Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the show. Got a great show plan for you. I wanted to open up by

talking about something that has been, oh, you know, again, I track the trends. I pay attention to

what's coming into my clinical practice. We look at the DMs on our Lovelin IG page, where you also,

you know, beautifully post questions, topics, and kind of taking it all into account,

looking at stories in the news, and really hit a lot of these topics based on that.

And one of the things that I was talking a lot with clients in my private practice

the past couple weeks was the way we go about and enter relationship seeking.

We, I talked a few times about this great article

that was dropped that was saying we have that, you know, I've been talking extensively about

how we're in the highest rate of singledom. And that's because people are delaying relationships,

leaving unhealthy ones, a lot of divorces happening and all that's a good thing. People are like,

what do you mean? People are single. People are leaving marriages. Yeah, because they're no longer staying in toxic

relationships. People are finally stepping up for themselves, not feeling trapped, uh, delaying things,

focusing on education and joy and fun. But the explosion of single men is not a good thing.

It's because women are no longer and other, you and other men that date men are no longer willing to be in relationships that aren't healthy. And men, it's really rooted in hetero men. Hetero men aren't willing to do the necessary work to be a better partner. Some of that's, you know, damage has been done to them, you know, as men, we have been socialized into a very toxic world and toxic masculinity

and patriarchy helps men, but also hurts them. And we haven't been given good role models.

And I still always talk about on the show how there's still bad dating advice about playing games and being

manipulative. And that's what's so hurtful to me is a lot of guys are victimized by a lot of the advice that's out there.

And yes, of course, I'm acknowledging that a lot of men just don't have an interest or willingness to do the work and they aren't great.

And there's a lot of narcissism out there.

But there are a lot of really great men that are victimized by following general advice and counsel, which is always gendered and often really problematic,

where, again, a lot of men are taught that we have to chase women, catch women, that we have

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