When Did Relationships Become Scary?

In this episode Trent examines Gen Z’s antipathy towards dating and offers some remedies.

Gay Romantic Comedy “Bro’s” Reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aAKR2iWQtk

The Female Sin No One Talks About: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlI7ZntOmw

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Transcript:

Trent Horn (00:00):

Recently, the horror film Obsession has blown up the box office and many critics say it’s because it taps into Gen Z’s anxiety about dating and relationships. You can also see evidence of this anxiety in films, TV shows, social media posts, and academic studies. So in today’s episode, we’re going to answer the question, when did relationships become scary? How can we MAGA make Amoray great again? Now you might be asking, what does this have to do with the Council of Trent’s mission of sharing the Catholic faith, which you can help us do by supporting us at trrenthornpodcast.com. Now, the answer is that marriage, the lifelong sexually exclusive bond between a man and a woman was created by God for the entire human race. Marriage is not a Catholic thing or even a Christian thing. God gave the entire human race marriage when he created Adam and Eve.

(00:50):

And this is why basically every culture on earth has some form of marriage and it’s good when people enter into a true marriage. The Catholic Church recognizes marriages where only one or even neither person is baptized as being good and natural marriages that are presumed to be indisoluble. This is why Eastern Orthodox commenter Andrew Wilson is wrong when he says it’s sinful for non-Christians to get married. Do you believe that it is sinful for a man to get married and have kids if he is not a Christian?

Interview (01:25):

That’s not marriage. Marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman. That’s within the purview of the Christian ethic. You have been running around with the rest of the tradcons telling men to sin, Lauren.

Trent Horn (01:39):

But the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law says the essential properties of marriage are unity and indisolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament. Notice that there’s a difference between marriage and Christian marriage, which you see in the catechism where it says the marriage covenant between baptiz persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament. Not that marriage itself is only a sacrament. Even in the Orthodox Church, when an unbaptized married couple converts, they don’t have to get remarried. The church simply recognizes their marriage and blesses or crowns it, whereas the Orthodox Church would marry a couple who wanted to convert and repentative cohabitation. Marriage is a good thing, even for non-religious people and society is better off when more people choose to be married. But in the past decade, there’s been a vibe shift against marriage and relationships and one way you can see this is in media.

(02:35):

Let’s go back to scary movies, which often reflect broader social anxieties. For example, monster films of the 1950s reflected social fears about nuclear weapons or communist infiltrators among us like an invasion of the body snatchers. The 1970s and 80s saw a huge increase in crime and represented the height of the serial killer boom in the United States. So it was no surprise that slasher films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and a nightmare on Elm Street were popular during this period. As crime dropped off in the 90s and America entered a period of economic prosperity, there was another source of social anxiety. Three films in 1999 all reflected a theme of discontent with boring suburban and corporate life, office space, fight club, and American beauty. Films where people’s greatest anxiety was the monotony of a well-paying job or living in a big, nice house. That hits a bit differently in today’s economy, but the source of anxiety in several recent films isn’t The Radioactive Monster, The Anonymous Slasher, or the Bland Corporate Job and Suburban Life.

(03:38):

It’s the intimate partner who we should be able to trust, which brings us back to obsession. In the film, Bear is in love with his friend Nikki, but he’s too timid to tell her. So he uses an ocult object to wish for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world and the results exemplify the adage, “Be careful what you wish for. ” I won’t spoil the film for you, but let’s just say Bear is not someone to root for and it’s not just obsession that has cast relationships in a dim light. In 2019’s midsummer, the romantic pair are hardly inspiring and one of them sacrifices the other to a grizzly end. 2020 gave us The Invisible Man, a story about an obsessive ex who uses invisibility technology to terrify his former girlfriend. And in 2025’s The House Made, the lead male character and several offscreen male characters that are central to the female character’s backstories are abusers.

(04:28):

Now, granted, there have always been films that depicted toxic male and female relationships, but they were usually balanced out by the much larger number of films that celebrated relationships. In the 90s and early 2000s, studios would release multiple romantic comedies every year, films like When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Love Actually, 10 Things I Hate About You, 13 Going On 30 and the Holiday. In the 2000s, romantic films made up about one third of films released each year, but today romantic films make up less than 10% of The Box Office. And outside this genre, the number of romantic interests in films in general has declined.

Interview (05:06):

I just mean that it’s no longer 1937 and we absolutely wrote a Snow White that is- She’s not Going to be Saved By the Prince.

(05:13):

She’s not going to be Saved for the Prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave, and true. And so it’s just a really incredible story for, I think, young people everywhere to see themselves in. What makes this film so beautiful is that it’s not centered around a man. It’s not centered around love at all, if anything. But we’ll see.

Trent Horn (05:37):

For example, early Marvel films prominently featured well-developed romantic relationships, but as the series progressed, they featured weaker pairings or turned male-female relationships into platonic friendships with maybe a hint of romance being mentioned. When it comes to Walt Disney and made it films of the ’90s and 2000s, romantic character relationships were common, as can be seen in The Lion King, Tarzan, Hercules, and The Princess and the Frog. They were even the central element of the plot as in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. But in the past 10 years, you either get no romantic interests like in Big Hero Six and Canto, Moana One and Two, Raya and The Last Dragon, Ralph Breaks the Internet and Wish, or when you do get them, it’s between two boys, like in Strange World. You also see this pattern in television shows where it used to be easy to name iconic couples, but now it’s hard to think of any such couples.

(06:27):

Or what about a television show rooted in the family with the love of a husband and wife, a mother and father being centerstage? These shows were a dime a dozen throughout the 20th century and even into the early 2000s, but now they’re practically extinct. And in contrast to teen dramas of the early 2000s that explored romance and range from wholesome to mildly spicy, today we have shows like Euphoria that feature teen characters but whose explicit content is clearly for debaucherous adults and presents a cynical view of relationships. But this observation also leads to a chicken and egg question. Does popular media devalue relationships and make people less open to them or is popular media just reflecting changing cultural attitudes? According to a 2023 UCLA study, more than half of the 1500 respondents said they wanted to see more content focused on friendships. Nearly 40% said they particularly want to see more non-romantic relationships or asexual characters on screen.

(07:24):

The majority of respondents said that they felt romance in media is overused and other studies in the past two decades have shown that young people’s interest in dating and sexual activity has dramatically decreased. In the early 2000s, about 19% of college-aged men were sexually inactive while in the late 2010s that jumped to 31%. And while a decrease in fornication is a good thing, it has not been balanced out by an increase in the desire to marry. According to the Institute for Family Studies, while 85% of women and 75% of men were ever married in 1967, just 23% of 25-year-old women and 20% of 25-year-old men have ever married today The Institute predicts that one-third of men and women who turn 45 in 2050, those who are about 18 or 19 today will not have married. So what’s causing relationships to become an old-fashioned tradition more people are saying isn’t for them.

(08:20):

Now you might want to blame feminism or liberalism and those things play a part, but we’ve had those things for nearly a century so they don’t explain the more recent dramatic change in the past 15 years. But if I had to put my finger on the culprit, I would say it’s social media, something that has dramatically changed our lives in the past two decades, but for four interrelated reasons. Number one, social media creates dating inefficiency. In the early 2000s, there were people called pickup artists who taught men how to approach strangers in public and ask them out. I always thought this was a bad idea because even if it worked, the odds weren’t great that the person would be a good match for you. This kind of pickup technique was called a cold approach in contrast to a warm approach where you express romantic interest to someone who is not a stranger, usually a friend, coworker, or acquaintance.

(09:11):

The problem with social media is that choosing to talk to people based on profiles is still a cold approach, maybe a cool approach because you know a few of their interests, but you still don’t know the person. Even if you chat with him or her online, it’s still a very artificial conversation. As a result, it takes a lot longer to see if the person has a good match. Even though you can scroll through hundreds of prospects, the amount of failed connections and ghosted conversations makes the whole process less efficient than old-fashioned warm approaches. For example, if you were at a co-ed event like a party or volunteer activity, you would be around friends, acquaintances, and strangers. In this setup, you could quickly tell if someone is interesting or just not your type and you could tell whether you have a connection with the person without the awkwardness of a dating context hanging over both of you.

(09:58):

You’d also have other friends who could recommend or raise concerns about the person before you move forward with anything. Then if you asked the person to get coffee or go on a small date, you’d already have a shared foundation and decent odds you could get along because you had a small in- person encounter that passed a vibes check. In fact, recent studies show that couples who met online were more likely to get divorced than couples who met offline because of the lack of this extra vetting process. In 2013, online dating became the most popular way couples met and now over half of all couples meet online. But if this process ends with rejection or mismatches over and over again, it can seem like a waste of time and people will retreat from it. So you might be thinking the answer then is to help people meet in person instead of just randomly online, but then we have to face problem number two social media isolates people.

(10:53):

In this popular Reddit post, a user asks, “I love ’90s and 2000s movies so much and all of the teen movies have one of these party scenes. They look so fun. I’m Gen Z and have never been to anything like this. So was this a thing that just doesn’t happen anymore or is it just Hollywood trying to make me hate my life more?” As someone who grew up during this time period, I can say that there weren’t over the top parties with dozens or hundreds of people. And if there were, they were incredibly extraordinary, but it also wasn’t uncommon for a handful or even a dozen people to spontaneously get together and play video games, chat, listen to music, and maybe get into a few shenanigans because you couldn’t do any of that by yourself. I graduated high school in 2003 and before that time there was no Facebook, no X, no Instagram, no YouTube and no MySpace, no online Halo fights or World of Warcraft or any other massive online games.

(11:47):

Nearly everything was local. If you liked someone, you could try chatting with them on AOL Instant Messenger or you could get off the couch and go to where people were hanging out. If you didn’t go out, then you didn’t interact with people. So there was a big motivation to go outside and touch grass. But with social media, we’ve traded friends for followers. We get a fake sense of interacting with people on social media, even though we are currently in a friendship recession. Since 1990, the number of people who say they have no friends has increased 400% and since 2003, people ages 15 to 29 have spent 45% more time alone than they did in 2010, which is twice as high as the alone time people spent in 2020 during the lockdowns. Statistics show that when I was in high school, we spent on average two and a half hours a day with friends, but today that number has dropped to less than 40 minutes.

(12:40):

Meanwhile, average screen time for young people has increased from six hours in the early 2010s to over nine hours a day. And in the early 2000s, teens spent one hour a day on computer screens, with the rest of their screen time being video games or television, which you could share with other people. Even after I graduated high school and college, when social media started to become popular, it was a tool to assist our real life interactions, not replace them. But does that mean if we could just get people together in the same place off social media more often we could make romantic relationships easier? Well, no, because there is a third problem with social media. Specifically, number three, social media creates new social hazards. One common bit of advice for young men pursuing women has always been, the worst she can say is no, but today that’s not true.

(13:31):

Now the worst a woman can say is, “Smile for my TikTok as I embarrass you in front of thousands or even millions of people. ” Men are legitimately scared that their sincere approaches will become fodder for others who want to create content. I remember seeing a viral picture being shared of a guy at a party standing with his hands in his pockets, sadly looking at a group of girls he wanted to talk to. He was just existing and yet he was still captured by social media and made an object of ridicule. It’s no wonder so many people would rather live behind an anonymous avatar than put themselves in that position. In the 18th century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed an idea for a prison guard system called The Panopticon. It allowed one guard in a central tower to surveil an entire prison. Since the prisoners never knew if the guard was watching them, they were always motivated to be on their best behavior.

(14:22):

But today we live in a digital panopticon where we don’t know if someone has pulled out their smartphone to record us so we always have to be on our best behavior. But even when men approach women sincerely, they can end up being an object of public ridicule because they violated a boundary they didn’t know about that was a leftover of the Me Too era. Now that movement was praiseworthy in exposing sexual abusers like Harvey Weinstein, but it went too far in equating the expression of romantic interest to an uninterested person as being the equivalent of sexual harassment worthy of getting reported to HR as popularized in this meme. And finally, we have the fourth way social media has ruined modern relationships. It distorts our perception of reality. During the pandemic, only one out of 112 cases of COVID resulted in hospitalization, less than 1%. But in a Gallup poll, quote, 41% of Democrats thought that at least 50% of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19.

(15:22):

For these people endlessly watching news stories and reading posts about COVID distorted their perception of reality, making the virus seem much more dangerous than it actually was. And the same thing happens to men and women who spend too much time online reading about dating and relationships. Through manipulated algorithms, men and women see the worst of the other sex because those bad behaviors and toxic attitudes generate anger, which generates clicks and repos. They then grossly inflate the risks of ending up dating or marrying a terrible person by thinking every man or woman is like this toxic online example. Men, for example, see some women talk about dating in transactional terms or reject guys over silly things that allegedly gave them the ick and even publicly shame their sincere advances. The men then think that all women are like this and become jaded about dating and see dating as a humiliation ritual and avoid it.

(16:15):

And then women see these viral men, especially men who follow red pillars like Andrew Tate, call women holes or voids, feminine humanoids to dehumanize them. They will see some men equate women’s value with physical appearance and mock women for getting older. Those women then assume that if men will just trade them in for a younger model, then they might as well not bother getting married in the first place, or they’ll see the horrible things that trolls say online about assaulting women and reach the insane conclusion that they would be safer in the woods with a bear than with a man. The result is that some women will watch a horror film like obsession and think this shows that all men are like the main character who only cares about possessing women not truly loving them. And some men will watch the same movie and think that this shows women are obsessive monsters or those men will consume horror stories peddled by people like Pearl who say women just want to marry men so they can divorce them and take their money and kids.

(17:12):

Even though as I showed in our debate, the majority of marriages last a lifetime and even the majority of divorced men get married again because that’s usually preferable to being unmarried. This conflict between men and women has given rise to something called heteropessimism, a term coined by Aza Saracen in 2019 to describe behavior that is “expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” And it shouldn’t surprise you that some of the biggest advocates for heteropessimism are LGBT advocates who push homo optimism or even LGBT supremacy saying that their relationships are better than male female ones. One author at genderspecialist.com writes, “The results of a 2020 study found that same gender couples have better, healthier interactions with their partners than those in heterosexual relationships.”

Interview (18:05):

Sure, Jan.

Trent Horn (18:09):

Except it turns out that same sex couples experience higher rates of domestic violence, but you won’t see that reality in Hollywood projects that push the LGBT agenda, even when the projects are destined to fail, like 2022’s Gay Romantic Comedy Bros, which I reviewed in a previous episode linked below and Lightyear, where I kid you not, the plot is about, as one expos puts it, Buzz Lightyear ending himself to guarantee his Black lady boss could have a biracial kid with her lesbian wife. But in most cases, people with opposite sex attractions become their own worst enemies. You can see this in how social media distorts their perception of what is valuable in relationships. And so these men and women will pass over potential partners that don’t meet some delusional standard. That happens when women think that men aren’t good enough to date unless they’re over six feet tall make over six figures and have a six pack and it happens when men, especially those who consume large amounts of cornography, think a woman is fat unless she’s rail thin, like Anne Hathaway or Margot Robbie are mid or average looking and women are angry feminists if they don’t cheerfully agree with everything their man says.

(19:16):

But having a stunted view of women doesn’t prepare a man to value a woman who doesn’t dramatically stand out from other women or she’s average but is still beautiful in her own right. However, he should still love her primarily because of her immaterial qualities, including her personality and interests that for him do dramatically stand out from other women. And the same is true for women who pass over average men because those women get superficial attention from very attractive men. Finally, social media creates the false perception that we’re always going to be missing out on the next best thing because it presents us with so many options. After the development of sustainable farming, most people rarely traveled more than 30 miles from their home. There were at most a few dozen romantic prospects in their village or community. Even after urbanization and the move to larger cities, the number of romantic prospects might have risen into the dozens or hundreds, but it was still manageable to navigate.

(20:12):

But while reviewing hundreds of romantic prospects would have taken months, years, or decades in the past, with your smartphone, that can be accomplished in a few minutes and human beings weren’t designed to process relationships in this way. Back in 2004, Barry Schwartz noted this in his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, when he showed how the abundant choices we have in modern society actually create analysis paralysis and it makes us less happy than if we had had fewer choices. And even when relationships are formed through social media and dating apps, people use the technology to keep a safe distance from the other person and never truly commit. Smartphones have encouraged us to only interact with the perfect reply in a text or the perfect posts on social media. So many people think they can’t date until they or the relationship they’re in are just perfect.

(21:04):

As a result, a lot of this has given rise to so- called situationships and people feel like having their time being wasted. In fact, one reason romantic comedies aren’t popular today is that the elements that made them so special, the meet cute, the organic romances that develop over time, these things are an alien concept in a world where the first time you meet someone, you can then cyberstalk everything about him or her and see if the person meets an impossible checklist. And if they don’t, you just ghost the person, which is a lot harder to do when you meet someone through friends and family like most of us did just a few decades ago. So what do we do? Well, I pray that one day we’re going to look back on smartphones and constant social media use like we look back on ubiquitous indoor smoking and ask ourselves, why did we think that was a good idea?

(21:50):

But considering the social media industry makes way, way more money than the tobacco industry ever made, I doubt this will happen. At best, we can try to discipline ourselves and form communities to encourage fruitful relationships between people who are discerning marriage apart from the bad effects of social media. I spent a lot of time outlining the problem here in this episode, I’m just going to offer nine brief points for some practical solutions and I like to thank the four anonymous Gen Z influencers I asked to review today’s episode and the following tips. So here they are. Number one, be intentional with social media. Don’t casually use it because that lets your brain get reprogrammed. One good tip is to set an alarm and only use social media for a limited amount of time and just dump dating apps like Tinder or Hinge altogether. Number two, men, stop watching porn.

(22:42):

This is another example of social media ruining relationships because even adult content, which once only existed on sketchy virus-written websites is now easily accessible on sites that resemble social media like Facebook, but are not about looking at people’s faces. Men, you need to stop watching this stuff because it makes you awkward around women. That’s because when you watch explicit materials, you train yourself to feast on a woman’s body with your eyes. You’ll then subconsciously do that to regular women in real life and it creeps them out. They notice. But if you give up the Triple X stuff, you’ll be on a good path to learning how to talk comfortably to women, which is the first step to getting a girlfriend. Number three, women, stop watching, or more in your case, reading corn. I covered how women’s literature is raunchy trash in a previous episode that I’ll link to below.

(23:34):

Consuming this material rewires your brain to make it want unhealthy male attention and stop making corn, which includes posting pictures of yourself in a thong bikini on Instagram. That just attracts the wrong kind of attention from men and leads them into grave sin. Number four, do whatever you can to grow your friend and acquaintance network. Join clubs, go on mission trips, say hi to random people of the same sex and chat with them. Then practice doing that with people of the opposite sex. Don’t use activities only as a means to date people, but as a way to become a fulfilled person who is still happy even if you don’t find a relationship in the activity and in becoming a mature, happy person, you’ll naturally be attractive to other people. Number five, married people and those in the older crowd like myself. Recognize that the younger generation was dealt a rough hand and so we should help them find ways to create friendships and relationships.

(24:31):

This is especially true after college when it’s really hard to meet people. I’m not talking about making programs dedicated to dating because then it just feels like a meet market, but places where young or not so young unmarried people can hang out with a diverse group and get to know one another in a place that’s free from social media judgment. In many early American immigrant communities, the Catholic Parish Hall served this purpose. So maybe it’s time to bring that back. But whatever it is, older generations need to step in and help provide this for young people. The burden shouldn’t fall on them alone and we need to help them. Jason Everett hosts a program for young people to go on camping trips together while learning about the works with John Paul II called JP2 Trails. So that would be one example. Number six, men make the first move, women send the first signal.

(25:19):

Women, if you’re interested in a guy asking you out, then you need to flirt without being a floozy. Laugh at his unfunny jokes, make eye contact, smile, touch his arm, flip your hair, all of that. Men look for these signs, but even if they aren’t obvious, don’t be ashamed to just go for it and ask, “Do you want to go on a coffee date or go and chat or go on a walk?” Women, if you’re not interested, just politely decline. And for the love of goodness, don’t talk about declining on social media. I’m serious, don’t make fun of guys who give it a shot because that just makes them not want to try in the future and men don’t be overly worried about this because it’s pretty rare in real life for someone to publicly post a video about rejecting a guy. But I’ll admit it’s not necessarily uncommon for a group to be unfriendly to a guy because he asked out someone in the group.

(26:11):

It’s a date, not a marriage proposal. Although to be fair, men should know that approaching women can become creepy if you ask out every single woman in your friend group. So be selective and see how you get along with people in co-ed non-date settings. And if a woman says no and isn’t mean about it or blasting you on social media, then don’t take it personally and learn to take a hint as well. If you ask her out and she’s busy two times in a row and doesn’t suggest an alternative time and place to meet up, cut her loose. All right. Number seven, women don’t waste time on things that will keep guys from being able to pursue a relationship. This includes overworking, overscheduling, and over committing to guys. Don’t allow yourself to be monopolized by a guy who dates you for years and years but won’t commit.

(27:01):

And men, if there ain’t no ring, it’s not a thing. So even if she has a boyfriend but he won’t commit to her, well, maybe she needs a man friend like you. And women, as I mentioned earlier, don’t pass over men for delusional standards or constantly hold out for very, very attractive men who might give you attention because they get a lot of attention from women. Give decent guys a chance and men give decent girls a chance as well because oftentimes you may be passing over average women as well. So both sides need to give each other a chance. Number eight, keep first dates casual and women, you’re nuts if you think it has to be a three course dinner with a guy that you’ve never met before. Coffee or ice cream or a walk works just fine. Even if it’s a first romantic date after several casual dates, it does not have to cost $200, which is the average amount that Gen Z spends on a first date.

(27:58):

One of my favorite first dates with Laura was the two of us going to a bookstore with a coffee shop attached. We then went and got three books we would buy if we had the money, we drank coffee and we talked about why we would’ve bought those three books, which is a great way to get to know each other. And finally, number nine, keep God at the center of your discernment and your spiritual life. At the end of the day, none of us is owed a relationship or really anything in this life. Life is a gift from God and so are other gifts like relationships. I felt that in a deep way this past year since my wife was diagnosed with brain cancer. So I’m acutely aware that relationships only exist through God’s timetable, not ours. One of my favorite Bible verses gives us a good attitude to endure these kinds of trials.

(28:44):

It’s Sierra Act two: four through six, which says, “Accept whatever happens to you. In periods of humiliation, be patient. For in fire gold is tested and the chosen and the crucible of humiliation, trust in God and he will help you. Make your way straight and hope in him.” So whether you’re enduring the trials of pursuing marriage or maybe you’re in a marriage that’s become very difficult, or maybe you’re grieving a broken marriage or a spouse who has passed away, whatever it may be, use whatever trials God has given you to grow closer to him and no matter what, keep your focus on God and don’t be afraid. That was Pope Leo’s recent advice to young people in Spain who were discerning marriage. For more on this from a dating perspective, check out Jason Everett’s book, How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.