concept i don't really like men right now but i found this one individual man who's actually okay but then can I introduce that one individual man into my life when I've been selling the idea of we don't like men as a concept yeah have you heard of the term heterofatalism yes I this is new to me but um I read what it meant it's a term for the feeling of resignation and frustration that heterosexual relationships are often doomed to fail yet people continue to engage in them.

17:26Elliott:It describes the emotional exhaustion and hopelessness that some straight women feel about dating men, characterized by a deep-seated disappointment with men's behavior, coupled with a continued, often weary pursuit of romantic connection with them. Which I'm so elated that somebody coined it. But when I looked up like common expressions of what hetero fatalism would be every single one of them rang true for me and my female friends so making jokes about men are trash but still swiping right on dating apps like amongst women when we're all together you know it you know you're going to get a laugh if you make a joke about a man being useless or rubbish everyone will chuckle along lamenting one's attraction to men with shame or embarrassment yes like any women i know that are single in particular are like oh god and you know and it says fantasizing about queer relationships as a way to escape the emotional labor of heterosexual ones yes like the number of women i know that say god i wish i was a lesbian feeling a sense of futility in dating because of repeated disappointments and mismatched expectations and a feeling of being stuck in a cycle of dating because of the deep desire for a romantic connection despite the perceived futility of it all absolutely true for me and my female friends and none of those jokes we make in front of men we keep them you know when the women are together we say things they just roll off the tongue stuff like that and I think that's the same for all women when they're together and so I think this has been happening this move away from it being cool to have a boyfriend for quite a while behind closed doors and now we're seeing it translate into social media and the way that people are hiding boyfriends i also i mean i think the social media aspect is really interesting because i think social media has had an impact on so much of our behavior when i was like 19 20 all i did was get drunk almost constantly i'm not like celebrating that and telling people it's cool but that's what i did i was in the pub all the time drinking and now you go past universities and all the bars are closed and nobody's really doing that anymore and I think partly that's because firstly they seem to be a far healthier generation but also because I think part of it is you don't want that to be documented you absolutely sloshed you know falling over somewhere and you don't want it to be stay with you for eternity and so the social media is influencing their behavior and drinking and I think it potentially is also or influencing people's behavior in relationships.

20:12Elliott:I think it started to filter through these messages of being in a relationship is not good for you. And also this need to be seen to be an independent woman. I'm an independent woman. I mean, maybe that song has a lot to answer for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, Beyonce then did bills, bills, bills. Yeah. Which is like, can you pay my bills? So the contradiction is crazy. Yeah. Like, I want to be independent and celebrate that call. Then also, I'm only going to date you if you can pay my bills. Yes. But you see, we've also come from a situation where women were doing the vast majority of the, you know, going back to, I think unpaid labour is a big part of this.

20:55Elliott:We go back to a phase where, you know, point in time where women were doing absolutely the lion's share of the unpaid labour, the cooking, cleaning, stop, pairing, the caring. but there was an unwritten expectation that then the man would do the vast majority of the earning the external labor to bring the money home and we're not in that position anymore one in one in four couples women are the primary earner and when they are the primary earner they tend to do more of the unpaid labor so we're in a situation now where women are falling to pieces because we are still doing the vast majority of the unpaid labor and we are now expected to be independent women who can earn their keep and be financially independent so we've got to do both of those things simultaneously so back when we had this unwritten agreement where men would bring home the bacon and the women would cook it at least we were both doing similar amounts of work just in different spheres and I'm not saying I want to go back there absolutely don't I'm just saying that transition has been really slow women are doing a lot more of the paid work and men haven't on average kept pace with the other side and so it does feel like a real kick back to me and that nowhere was this more apparent than during the pandemic and I feel like the pandemic has sort of put a rocket up the ass of this because we saw so clearly in households when people were stuck at home that women would like falling apart mentally because the only time the unpaid labour was shared between mothers and fathers was when the mother was continuing to do paid work and the father was furloughed.

22:51Elliott:Then it was shared equally, the unpaid labour. Women were interrupted during their paid work on average every hour. Men were interrupted every three hours. The government, for goodness sake, put out an advert to tell everybody to stay at home. And the image was of a woman doing the hoovering and the unpaid labour and the man was lying on the sofa no way like you know it was just everywhere and everywhere you look women were falling apart because they were doing trying to keep it all together the emotional labor the mental labor the domestic labor and the paid labor and I think that has potentially forced people to sort of see these inequalities that really exist and think, I don't want that for me.

23:42Elliott:I don't want my life to look like that. And it's a kickback against those things. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. I did a talk two days ago and got a really interesting question. So the audience were people who chair family networks in companies and I did my talk about engaging dads in family networks and at the end this lady put her hand up and asked a question about how do they talk to the dads from the angle of when you prioritize child care or find a better balance between your work and your life and you are active equal parents at home it's potentially going to impact your career.

24:54Like how do they approach that conversation with the men? Because they see that that is a barrier to those men doing what they should be doing at home. And I spoke about consequence, the fact that I don't think as men, we've had conversations about consequences and what the result of our decisions could be, especially now. So maybe 15 years ago, there wasn't so much of a consequence of prioritizing work. And I say prioritizing, not discounting households needs, financial contributions and whatnot. What I'm talking about here is for the men who have choice, who earn a decent amount of money, and there is a decent amount of money coming into the home.

25:39For those men who have the choice to take the full parental leave, the choice to work flexibly, the choice to leave early, three days a week to do the school pickup, the choice to take on the mental load, which. a lot of men that I speak to do so I think maybe 15 20 years ago the consequence of not parenting out loud at work and being equal parents at home maybe there wasn't much of a consequence because your partner might have stayed at the time that was culturally what you know what we did I think in in recent years there has been a shift now so many more women have realized actually I can do this by myself um as you said when women are widowed they are sometimes happier I know women in my own life who have who are mothers who got divorced are way happier now yeah so for those men before they may not have been a consequence now there is a consequence and if you want that really strong relationship with your children but also you want a happy partnership and a happy wife, partner, girlfriend, and you want that close relationship, you want regular good sex, you want a happy home, you want the joys of being in a family unit and all the stuff that comes with that, then we have to think about what is the consequence of our decisions.

27:07If we choose not to, when we do have the choice, the consequence may be that we're going to get divorced in a few years. The consequence may be in 20 years time, our kids come over and they don't really have much to say to us. And there's a bit of distance and we don't feel connected because we didn't have those shared memories when they were younger. Potentially that is a consequence. I don't think we've spoken enough about the reality of that, but that's happening all the time. It's happening all the time. And so we're trying to bring up those conversations. It's not about blame it's not about accusing anyone it's not about anyone making anyone feel bad about anything it's just the reality of what's going on and every decision we make comes with a trade-off and the reality is yes if you do prioritize child care and and parent loudly and and for a little while you're going to be really pouring into your children it may be that your career is going to store for a little while you know not forever but for a few years you might not get promoted yeah that is a consequence of that decision but you're going to have fingers crossed a really good relationship with all your family members and we know how valuable that is the flip side is we prioritize work we stay late we don't take that parental leave we say no to the flexible working when we could do it we don't work from home when we could we don't do the mental loading school pickups we may get promoted we may earn more money that's a consequence but that's probably going to have an impact at home again it's not to say anyone has to make any decision it's just about presenting the reality of where we are and the privilege if you like of working in the time now depending on where you work obviously but for a lot of people they do have access to work to be to be more flexible it is possible for men to be equal parents we can still maintain careers and earn good money it can be done um take advantage of that so that's definitely one thing i always want to talk about the other thing that i think from this article really kind of got me is obviously like i have two daughters and i think about how i would feel if they were reading this article and part of me is like yes i want them to get their own money not feel like they have to rely on anyone definitely it's better to not being in a relationship is better than being in a bad relationship 100 yeah but the flip side of that is that there are still really good men there are still lovely caring men who will do all the things that most women want them to do there's those men still exist and I feel like what I wouldn't want my daughters to do is to go into the world and think oh having a boyfriend is embarrassing point blank that's it that like all that there's there's no good men and there's a blanket statement and that is true and we live kind of that's that's that's our starting point I don't want them to do that because there are still good men out there you know and and I want them to find if they are heterosexual I want them to find a good man and have a partnership because that is that is really good too again I'm not taking anything away from single people that's cool if you want to do that that's fine and you can live a happy life being single but it's also really nice to be in a good partnership when it's healthy yeah and when it comes to building wealth when it comes to like basically like group economics right it's easier to build together and so i just wouldn't want i was thinking about that i'm thinking okay like i hear it i understand it for all the reasons we've spoken about i don't think i would want my daughters to read it without conversation with me or their mum about like what the wider context of this means and i hope also that they may read that but think well my dad's cool yeah my uncle's cool yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so i mean you have set a

31:36Elliott:precedent for your kids they've seen your behavior and they will expect that now in a man and that's the absolute most glorious thing that you could do for those girls is show them what a good man is and how he behaves because and the lots of girls don't get that opportunity you know my dad was never around I never barely ever saw him so knowing what a healthy relationship looked like just didn't exist for me and I think it didn't exist for lots of lots of women I know as well because our generation, the dad was out the vast majority of the time. The woman was at home. You didn't see men behave in a way that was, you know, they didn't spend as much time with the kids and they didn't spend as much time at home as men are starting to do now.

32:30But your girls, they'll have seen that. Fingers crossed. And I think, you know, I think when I was growing up,

32:40Elliott:You didn't, your expectations of men were very low and you just felt grateful to be in a relationship, the vast majority of girls that I knew. And I think now what I would hope comes from this is girls are more demanding of better relationships. They say to men, this is what I want in a relationship. This is what is a good relationship and a healthy relationship to me. If you are not prepared for that, if that doesn't feel right for you, then this isn't going to work. and I never had conversations with anybody I was with like that and never talked to them about you know and with my partner now we never had a conversation about if we have kids who's going to continue their career who's gonna you know what you know I did a post on LinkedIn recently like asking the simple question of if we both got an important meeting and one of the kids is sick who's going to step back like have that conversation before you enter into those relationships I think if you do have those open conversations it could help to resolve a lot when you come up against it rather than just like it happening and then starting and you you know for some people then potentially realizing crap I've now got to take a step back from something I love because the other person isn't willing to do it yeah do you know what I think I realized from this is everything we do is is political you know whether we choose to have a partner or not is now like a political decision and I think I saw a comment on the article I think it was a comment or was another article there's so much I've read over this over the last week or so and someone said why does it feel like having a boyfriend is republican yeah that's actually quite funny but I hear it I get it I hear it like I understand that do you think that this is two sides of the same coin with being a trad wife like I think there's a link there with the trad wife movement that you've got you know in this case people saying oh well I'm I'm going to remain single and I don't want people to even know if I would consider being in a relationship and then the other side you've got women going I will do whatever you tell me I'm going to stay at home and look gorgeous and do all the cooking and cleaning and childcare yeah do you know what's interesting I because in our relationship we earn and care as equally as we can it changes week by week but you know our starting point is is equal and it's really hard like it's really bloody hard yeah because like you're both doing everything yeah and so i'm not saying i would want it the alternative long term anyway the alternative is not good but on a day-to-day equal parenting is quite tiring for both of you like it's really hard for both right and so last year snenny took a career break he took three months off and i would come home and the house would be clean no food on the table food on the table kids picked up from the school excited and i was like oh yeah i am not running around like a headless chicken trying to do all these things you're not running around like headless chicken don't get me wrong that was like a career break right three months okay cool it could have been either way it it was nice for that period of time would it work for us long term no first of all financially the UK is bloody expensive like two incomes really really help so first of all financially secondly Snelly wouldn't be happy yeah I was gonna say that work cool like I'm for three months amazing it's a hot it's like a holiday do you know what I mean but okay you are home for the next 20 years that's a different proposal now that's a different that's a different scenario altogether so she wouldn't be happy but also what I found out for myself is that if that was the case I would probably do less parenting which I don't want to do because naturally why would I leave leave early to do the pick up when she's doing it now like why would I wouldn't need to even if I wanted to gradually I probably would just back away it's natural because you've got your roles now yeah you're the main earner actually the pressure is on you to go out and earn so you better go out and earn mate especially being self-employed as well like I can't just sit at home like don't get paid sitting at home I'd love to but don't so I would naturally pull away and so it wouldn't work for any of us long term but for that three months coming home to a roast and the heating on and the carpet's been hoovered it was lovely can you imagine yeah my mum used to look after uh when the kids were babies she used to come to manchester every two weeks and she'd stay overnight one night every two weeks and look after the kids and that was my window into what it was like to have somebody at home doing stuff because while she was there she'd do the work she'd do a bit of washing and she'd clean the floor a bit and sometimes she'd bring food with her and it was honestly that I'd look forward to that every I mean it stopped after two years and there was only once every two weeks but um it was oh it was it was lush and I was like this is what it was like back in the day for men going out to work come back the food be on the table kids will be clean and sorted i mean no wonder yeah yeah no wonder but i just know um personally like she's she's very clever right like she's way clever than i am she's so smart and has so much value to give in the world and society and she's super talented so she wouldn't like she wouldn't be happy right and if she's not happy i'm i'm not happy like no one's happy so i yeah i think we're in this interesting point now where again if that's what people want to do then that's fine and i don't think we should make them feel bad for that if they genuinely both want to live in that traditional setup then yeah cool if it's healthy for you and you genuinely want to do it great yeah i think the other thing i've seen as well is is um i think the definition of trad wife has changed a little bit because i feel like before a trad wife was genuinely a trad wife but I have seen some trad wife influencers now on Instagram who have like 250 ,000 followers and quite a lot of brand deals and so are you a trad wife or are you a part-time influencer and you do all the child care yeah yeah that's yeah well again it's a big lie isn't it i think being a trad wife does sell actually now it seems and yeah i think lots of there are a lot of my trad trad wives i'm doing inverted commas it's a podcast so you can't see i've just realized uh who they're they're pretending that you know their whole life is looking gorgeous and doing all of the traditional work in the home when actually they have careers their career is pretty working exactly you actually got a job you probably got like a social media manager you've got like an assistant you've got a whole business yeah like you're you're a businesswoman yeah yeah completely and yeah we don't talk about that we just pretend that we're all uh just happy at home yeah i mean it's such a such a mad world kids growing up in now to me because well I'm sure to you as well because we just didn't none of this existed there was just there's no social media there was no internet there was no phones there was just a very simple kind of messaging it was still very simple and now it feels all completely in flux and there's all the chaos going on and uh I you know I think it will start to settle down I have hopes that things will start to settle down and we'll find a rhythm that works in this new world we're just at the moment dealing with the complexity and that is chaotic for all of us and it means that we're seeing things like it feeling embarrassing to have a boyfriend trad wives polarization between men and women and many other groups i have faith though that eventually we'll find a way to work in this new world that works for all of us and I also I think just to end as well I think um it's in like guiding the young people right like your sons my daughters we need to we need to give them an insight into the world we need to give them like advice I think it's really hard to expect them to go into this world where there's so many options and so many narratives and so many things that you could and couldn't be that didn't exist 20 30 years ago when we were maybe a bit younger and we need to help them to navigate this because back then i'm talking about 20 30 40 50 years ago things were shit for women right and now there are things that could make it less shit and there are more options for how you can live your life but i do feel like we need to help young men and boys and girls to navigate that like your post on linkedin what is a good relationship what questions should you be asking like before you get into a relationship you know um we do we just do that and also I feel like spend a little bit time off the internet as well you know I think um yes I think online narratives are a reflection of real life but also I feel like when we spend so much time online reading things and we can we can feel like that represents the whole world and i look around and i'm like it kind of does definitely in some ways but also it doesn't in some ways too and there's loads of examples that i can wheel off of healthy happy people who are in relationships who haven't even seen this article who were just getting on with their life so yes it's it's yes it's a mindful to navigate um i feel like i've got through this without getting cancelled i feel like you did too well done i'm not cancelled well we'll wait and see Elliot there's quite more well thank you everybody for listening take some time to go and read the article and let us know what you think and we will see you next week see ya bye

43:57browser. But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility, and availability varies 18+.