Allie Volpe
speaker
28 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Allie Volpe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Just anecdotally, so many of the single people I know personally are having a hard time with dating. It just seems like nobody is having a fun time.
And like we're generally socializing less than like even 10, 20 years ago. So it makes it hard to just meet people.
We're also living in a way that doesn't necessarily promote connection. Like, we stare at our phones when we're on public transportation or while we're waiting in line for coffee. We use self-checkout. We order food via apps and touch screens. We wear AirPods in any interstitial moment.
You're on the phone. So it just like kind of makes it hard to like naturally or quote unquote like naturally meet people. But like for men in particular, this really seems to be a problem. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 63% of men under 30 said they were single compared to only 34% of women in the same age bracket. single men were likely to be looking for love.
Like half of them in that same survey said they reported looking for a committed relationship and or casual dates, while only 35% of single women said the same. So, you know, there's a desire there and there's a lot of men looking for this, but they're having trouble.
Yeah. I mean, to speak to the caller's point about like who are creating these rules.
I'm doing a follow-up story about dating standards and expectations specifically. And, you know, like going back to the 70s, 80s, you know, if you would poll women about like what they were looking for in men, they're often looking for these like provider type qualities of they're high earner, they're going to protect, they're going to support.
And men just as consistently are like, I just want somebody hot. Yeah.
Nice. And these expectations have persisted, like, from the 80s until, you know, recently. Like, these things have not really changed very much. A recent YouGov poll found that men prioritize sex, romance, and physical attraction more than women, while women emphasize empathy, monogamy, and independence more.
This is, I think, a good consequence of the Me Too movement, I think, is that there's been like a wider discussion about like what behavior women would consider predatory or inappropriate. So I think there's more of an understanding that like you shouldn't be creepy and harass women, which is great. Like that is wonderful.
And Richard Reeves, the expert I talked to, he's the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and he wrote a book also called Of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It. He told me that the men that he works with, like, generally understand this. Like, don't be a creep. But that's getting in the way of them dating, you know?
Like, they're so in their heads about it. Like, they don't want to come off as, like, a quote-unquote bad guy, but they're just sort of opting out of it altogether. Yeah.
Something else I've been thinking about a lot is more people are going to therapy, that is a good thing. But out of that has come like the emergence of therapy speak where people are misusing terms that are vaguely like pop psychology that like not even a therapist would use. You know, if anyone has what you deem like a quote unquote red flag, it's a no go.
And so people are writing people off based on some of these red flags. But I think everybody is going to have something that might give you the quote unquote ick or, you know, might not be your dream standard. And we are more likely to write them off immediately because of that. You got to meet people in person. I think like, again, like apps are fine, but I think it's a tool.
You got to go to places where there are people and you're doing an activity that like you like. So like you shouldn't go to like run club if you hate running and expect to meet somebody, you know, like maybe you do like like a wine tasting club or like you go to you take some pottery classes or comedy classes, whatever.
go somewhere where there's going to be people that like you can see week after week. Like if you're seeing them week after week after week, like they kind of get a sense of who you are. And I think we just like, can't assume the worst of people. I feel like trust is really low right now. Again, another young male reader reached out to me. He's 20, 21, and he's just starting to date.
And he just feels like, how do I get people to trust me? How do I get how do I trust other people? And I get it. It's really, really hard. But I think we have to just like assume that people want what we want.
Like we just have to have a little bit of like humanity and flexibility for people and like to understand like, yes, if I'm an inherently like valued but imperfect person, so is this other person.
I wrote a little bit about this. And I think the male loneliness epidemic conversation kind of, it spread because it became a conversation kind of about dating. That's how I first heard about it. And that's, I think, why this traveled so far. And I think they were conflating a conversation about singleness with a conversation about being lonely when actually they're kind of two different things.
Yeah, it's almost like a very easy explanation because it's solvable. If you kind of pin it on loneliness, then there's a solution embedded in that, which is like, talk to them and make them less lonely. And it kind of feels like too easy of a solution to what might be just more kind of ingrained ideological differences.
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