I'm Not Afraid to Say I Want a Boyfriend

British Vogue just published an article asking if having a boyfriend is embarrassing now, and apparently the internet collectively decided: yes, actually. 

Women are cropping their partners out of photos. Single women are being celebrated like they just won an award. If you dare post "dinner with this one," you're basically committing social suicide.

I read Chanté Joseph's piece about how we're living in an era of "heterofatalism" where straight women have collectively lost faith in partnership, and I get it. Frankly, it makes me sad. Here’s why this is happening.

The dating apps are fucked. They’re transactional nightmares. Swiping through infinite options has literally rewired our brains to think commitment is optional. We're no longer committal as a society because we're used to having it all, and relationships that require longevity, commitment, and loyalty just aren't in alignment with our dating culture anymore.

Dating apps turned human connection into a marketplace where everyone's shopping for the best deal while keeping three backup options in their cart. We're swiping through faces like we're ordering from a menu, and it's destroyed our ability to commit to anything. 

Why invest in the person in front of you when someone "better" might be one swipe away? The transactional nature of swiping has fundamentally changed how we approach relationships, turning something that should be about connection into something that feels like shopping.

Joseph's article captures the exhaustion women feel from years of watching others perform relationships. Women centered their entire identities around their boyfriends, posting constant couple content, making men the most interesting thing about them. That performance was exhausting to witness and probably worse to live through.

The economic reality adds another layer. According to the Brookings Institution, men who experienced the biggest drops in earnings also saw the sharpest decline in marriage rates. Women aren't being shallow when they opt out of partnership; they're making rational decisions about not tying themselves financially to someone who's going to limit their options rather than expand them.

The traditional model of partnership has been terrible for women in so many ways, but what if instead of giving up entirely, we actually redefined what partnership could look like?

I'm a child of the 90s Disney Golden Era, the one where princesses fell in love, were empowered, and saved the world. Belle changed the Beast back into a man. Tiana was cool being a frog because she fell in love with the prince and they made it work. Mulan saved f-ing China for cring out loud. These women were hardworking, had their own dreams, and love was part of them, not their whole story.

I learned about love from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 27 Dresses, Serendipity, and 10 Things I Hate About You. These rom-coms taught me hope, taught me that love was laughter, that opposites attract, and that falling for your best friend could be the best choice you’d ever make. 

Did you notice that there's been a decline in rom-coms over the past decade?  I didn’t really get that until it was pointed out to me.  There hasn’t really been a Notebook-esque type of love story on the big screen in some time. Reese Witherspoon talked about this on a podcast, pointing out that rom-coms taught us how to love in modern times. They gave us a blueprint for navigating conflict, for choosing someone while still being yourself, and a shared belief that maybe, just maybe despite all of the childhood traumas and shit past relationships, that love conquers all.

If you’ve been following along, there’s a Netflix series, Nobody Wants This, that’s resonating so hard right now with its audience.  I personally love this show and Adam Brody is a dream.  The interesting thing about this show is that for the first time, the challenges presented by the characters are real and tangible.  They’re being faced with life issues the we, as a modern dating culture are also struggling with.  Joanne and Noah also show us that despite the obstacles in their way, love and the idea of soulmates is still real. They're navigating actual modern conflicts—career tensions, family expectations, religious identity—and choosing each other anyway.

The show also depicts healthy male-female friendships through the sister Morgan and Dax's dynamic. It proves that platonic relationships between men and women can exist without being sexually coded, which a lot of people think isn't sustainable. I personally have so many genuinely platonic guy friends because of how we met, I'm friends with their girlfriends, we just hang out, it's chill, not weird, and I love every second of it. 

Women can choose. 

Women have only had the power to work, vote, and make financial choices independently for a historically tiny amount of time. We're over-educated and have started out-earning men in many sectors. Thousands of years of traditional gender dynamics suddenly don't fit the mold of modern partnership.

Instead of figuring out what new models could work, we're being told to just do it alone. A lot of women are choosing that because being alone is genuinely better than being in a partnership that makes you smaller. 

Research from the Institute for Family Studies shows that essentially all of the fertility decline since 2001 comes from changes in marriage patterns: women marrying later or not at all, shifting birth rates, consumer spending, housing markets, everything.

Eesh - am I a statistic? Are you?

I have a Master’s degree, multiple businesses, and a taste for spa days and Michelin restaurants. 

I'm still here saying: I want a boyfriend. I want a boyfriend who supports the fact that I run multiple businesses and wants me to go on girls' weekends just as much as I want him watching the Knicks on Tuesday nights with his bros. I'm cool with him not texting me back immediately because we both have our own lives. I want love that shows up.

I grew up in a house where my parents had gender roles, but they had very specific duties that worked for them. 

I don't know exactly what modern partnership looks like for me because I'm still single. I know I'm still a girl who loves when a man opens my door. I love being taken care of. I know I can take care of myself, but I love the idea of someone loving me so much that they can anticipate my needs. That's not about money or status, that's about who you are, your character, what you value. For me, that's love.

In Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules of Love, ​​he teaches that successful dating isn’t about rushing into love but about building clarity, self-awareness, and alignment. He urges people to first feel comfortable being alone and to define what love means for them before seeking it in someone else. When dating, he suggests viewing each encounter as a learning opportunity: your partner becomes a mirror and a teacher, helping you grow. Shetty outlines three important dates that reveal compatibility beyond attraction: one focused on values (what truly matters to each person), another on growth and goals (where each sees their life heading), and a third on service and contribution (how each wants to give back or make a difference). Through these mindful conversations, you discover whether your lives, purposes, and principles align. Lasting love, he says, isn’t found through chemistry alone, but through shared purpose, character, and consistent effort.  I don’t know about you, but I can get on board with this advice.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before talks about meet-cutes.  The dream is still there.  Dating apps have turned connection into a transaction, and people are moving toward real-world interactions.  The hope of a meet-cute is so back, despite boyfriends not being cool. There's so much beauty in being able to talk to a stranger, to look at someone from across the room, lock eyes, and just know.  Where do you think those movie scenes come from? It has to be someone’s real experience; why not make it your own? 

Be intentional. Be strategic. Have a night out with the girls, go sit at a sports bar and talk to the cute guy next to you who's engrossed in the game. He's probably not even thinking about having you, but that’s okay.  Most dues get rejected so often, they are probably more scared than anything to say hi. 

We've treated every first date like an audition for marriage, analyzed every text for hidden meaning, kept scorecards of who invested more. What if we relaxed into the idea that you can enjoy someone's company without immediately calculating whether they're marriage material?

Joseph's article about boyfriends being embarrassing resonates because it names something real: the exhaustion of performing relationships, the economic calculations that make partnership seem irrational, the way women have been taught to center men at their own expense. 

The cultural shift toward celebrating singleness is valid. Women building lives they actually want to live instead of lives that look good on Instagram? That's genuine progress.

Women can be financially stable alone now. We have our own careers, our own money, our own access to housing and credit. Some women are choosing intentional singleness and building complete, fulfilling lives around friendships, careers, creative projects, communities. That path is valid and beautiful.

Other women are in partnerships that genuinely make their lives bigger. They've found men who contribute equally, who don't require them to shrink, who add value instead of extracting it. Those relationships exist too.

As for me? I’m going to keep being the person who believes in love, who wants partnership, who thinks romance is still possible (just with more realistic conflicts and less spontaneous singing).

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