EPI 34: Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing OR Just Bad for your Aura?!

A headline asked whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing—and it landed because so many women are done letting public romance define their worth. I take you from “boyfriend land” and early mommy blogging to a new center of gravity where sovereignty, safety, and self-respect lead. As a Gen X Black woman who grew up in church culture, married young, and lived the trad-wife script, I’ve seen how the internet once rewarded hard launches and identity-by-relationship. Now, younger women are choosing privacy, soft launches, and lives not anchored to men. That isn’t cynicism; it’s clarity.

We dig into why Gen Z calls relationships a brand risk, the rise of “aura,” and how heterofatalism names the real fatigue of cishet dating. I share why I posted the back of my boyfriend’s head, what protecting our adult kids online looks like, and how choosing to share less can reflect more power. We also talk data: why single women often age happier and wealthier, why men’s outcomes improve with marriage, and how that asymmetry shapes whether marriage, partnership, or a private bond makes sense. The theme running through it all is agency—love as a choice, not a rescue plan.

You’ll hear what a sovereign relationship feels like in practice: two full lives, mutual respect, effort and consistency without codependence. We celebrate friendship, community, and mothering as real sites of intimacy, and we reject manipulative “get-his-money” strategies that mirror the worst of patriarchy. Share your joy loudly or guard it quietly—either way, let the center be you. If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your take: do you hard launch, soft launch, or keep love off the grid?

Chapters

• 0:00 The Vogue Article And The Soft Launch
• 2:35 Generational Views On Public Relationships
• 4:48 From Boyfriend Land To Mommy Blogging
• 8:50 Gen Z, Aura, And Heterofatalism
• 12:05 Single Life, Soft Girl Era, And Autonomy
• 15:40 Research On Marriage Outcomes For Women And Men
• 19:25 Centering Women’s Power And Private Love
• 23:10 Choosing Partners Without Potential Fantasies
• 26:30 Beyond Marriage: Companionship And Practical Realities
• 29:10 Dating Fatigue, Safety, And Patriarchy
• 33:05 How Her Relationship Began And Why It Works
• 36:15 Community, Friendship, And Non-Romantic Love

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

So the other day I saw the British Vogue article is having a boyfriend embarrassing? And I saw it on my Instagram story, so I reshared it to my stories. And I wrote, Low key, it is a little embarrassing, but my boyfriend is the salt of the MF in Earth, and he is one of the best humans I've ever met, so I'll keep him. Even before I read that article, I have noticed that a lot more women on the internet are sharing their boyfriends with like the back of their head, which is literally exactly what I did. Actually, that was my soft launch post I put on Instagram, which I'll post here, was just a picture of me holding the back of his head. But our first date was like this epic whole first weekend because we had been, I call it Mr. Texas Online because he is really far away, obviously lives in Texas. Our first date was like a whole weekend he planned for us in Detroit, which was really, really fun. So I had been posting all week on all my Instagram stories like what we were doing and where we were going and how much fun it was. And I posted him with a picture on my stories of just his head with like an emoji. And one of my guy friends was like, There is no way I would be happy with that. Now, let me say one of my guy friends who wrote this, he is 30 years old right now, I think about to be 31. My boyfriend, by the way, is 56. So there is a big generational difference between the guy who wrote that and my actual man who did not care at all whether I put his head as an emoji or whether I put his real face. We do have some legitimate reasons why I'm not showing his face. It's partly because we are older people with older grown kids, and we don't really want our kids all up in our business because our kids are all on social media. That's part of it. But anyway, I just thought it was so funny that one of my younger guy friends would say that like I would never let a woman, I would never take a woman out on a whole day and then have her post me as an emoji head, which is partly what I want to talk about in today's episode, is having a boyfriend embarrassing how it's different for generations for both men and women. It was a very viral article, and it's kind of setting up this cultural moment. I appreciated that she called out. And I think the reason why it went viral is because women in this generation, this younger generation, I'm Gen X, I'm 48. Women in the younger generation, these millennials and like the Gen Z age that are at the like dating, maybe I kind of want to get married age. For them, considering boyfriends as kind of embarrassing is honestly kind of a flat coming from your elder Gen X woman over here. But before we get into all that, let me just introduce myself quickly. I'm Grace Sandra, a writer, author, advocate, activist, mom, etc. And this is the Out Here Trying to Survive podcast. Please consider this a warm hug of solidarity from me to you. I am rooting for black women. It's made for black women and it centers black women. And if that's you or you want to learn about that, welcome to episode 34. Yeah, so I want to talk about this article. Let me get my glasses on because like I said, I'm Gen X and I'm going half blind. Y'all, not me with the Bifal because I gotta look up like this. So in the article, she says that if someone so much as says my boyfriend on social media, they're muted. I had never heard of that. Again, I'm Gen X, but I know this was written for millennialslash Gen Z women, probably more Gen Z than millennial. And I think that's fucking crazy that that would happen, but I get it. Just hear me out. So I like that she talks about this idea of boyfriend land, and that is basically a world where women's online identities centered around the lives of their partners, a situation rarely seen reversed. And this is about the time where women's identities were defined by the relationship. Now, if you're talking about women's identities being defined by the relationship, that is me, baby. I grew up Gen X at a time when, especially particularly for those of us who grew up in the church or in evangelical culture in general, we were taught that we need to get us a man. As soon as you get a man, you're gonna be happy. And then what you're gonna do with that man is you're gonna marry that man. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna marry that man and you're gonna live happily ever after. And of course, you're gonna wait until you marry him to have sex. You're not gonna like sex before then. But then once you get married, then you better become a whole freaking a hoe for that man. So I was kind of raised in that generation of like, this is the most celebrated thing you can do is become a wife. And if you think about it, I was born in the 70s, so we're just literally coming out of that generation. I mean, I think even after I was born, where women were just able to like literally get their own credit card and have their own bank account and be able to buy their own house and all of these things that my mom's generation definitely didn't have. I mean, consider that my mom was born in 1940. My mom had me older and I'm 48. She was born in 1940. Women were not able to do any of that. So my mom was definitely not teaching me, like, you are fine on your own. You can be whatever you want without a man, you can do whatever you want without a man. That was not the little speech that I was getting. She was always talking about when you get married, Grace, and when you get married. So what did I do as I went and got married at 22? Because that is what I was taught to do as a good Christian girl. And I honestly wasn't like the greatest little Christian girl, but that is one thing I did right, quote unquote, right. You get my point. Like women's identities were defined by this boyfriend land. And then when you get social media taking off and people having, you know, especially the whole trad wives movement, people having all of this content about women being married. And then from there, one of my favorite authors of all time, Anne Lamont, wrote this book called Operating Instructions. And it was, as people later came to call it, it was like the first mommy blog. And she really just goes into all of her feelings about being a mommy and all of this stuff. Although she was not married, and then she later converted to Christianity. But anyway, mommy blogging was a thing that started in the early 2000s that I fully partook in as soon as I had my first son in 2005. So I started writing about my day-to-day life as a mom and blogging all of these stories about my kids. Thank God a lot of it is gone and not on the internet anymore. It was really embarrassing. But mommy blogging was a big thing, and it was a space for women to talk about what their life was like as traditional wives. And I was really heavily in that space. There was this organization called Blog Her, and Blog Her like really celebrated women's voices. This was before TikTok. This was really honestly just as Instagram was starting to kind of become a thing. The big thing back then was like it went from my space to people were blogging on Zanga, X-A-N-G-A, y'all remember Zanga? And then it went from that to WordPress, and everybody had a well, all the mommies who were writing or wanting to share their kind of trad wife lives were mommy blogging. And then that gave rise to Instagram and TikTok and all that came later. But during the whole mommy blogging phase, it just was pretty much celebrated amongst women of my generation that, like, that is what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to get married and you were supposed to have babies and you were supposed to live and celebrate in that. It was, I feel like, seen as an ideal that you were supposed to thrive. As a woman, you were supposed to thrive, especially in even evangelical Christian circles. You were supposed to thrive as a wife and mom. Because I was married from 22 to like 36, and then I got married again at 37, from like 37 to 42. So I was married for like 20 years combined. I have no idea what the experience was like for a lot of Christian women who were waiting on that, who are like now my age, who never got married, or who got married very late. But I have seen some of the commentary about this, particularly from older women, and apparently it was hell out here for Gen X women who were unmarried, particularly in Christian spaces, to what it is now, what it is now, what a difference. So now we got younger generations, particularly Gen Z, who are seeing launching a boyfriend as cringe, and on top of all that, as a threat to their personal brand. And I am not mad at them, y'all. I am not mad at them. They are seeing being single as a flex. She says here, they want the prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it. I don't understand what that means, to be honest with you, the norminess. Not my old Gen X ass having to look up a word and an article written for Gen Z. Norminess. Meaning, Lord, okay, it's a whole thing, y'all. Norminess is not a standard English word, but it likely refers to the state or quality of being a normy, N-O-R-M-I-E, a slang term for a normal person who conforms to mainstream tastes and habits. A normy is often seen as someone with unremarkable interests who doesn't deviate from popular culture or opinion. Damn. It shows a lack of distinctiveness. This term can imply a person has no unique or counter-cultural personality traits. Okay, so what she's saying here is that some of these women want the prize and celebration of partnership, but they understand the norminess of it, that they are boring as hell, apparently. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don't want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with becoming partnered. Let's define heterofatalism too. It is the belief that heterosexual relationships are doomed to fail due to inherent flaws, frustration with men's dating behaviors, and a pessimistic outlook on finding a fulfilling partnership. It stems from a sense of disappointment in dating where efforts to form connections with men are often met with unsatisfactory outcomes, leading to a feeling that all relationships will end in failure and is particularly associated with the experiences of straight women frustrated with contemporary heterosexual dating dynamics. Okay, well, in that case, I've been hetero fatal as fuck.

unknown: 9:25

As fuck.

SPEAKER_00: 9:27

So then she goes on to share more about like how women online are hiding their relationships that people don't know whether ever with a man or not with a man. I feel like I've seen that a lot lately. Or they'll just do something really subtle, like the little clink of the glasses, where you can kind of see the man's hand, which I have done before several times, but that's only because I was out here dating and I was dating like two men, maybe three men at a time, or or literally just dating one man for a month, then dating a different man the next month, and just really trying to get to know men and realizing when it wasn't a good fit to move the fuck on. And I'm not gonna post a picture of every man I'm dating, but like doing a little glass clink did not seem like that big of a deal. But anyway, I just think it's interesting because I wasn't doing it because I thought having a boyfriend was lame because none of those men were my boyfriend, those are just men I allowed to take me out. I thought this was so funny. So on the delusional diaries podcast, Hallie and Jazz are talking about whether having a boyfriend is quote unquote lame now. And one of them said, Why does having a boyfriend feel Republican? I am dead. I am dead. And then somebody said, Boyfriends are out of style, they won't come back in until they start acting right. In essence, having a boyfriend typically takes hits on a woman's aura. So for all of you other gen X folks, aura is this new thing that before the word was Riz. My son, who's 16, one of his friends told me the other day that aura was on its way out, too. But aura is apparently the new Riz. How person is, and I don't even fully know how to explain it, but this is what the young folks are saying, right? The women nowadays are like, if you have aura, like if you find, if you cue, if you are it girl, if you think you're all that, and then you get a man like your aura is reduced. Okay, girlies. Okay. I did think this was very interesting because this also fits me. It says, even partnered women will lament about men and heterosexuality, partly in solidarity with other women, but also because it is now. I don't know where the rest of that sentence went. I must have cut it off in my screenshot. It says, being partnered doesn't affirm your womanhood anymore. It is now no longer considered an achievement, and if anything, it's become more of a flex to just pronounce yourself single. And as straight women, we're confronting something that every other sexuality has had to contend with, which is a politicization of our identity. I love that she said, however, as traditional roles are starting to crumble, maybe we are being forced to reevaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality. And that I think is an amazing thing. I love that for this generation. I love that they're starting to say, I don't have to be with a man. I literally don't have to. I also love that the article points out that there's obviously no shame in finding love or falling in love or celebrating your joy. As long as we are openly rethinking heteronormativity, which is something I am so passionate about, particularly as an LGBTQIA plus ally. And I also love that she talks about how single women now are romanticizing their single life. And if you look on YouTube, if you just type in the word romanticizing, I mean, I think I even have a podcast title with romanticizing in the podcast title. I love that women are talking about their soft girl era. You know, I have a whole system that I built, which by the way is available on my stand store. It's called the soft girl survival system to figure out how to literally, literally survive all the things that we're going through without feeling like you need to depend on a man. It's really not about the man aspect, but more about like how do you find what you need within yourself? How do you become the soft girl that you need to be? And not for the purpose of finding a man, but so that you can be the best version of you. And I love that she says this is a nail in the coffin of a centuries-old heterosexual fairy tale that never really benefited men to begin with. YouTube video on this, and I will link it in the comments, about an article that came out a few years ago that got big, like way bigger than this one. It went viral, viral, viral. Talked about this idea that basically heteronormativity and getting married is not benefiting women overall. It talked about the idea of how the most dangerous man in a woman's life is usually typically her boyfriend, fiance, or husband. Shortly after that, it's her father or brother. The article talked about how multiple, multiple studies have shown that when a woman gets older as she's aging, that she is so much more likely to be happy and content if she's not married. She's wealthier, she has better relationships with her kids, she has more hobbies, she's reading more, she has more animals, animals that she loves, hence the cat lady thing, that women really are starting to come alive as they get older and realize they do not need a man because now we can have our own bank accounts and we can have our own homes and we can have our own careers, and we're older now. Our kids are off and we can still pursue meaningful connections with them and restore those connections without someone coming in and sabotaging them. And the article goes in great depth about how men do not have the same outcomes. If a man is single as he gets older, he is fatter in an unhealthy way, he is not making as much money, he's not as fulfilled, he's usually very lonely, he's not doing social things, he's typically not pursuing his kids, he's not going to the doctors like he should be, he's not doing his checkups, so he's dying younger. And sometimes, if they're lonely enough, they will unalive themselves and they don't have as many friends and they're not pursuing therapy, so they're unaliving themselves at a much greater rate than women. And a lot of times people attest that to something being wrong with women, or somehow women are somehow making these men unalive themselves. It's no, it's because women are going to therapy and they're dealing with their stuff and they're co-communing. We're communing with our girlfriends and we're creating community and we're making sure that we're repairing and restoring the relationship with our children or just having good relationships with our children in general. And men are unaliving themselves because they're not doing those critical things that women do as we age. And so, men, if they are single, as they get older, they are unhappier. And if they get married, all of those outcomes get better. And so, what that means is that studies have now proven what women have been like literally growing towards for these last 20 or 30 years of things have been evolving and the cultural conversation is shifting so dramatically, is women are realizing, like, oh yeah, these studies are true. We are just happier without y'all. We are literally just happy without y'all. And so many of y'all are so violent in so many ways that it's literally not benefiting us to be with you. And so these younger generations are like, not only that, but it's embarrassing. Y'all are embarrassing, fully embarrassing. And I have been on these internet streets a low-key Miss Andrus, which I believe is just a response to misogyny. Because we still don't have the power. We still making less than y'all, and we still getting unalive by y'all and beaten by y'all and treated abhorribly by y'all in so many different ways. So I'm not feeling too bad about my little low-key Miss Andry. But I'm a feminist and a womanist, and I have been out here wanting liberation theology for all my sisters. For real. That's why my entire platform centers black womanhood. Why I'm really committed to advocating for black women in every way possible till the day I'm not here no more. Even then, my spirit will live on. But here's where it gets personal, reflective, and nuanced. Because behold and low, lo and behold, like Jesse Wu says, I watched so much Jesse Wu. I talk like her now. Behold and low, lo and behold, I'm in a relationship. Like I said when we first got together, I soft launched with a picture with the back of his head. I was not in any way embarrassed. Like I said, that was kind of more logistical because of our situation with our children. We are both older. Like I said, I'm 48 and he's 56. So we're not dabbling in all these kind of weird relationship dynamics anymore. We've both been married before. We're more mature. We're just trying to figure out what is the best way to have a relationship right now at this current trajectory and how to share or not share that online. And trust me, we are both really excited to share each other when the time is right. At the same time, y'all, I'm old as dirt, and I think I've earned the right. Not that I need to earn it, but I've definitely earned the right to love quietly and not have to put my relationship all out there. Because I definitely have in the past. And also for me, sharing less right now, I'm older and more mature, so I'm not centering this man in my life the way I have previously. So, in some ways, me sharing less is a reflection of what I want for the younger girlies and what the younger girlies are already getting a hold of. It's like these men shouldn't be centered in our lives anyway. They should not be the center, and our whole life revolves around them. Now it is something different if there's a young couple or a married couple or even an older couple who like they want to make content together, they want to partner together, that's fine. You know, or they're making family content or mom content, trad wife content, that's totally fine. I think that maybe my first marriage when I first started mommy blogging and sharing so much about my marriage, and I was sharing the good parts and the bad parts because I wanted to be vulnerable. Like, this is not perfect. And I've been taught that getting married was so much like the answer to all my problems, and my first marriage was so imperfect and so unhealthy. Our conflict was so unhealthy. There was things about me that was so unhealthy. There was stuff about him that was so unhealthy, y'all. Like it was just unhealthy as fuck. And I just look back at that and I was sharing so much of our marriage, good and bad. That's one thing I can say. I was sharing good and bad. I've always done pretty well online and sharing the good and the bad. People get real happy stuff from me, and you're gonna get the ugly stuff too. I've never really just been like, look at my big, beautiful, happy life. And I've never been like, look at this misery I'm in only. Because I definitely have had times where I've been like, I'm in misery, y'all. I'm in fucking misery. Someone save me from my misery. But I do wonder if my first marriage, how much I shared online, was maybe performative because I thought this is who I have to be. I have to be a wife, I have to be a mom. I have to be a traditional wife in some way. Like there was a whole time where I never showed cleavage online, which some of y'all might not believe because my titties be all on these internet streets everywhere now. I used to not think that was what I should do as a traditional wife. I didn't even get my nose pierced for a long time because I was so heavily involved in evangelical Christian culture and I wanted it, but I was so like brainwashed to believe that as a traditional Christian wife, I shouldn't ever show like a little tip of my cleavage, nor have my nose pierced. I mean, it was crazy, y'all. And no, we were not Mormon. We were evangelical Christian going to like Baptist churches and then like a non-denominational vineyard y kind of church. We went to one of those. So for where I'm at now, me sharing more privately or sharing less of our relationship is more about power. It's not about shame or being embarrassed by having a boyfriend. It's more about like, wow, I'm really firmly standing in my power now. I know that this relationship doesn't define me. If you heard my previous episode, I talked a lot about how I got to a place where I fully was fine if I never had a man for the rest of my whole goddamn life. I finally got to the point where I'm like, I don't need this or want this at all. Right before I met him. And I finally got to a place where I was like, yeah, if I ever get with anyone, like this relationship is going to be so fucking special. It's going to be so special to me in so many ways. That's what it is. So when I don't share now, it's not from shame. It's more from, yeah, I just am really aware that this is not my savior. It's not something that I have to have in any way. It's just something that I want to have. I like having him around. I don't need him to be around. You know what I'm saying? And also, I think as a Gen X woman who's been divorced twice, me and him both have been divorced and have kids, things just feel, I think, a little bit more sacred. Now, if any younger ladies, I know my podcast audience is typically 35 women and up, but even for those of you who are 35 and never been married before, I do want to say as an older lady out here in these dating streets that you do go to a point where it feels like you know more of who you are, and it really is a better place to love from. And cishat men, y'all, they don't tend to change, they don't tend to change. Like I said, they're not doing their work. So who they are when they are older is who they are. Like I said, my man is 56. Who he is is who he is. So when I chose him, I was choosing him. I'm not, there is no potential when you're dating at this age. You're not dating for potential. These men are who they are. He is who he motherfucking is. So when I chose him, I'm like, okay, are you fully content with who he is right now today? If he never changes another thing, are you content with this man? And vice versa. You know, just a little note to my younger women friends who are dating. When you're a little bit older, things are a little bit more clearly. I actually think this is a great time to start a new relationship, is when you're much, much, much older. I think it's a great time to move forward in a way that's a little bit more serious, but maybe not even marriage. That's not for everyone. And as someone who's already tried marriage twice, oh it's challenging to thinking about doing something like that again. It really is. I will say that I'm someone who's always, in the past couple years, said, I'll never get married again. I only ever want to have like a long-term partnership. Maybe just like a guy I'm hanging out with every five or seven years or so. I don't know. I didn't really have a plan like that, but I really wanted to have like a companion. Like I mentioned in my last episode, I wanted to have ongoing sex. I wanted to have a companion. I wanted to have like a guy in my life who I felt like was really special, who found me special, and just kind of relax into that. Probably again, because of my generation and being Gen X and then being married for 20 years of my adult life, I kind of thought like that was more ideal. And when I finally woke up and realized, like, that is not an ideal girl. Like, what are you talking about? Now I'm with someone who does actually want to get married again. I have told him before, like, wow, this is not something I ever thought about. But again, we're pretty new, so it's pretty new for that kind of conversation. But it is interesting because our relationship does kind of prove the statistics that men typically do want to get married again, and men typically do get married again immediately, almost immediately after divorce, typically don't wait long to get married again. Whereas women nowadays are like, yeah, this is just not really a thing that I feel like I need to do in any way. Don't really need to legally make this happen, don't really need to put our finances together, don't really need to change up our life insurance policies and all these things that are honestly really complicated, including changing my name again. You know, after doing that shit twice, it's frustrating. So, what do y'all think? Do you think that women should be shamed for hard launching their boyfriends, losing followers, being muted on social media? I actually personally think that's crazy. I don't think that any woman should be shamed like that. I think what I want to do as an older woman is I want to help younger women realize everything y'all are thinking about how potentially dangerous it is to associate yourself with a cishat man. Everything that y'all are fearing, all of the exhaustion that you feel from dating, which almost every single woman I know, including myself, has been just exhausted on dating in general because the dating pool is so poisoned with larva and maggots, liars and abusers and cheaters, emotionally violent men. I get the fatigue like fully. The one thing that I like about the fatigue that young women are experiencing like the full ramifications of the patriarchy and the full ramifications of a lot of men who have embraced misogyny. What I like about that is that they're saying, yeah, this heteronormativity shit, like this is bullshit. The idea that I should get married to be happy, like it's bullshit. I love that they're getting there. I love that they're saying these things. I love that there's even some of this, like maybe cultural regression, because honestly, like sometimes shit has to hit rock bottom for everybody to wake up and be like, let's do things differently. And this hetero fatalism, like the idea that men ultimately will disappoint you, and the idea that like public enthusiasm for a relationship just in general, that that feels like naive or cringy. I think that's part of the growing pains. Both can exist. This is where nuance comes in. Both can exist because I I felt all of that. I felt hetero fatal as fuck, like I said. But then I also got to a point where I'm like, I'm not going to close the door on something that could still be beautiful for me personally, but I realize I just don't need it anymore. But I also, you know, I had enough years of dating where I was just like, this shit is this is unbearable. I can't keep living like this. And as a matter of fact, I wasn't dating. I decided not to date. Like I said in my last episode, listen to it if you haven't yet, that I decided not to date anymore at all. I did not meet my man right now on a dating app or trying to look for him or anything like that. He kept seeing my stuff come up on his Facebook. He said that my stories kept popping up, and then he reached out to me. I told him right away, I'm not interested. Sorry. And then he like reached out again the next week, and I was like, Yeah, you know, you do seem nice, but no. And then he like reached out again the next week. I mean, the whole process of him reaching out to me before I finally agreed to even a phone call. Actually, I didn't agree to a phone call. I finally sent him a voice clip. It was like three weeks, but he reached out to me, I don't know how many times, but like quite a few times. And he wasn't being rude or overly aggressive. I wasn't ever offended because he was being so polite and respectful in his discourse. But I was just like, yeah, it's not happening, bro. This is literally not happening. And I think what he got that he still appreciates about me is he knew that my life was not anchored in men and would never be anchored in him. That I have a big, full life full of my children, my girlfriends, my career, my aspirations, my desire to even grow this podcast. Like he knows I have other things in life that anchor me and that my life is centered around, and that he was never going to be directly in the center of it. You know, and as a side note, I think men appreciate that as much as women appreciate that. I love that he got a lot of shit going on in his life. He has so many things going on in his life that I'm intrigued by, that I'm interested in, that I respect, that I appreciate, that I'm in awe of. Just all the things that he does and all the things he thinks about and all the things that he is and all of what he's done in his life, I'm like, that's fucking cool, bro. Like, that's really fucking cool. I love all this stuff about you. And I love that his life is also not centered around me. As soon as people start centering their whole lives around each other, like then it just turns into a big codependent ball, which is never healthy anyway. So I love that all these young women are like, we are never going to be a codependent ball with y'all. We are going to have our own full lives. We're gonna have our cats and our books and our friends and our yoga and our trips, our solo trips to Japan and our girls' trips to Miami, etc. What I love about this article again is that it hopefully releases the shame. What I want young women to know is that the fairy tales and the sitcoms, growing pains, and all these things that I was raised with, that all of that are not true in the way it was presented to us. But that real, actual, true love is possible and it doesn't have to be through a man. I experienced, and I've said this so many times, and I want to keep harping on it. I have really beautiful girl friendship. I have three right now that are really strong and really beautiful in my inner circle, and we are all in love with each other. We're all heterosexual women. Actually, no, that's not true. One of them is homosexual, but she got her own little girlfriend. Like, we're we are not in love with each other in a romantic way, but we love each other as girlfriends. My girlfriends are such an important part of my love life. You know what I mean? As a straight person, like they are such an important part of how I receive intimacy in this world and how I give intimacy in this world. And it is fully possible to find joy and fulfillment in that. For me, I'm also a woman with three children, and I also love my relationships with my children, and I will do anything for them until the day I die, will pursue these children, will always pursue them, will always love them. I always want them to be in my life. They will always be a big part of how I love and receive and give community and receive community. As a Gen Xer, I have come to understand marriage is not a part of my survival plan, nor does it have to be. And y'all, we don't have to be like this fucking idiot, Shira Seven. Like, I remember for a while she was really popular because she was talking about how, okay, well, if you're gonna have a man in your life, then use him for money. Y'all, don't be that girl. Do not be that girl. And she got droves and droves of women on her platform, mostly Gen Z millennial women, because these women are like, well, fuck it. Like, if we're gonna have men in our lives, like we might as well use them for money. The reason why I always hated what she was doing is because it was just a woman basically teaching other women to do evil shit. Now, I talked about Miss Andry. It is one thing to be in a relationship with someone that is reciprocal and ask for money for help or or whatever, or just you know, ask your boyfriend, like, what's crazy is I ain't never asked this man for no money. He'd just be sending it to me. Like, hey, here, go have fun. I took my kids to have a birthday party. He sent me money. When me and my girl went to Comic-Con over in the Detroit area, he sent me money. He was like, Hey, this is so y'all can have a little fun. He just sends me money. I don't ever have to ask. But I ain't shaming women that do ask, but that's my point. When you're asking for money in a relationship and it's reciprocal and it's not for the purpose of using someone, but what Shira Seven was teaching women like, okay, well, we hate men anyway, so if we're gonna have them in our lives, let's just use them for money, and really teaching women to be really, really manipulative, dishonest, Really horrible people. And I had a friend, she's not my friend no more. And this is a big reason why because she was a big Shira Seven fan and she was doing all of these things just to use men. I think she still is, I don't know. But I was just like, this is really disgusting behavior. And I do understand because her gen she was younger than me. I think she is a whole generation different than me. I think she's like 36 or 37 now. I'm not sure. So she's probably a millennial. Basically is right in line with everything this article said. And for her, it's like, why the hell not? And for me, it was like, because you're being a horrible person. Don't be a dishonest, horrible person. We don't need to do that, y'all. We don't need to do that. I personally, as a woman, as a human, am never going to just try to be a horrible, dishonest, mean, unkind person for shits and giggles. And I'm never going to teach my children to be mean, horrible, dishonest, unkind people for shits and giggles. And so the whole Shira Seven movement, I'm like, you took something that is really a healthy thing, teaching women that they don't need a man to survive and they can be truly independent and truly happy and peaceful person. You took that such a beautiful thing and then added on this whole element, but like also be a bitch in a bad way. Because you can be a bitch, you can be a bad bitch in a good way. Or you can put all of that dissonance, resistance into something that really matters, like fighting for social justice or or or or feeding hungry kids or something that's worth a damn, but using men for money? How unoriginal. And also, you really want to be as evil as men who just use women for sex and then dump them on the side of the road literally and figuratively. Ew. Oh, I'm so disgusted. Y'all, if you know me and you know my platform, I don't really like hating on women for almost anything, but this. Please don't be a dumbass, basic ass, original ass bitch and just use men for money. Like, please. There's so many more ways we can get money nowadays. Besides becoming evil. That's not an option. That should not be an option. The new flex isn't being single or partnered per se, it's being sovereign. There is no need to broadcast your relationship to validate your life. But if you want to share your relationship, if it makes you happy, do that. Please don't reject love just to prove your independence. If love finds you, embrace it, baby girl, embrace it. Nowadays, after all these years, women are finally allowed to love on their own terms. We are allowed to love quietly, privately, or even loudly, with maybe some chagrin, but on our own terms. So, no, my conclusion is having a boyfriend is not embarrassing, fully. Maybe somewhat, a little bit, depending on who the audience is. But as a grown-ass woman, I don't give a fuck. But maybe for the first time, beautifully, it's just not a headline anymore. I hope that most of my listeners will be like, oh, Grace has a boyfriend. I hope he's good to her. I hope he loves her. Good for her. But not like, oh my God, Grace finally has a good boyfriend. She finally got a man who loves her. Oh my god, her whole life must be amazing. Which is where we were 20 years ago. And I thank God we are not there anymore. So did y'all read the article? I'm wondering what you guys thought of the article. Do you have a boyfriend? Do you find it embarrassing? And also, if you answer that, what generation are you in? I'd like to know. At the end of the day, y'all, I really do believe in manifesting our future and our destiny and what we want. And what I have been telling the universe and God that I want is a peace-filled life with people around me who are safe, who love me well, who I love, who I enjoy, who really enjoy me and love me for who I am. And that could be girlfriends, that could be my children, that could be other friends and colleagues I meet along the way. It could be a man, it could be a man we're just friends, it could be a man who I'm just sexual with, and that's it. It can be a man I'm romantically with, and we both friends, and we sexual and we romantic and all of those things. Like I've just been very open to experiencing a peace-filled life. A peace-filled motherfucking life. That's the kind of life I've been trying to manifest. And so the fact that this entire calendar year, this entire calendar year, I have been trying to manifest the shit out of everything. I've been scripting, I've been meditating, I've been trying to manifest a whole lot of shit. And I haven't this calendar year specifically wrote in like I'm trying to manifest a big, beautiful relationship because I did that last year. And as I said in my last episode, that really fell flat on my face because I ended up kind of low-key falling in love with a man who actually had a girlfriend the whole time and was just hiding it from me. And I ended up feeling really embarrassed and ashamed. And I just felt like I'm done with that being this big ass goal in my life. So when I think about you, I want you to really think about what do you really want when it comes to a boyfriend? If you want one, do not be ashamed of it. If you don't, and you're like, yeah, I just really don't think I want that. I really don't think I do want to be married, then y'all, then don't be ashamed of that. Then really try to manifest and put out in the world what you really actually want. What do you think will bring you the most peace? If you're a younger woman and you're like, I still do want to have kids, like despite the 4B movement and despite what women are saying, like divorce your ex, not your ex, divorce your husband, break up with your boyfriend, etc. I think there really has to be a place of sovereignty, like I said earlier, where we are fully living into what we want, despite what the culture has. But I am thankful that the culture has got us to a place where we are questioning what has been true before. And I'm thankful that women of my generation are waking the fuck up. So yeah, I love my boyfriend. He's really sweet. Having had someone go out of their way the way that he has tangibly, physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, in every way to show me how much I mean to him. If effort and consistency are a reflection of how much someone loves you and how much they care about you, this man is winning and winning and winning and winning and winning in all of those areas. I feel so loved and so taken care of. Just a sense of I have a really good person in my life, and that's not something I have thought for many, many, many, many, many years. Many years. So anyway. And on that note of hopefulness and non-embarrassment nor shame about my new relationship, let me also say my content is never gonna change. I'm not gonna be a relationship expert. I'm never gonna be on trying to teach women how to get a boyfriend, how to get a man, how to keep a man, how to get married. I'm never gonna do that kind of shit, y'all. I'm still gonna always be rooting for black women, advocating for black women, and out here trying to do the most to make sure that the most vulnerable, marginalized populations are able to survive and thrive post-trauma and love ourselves because we deserve it. I do have a book called Grace Actually Memoirs of Love, Faith, Loss, and Black Womanhood. And if you like reading and you like personal stories and memoirs, this is a book that you will love. It's very highly reviewed. Everyone who's ever read it has told me they loved it. I think you'll like it too. It's available on Amazon, both hardcopy and Kindle. Thank you so much if you made it this far. I appreciate you being here with me. I know that you could be anywhere on these internet streets. So the fact that you're here with me and all the way to the end says something important. So thank you so much for being here. And hopefully, I will see you on the next episode. Bye.