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Love Letters

‘I’m sorry I hid you’

Love Letters

The Boston Globe

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.51.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yowei Shaw, host of the podcast “Proxy” – and former host of NPR’s “Invisibilia” – joins Love Letters to tell a story about the time she was embarrassed of her partner … because he’s a man.This is Part 2 of our two-part series inspired by a viral Vogue essay that suggested women are now embarrassed about having male partners.Yowei’s story is a nuanced one. From the outside it might have seemed like Yowei was embarrassed by the wonderful man in her life, but in reality she was just trying to figure out who she was … and how to fit in.Laugh along as Yowei confesses how she hid a significant other, and how it changed her.To learn more about Love Letters and this episode (fun photos, etc.), sign up for Meredith’s newsletter at boston.com/Meredith.Love Letters is also an advice column. You can send any questions about friendship, love, dating, breakups, starting over, building community, etc. to loveletters@boston.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Now, are all the traitors present?

0:02.5

Let's get started, shall we?

0:04.5

From rags to riches.

0:05.8

I'm so sick of this.

0:07.0

Working like a dog and being treated worse.

0:09.1

Yorkshire to New York.

0:10.7

Poor climbers, you and me.

0:12.4

A life dedicated to revenge.

0:14.4

Let's make this an occasion to remember.

0:16.5

A woman of substance on Channel 4.

0:19.1

Stream now.

0:31.2

In our last episode, we talked to Chantay Joseph, the woman who wrote the Vogue essay,

0:33.6

is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?

0:38.8

For those who may have forgotten, Chanty said in her essay that she was noticing that straight women were beginning to hide their boyfriends on social media. She wanted to know

0:44.1

why these women seemed to be ashamed of having a male partner. She figured, maybe it was because

0:49.5

their boyfriends did embarrassing things, but more likely it pointed to a larger issue, that perhaps there was a new

0:57.1

strong need to distance oneself from a heteronormative structure that maybe once gave you clout

1:03.0

to be a part of. But in this era, feels sort of cringe. For some reason, our relationships still have

1:10.5

these really archaic, basic setups that we are all kind of just mindlessly subscribing to.

1:17.5

And so it kind of, yeah, it does feel like a bit like a relic of the past in some ways, the way we do straight relationships.

1:23.6

Chanty's essay went viral.

1:26.3

I would say mega-viral.

...

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