The Death of Romance
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Worzel onto The David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
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It didn't happen all at once. Instead, the modern disenchantment with romance unfolded slowly, subtly, but still unmistakably. Post-COVID, young people stopped dating as much. If you talk to them about why, what you hear is exhaustion with the apps, the whole hassle of combing through matches, chatting, finding a mutually convenient time, and then dragging yourself out of the house to meet a total stranger. All of that started to seem less important than seeing friends, caring for family, getting some work done, watching the series that everyone else was talking about. These shifts were made one by one, inside people's heads. And then all of these individual decisions accumulated over time and turned into something new.
Something which staff writer Faith Hill calls the romance slump. I have a question for you as my colleague. Are you the romance reporter? Is that your actual job?
You know, I think I'm proud to hold that mantle. I report on some other things, too. But romance and dating and singlehood specifically has kind of become a big thing for me.
That's amazing. So you are the Atlantic as a romance and relationship reporter, and that is you. I guess so. I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. Faith spent the last several months reporting on what she called the great romance slump. In the last 40 or so years, we've seen huge drops in both marriage and cohabitation rates, especially among 25 to 34-year-olds.
But there's also just a shrinking share of young adults who have a steady partner. And, you know, in 2019, 42 percent of single adults younger than 40 told Pew Research Center that they'd never been in a committed relationship. That is the statistic that really surprised me. I felt the same when I saw that. And, you know, I think it's important to talk about because it's pretty easy to shrug off the declining marriage rates as kind of like, you know, the institution of marriage is not as important to people. You can easily have romance without marriage. Or intimacy without marriage or children without marriage. Right, exactly. But that's not the only thing going on. You know, it's not just about sort of views towards marriage.
And I think this is really quite a profound change.
Yeah, listening to you, I see why you called your story the romance slump, because it is something of a resignation, like it's kind of like a like a shrug.
Yes, that's exactly it. I liked the term for that reason. It has this kind of subtle, almost passive feel to it. You know, it's not a sudden and dramatic plummet. It's not that active, like it's not people all swearing off romance, but rather sort of a lot of people kind of slowly giving up on it kind of captures this pessimism and fatigue.
Yeah, it's like a slight bad smell in the air.
Yeah, exactly.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–6:31
2
What is the “romance slump” and how did it develop over time?
6:31–11:30
3
Why are young adults abandoning dating apps and traditional courtship?
11:30–15:24
4
What do the latest marriage and cohabitation statistics reveal about the slump?
15:24–19:37
5
How does the gender gap affect women’s willingness to stay in relationships?
19:37–27:16
6
What can we learn from Treasure’s post‑romance life and new priorities?
27:16–30:54