It’s a conundrum for the ages: ’Tis the season for being thankful, but ’tis also the Year of the Heterofatalist, the era of a thousand antiromantic think pieces. And so while we defrost the turkey and count our blessings, I regret to inform you that to be conspicuously grateful for one’s spouse in 2025 is simply not done, darling.
Gone are the days of the classic rom-com, the Austenian marriage plot, and the “Take my wife. . . please!” Boomer humor that mixed exasperation with fondness. This was the year that the enlightened among us—particularly the overachieving, highly educated liberal women who represent the intended audience of the average Styles Section essay—finally understood, once and for all, that to desire men is a tragic inconvenience at best, a character flaw at worst. Something to be joked about, and apologized for, until every last glimmer of earnestness has been buried under a thick, slimy veneer of irony.
This mindset has infiltrated pop culture (I’ve even written about it before). The marriage comedy has been replaced by the divorce memoir; the bodice-ripping romance by the perimenopausal, polyamorous sex romp. The paper of record bemoans the absolute state of men and their burdensome keeping, as if they were dissatisfactory pets not worth the price of their care and feeding. And then there’s the recent British Vogue article that asks, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” then answers in the affirmative. Women, the article says, are hiding evidence of their male partners on social media out of a yearning to “straddle two worlds: One where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across quite culturally loser-ish.”
In other words, the verdict is in: The universal and eternal human yearning for love? Is some weak-ass shit.
