The Gargle - Relationships special

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

We present to you the first of our mini-series of themed specials of The Gargle!Josh Gondelman and Tiff Stevenson join host Alice Fraser to get into the latest in relationships news, featuring:💕 Relationship sabbaticals 🏋🏻‍♀️ Relationship workout🍭 Sugar relationships🇯🇵 Non-dating adultsRemember to click Follow in your podcast app to make sure you get every episode.If you enjoy the show leave a review, tell your friends, and share us on social media.To watch video versions of this and all other Bugle podcasts, head to the Bugle YouTube channel and hit subscribe.Would you like to help support The Gargle and other Bugle podcasts? I certainly would!You canMake a one-off donationJoin Team Bugle to get ad-free podcastsOr become a Super Bugler to also get exclusive podcasts and a limited edition episode of The Bugle on orange 12" vinyl. YES PLEASE!This week's stories:Story 1: https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-01-06/taking-a-break-from-love-to-miss-each-other-do-relationship-sabbaticals-work.htmlStory 2: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/04/workout-for-your-relationships-new-york-peoplehoodStory 3: https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/01/06/a-psychologist-gives-3-reasons-why-people-enter-sugar-relationships/amp/Story 4: https://japantoday.com/category/national/one-third-of-japan's-unmarried-adults-under-50-have-never-datedThis episode was presented and written by Alice Fraser, Josh Gondelman and Tiff StevensonAnd produced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

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Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Gargle. Relationship special. Welcome to The Gargle. This is the Sonic Pelosi Magazine's audio newspaper for a visual world. All of the news, none of the politics. This week with a theme and a ticking clock, your guest editors. This week's special edition of The Gargle are Josh Gondelman. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm related to so many people. And Tiff Stevenson. Hello. Hi. Listen, I mean, I'm an honest woman now because I'm married. So therefore, you know that I can't lie about any of these stories. therefore you know that I can't lie about any of these stories. Before we do the awkward side hug that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. The front cover is that meme of the jacked man arms, but instead of arm wrestling they're tenderly holding hands.

And the headlines read, Who wears the pants in your... Oh, God, we've been cursed by a genie to only have one pair of pants between us relationship. And May-December relationships, how time travel can spice up your sex life. And boyfriend or partner. Boyfriend or partner, tips for dating a fellow detective. As well as Modern Dating,

you drink diet soda, now try diet commitment. And the satirical cartoon is just one of those New Yorker cartoons of a man and a woman sitting awkwardly in a living room, but there's no conversation bar and they're just both on their phones trenchant cutting with the with the headline for that that i'll make it new yorker modern romance look i think you can get a relationship keep a relationship cruising that is otherwise completely unsustainable if you share taste in netflix documentaries you can keep that shit going for like a good 10 years without ever having to have that is otherwise completely unsustainable if you share taste in Netflix documentaries.

You can keep that shit going for like a good 10 years without ever having to have a conversation. We'll talk through the programs we watch. That's right. And top story this week is taking a break from love. And this is a question about whether 2024 is the year of the relationship sabbatical. Josh Gondelman, you're in a long-term relationship.

Can you unpack this story for us? Of course. So there's a new trend that's on the horizon of people in long-term romantic relationships taking a sabbatical from one another, taking some time apart for absence to make the heart grow fonder. And call me old-fashioned, but back in my day, when you wanted to miss someone that you loved, you'd go out and get a job and you'd be away from them all day

and you'd see them at night. One of the greatest celebrity practitioners of this, right? There's kind of the trendsetter is Pierce Morgan and his wife. Although anything, right? They said their relationship is better for having spent time apart. Although anything could be made better by spending six weeks away from Piers Morgan. Using him as a test case, the best way to be happy in any relationship or any situation would be divorce. Yeah, Piers Morgan's name is an anagram of divorce material. That's right. And so there are kinds of ins and outs, are kinds of ins and outs, pun intended, to this situation and a lot of nuance, right? Because some people think it's just time to spend apart in solitude while other people consider it time

to explore non-monogamy. And I travel a lot for work and I do miss my wife when I go away and I'm excited to see her when I come back. But I don't consider that a sabbatical. Like we're still married when I'm not around. Sabbatical makes it sound like you're practicing ethical non-monogamy without doing the ethical part. You're just like, yeah, I'm taking a break from this. It says in this article, there's a couple of interesting points it says um you can it's it occurs especially in the summer um but can also take place during the christmas season when each partner has to travel to different places to see their respective families no you have a stressful december like everyone else

you're not allowed to just go do what you want that's the whole point that's why christmas is stressful you have to figure it out but it says in this that in the Middle Ages, apparently wealthy married women who wanted to spend time alone retreated to convents. Now, I don't know whether that means the Middle Ages like the 13 or the 1400s or when men are middle aged, because if so, then I get it. I get retreating to a convent when your man turns middle age because we got married and then all of a sudden my husband started engaging in middle-aged behavior he has sounds now that he didn't have like when he gets up out the chair he makes a noise you know that noise that louis vega makes at the end of mumbo number five where he goes that's the sound my husband makes when he gets up out of a chair so i just i think these women were just trying to escape the middle-aged sounds their husbands were making.

And fair play. Or snoring. To be fair, in the middle ages, if you wanted to take a six-month sabbatical from your husband, you'd just send him to the next village to get some milk. using the mambo number five metaphor and and talking about convents does that mean uh angela sandra rita etc that's the names of the other nuns yes yeah they're all in there it's sweden for ria a little bit of monica in in silence a little bit of erica practicing solitude sorry yeah now i'm just remembering all the names well uh there's a personal relation and relationship coach in in this article called i know a spejo and uh she explains in that in a society that is so you know full of promptness

and speed we we should take pauses and periodically re-evaluate our lives and freely decide each day whether we want to continue sharing our path with our partner which sounds to me like the most like to decide on a day-to-day basis whether you want to be with the person you're with absolutely unhinged who is this person yeah you can't re-up a day at a time i know a lot of people whose marriages would last like four weeks total well that's it it could be in the morning you could be like i'm not going to renew this contract but by the afternoon they've done something really nice or you've said sorry and then it's fine again i mean even a phone contract lasts longer than that come on but also it says you set the

rules can we sleep with other people will we tell each other afterwards that's just polyamory that's just like right fight like and I don't want to hear about it not in a mean way I just anyone that's polyamorous always wants to tell me about it it's like they don't just want multiple sexual partners they also want multiple people to hear about their polyamory see i feel like this is more like the plastic surgery of polyamory is like you only notice the ones who are constantly telling you about it true that's right probably plenty of quiet polyamorous people that are not um uh not not saying it and then maintaining eye contact with me so just so you know maintaining eye contact with me so just so you know

oh okay okay i'm not but cool as you were as you were no judgment on your choices let's keep moving your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy wine is just a bottle of murdered grapes if you really want to impress that special someone and that special someone is grapes, order something more sophisticated. Order half a glass of water. Half a glass of water. Good for you, better for grapes. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Arranged Marriages. No, no, no, wait a minute. We know arranged marriages are a touchy subject, but we didn't when we named our company. It's just a wedding organization business.

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that's my dad but you know we don't talk about it yeah he's my first cousin that's fine, right? Yeah. Second cousin once removed. Yeah, it's kind of complicated.

I forget who's who. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now.

Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com Acast.com And that brings us to our next top story. Our next top story is a workout for your relationship. This is a new spin on relationship management, more in terms of just interpersonal connection. Tiff Stevenson, you've spun around before. Can you unpack this story?

I'm a huge spinner. Oh, I like running around in a little circle. Absolutely love it. From two spin class pioneers comes a workout for your relationships. What fresh hell is this is the article headline and uh i'm going with bench pressure love life stretch your friendships those are just my ideas for marketing um and it's the team behind soul cycle so obviously the phenomenally successful fitness brand uh franchise they've created this thing called peoplehood which is a company that invites strangers to attend 60 minute discussion groups called gathers which used to be like, you know, town square. Like, that sounds like, you know, not town square,

but like town hall meetings. They're called gathers. And SoulCycle was very much sort of aimed at women who wanted encouragement during their workout because you'd be doing SoulCycle. Well, I mean, SoulCycle is just when you'd want to go for a bike ride where you can't run away from the person who's screaming at you right well it's supposed to be empowering slogans though right so that's what gets shouted out during soul cycle so presumably

at this gathering you're going to get you are listening really well you go girl or i am a yes ander i am a yes ander so um it says in the blurb we laugh we learn we get to know ourselves better uh most of all we support each other as we continue to grow just book tickets to a comedy gig you want to laugh and get to know yourself and learn just buy don't spend 160 pound to join a thing called peoplehood peoplehood and so they're going to be meetings they're going to be meeting up and it's for you to work on your stretch your relationship muscles, guys. Get to know people. I can't critique this too hard because it sounds like exactly like what I do in my salons, which is just talk.

We just have a chat. Yeah. Look, this is not a you thing because like this is the SoulCycle people, right? So instead of bikes, you just get in a room with strangers and you share intimate secrets, which I think is very efficient, right? They're cutting out the inconvenient middleman of exercise and just going straight to the being a cult part of SoulCycle. And I think it's good, right? part of SoulCycle. And they think it's good, right? Because I think what group therapy really needs is fewer pesky credentials getting in the way of the people running it. It should just be run by anyone who has abs. That's who I think should be in charge of group therapy.

And they call it, I think the name of it is so bad. People heard is like uh sure it definitely sounds a little animalistic right and they call each session a gather which does make me want to hunt them i think it's peoplehood like neighborhood oh peoplehood i'm sorry peoplehood oh that's that's even peoplehood is even scarier yeah yeah like peoplehood like it's just like, oh. It's just like, wear what people wear the human race now. Yeah, it's like then we got into the dark alleyway where no one witnessed and he removed his peoplehood. What lay beneath.

Yeah, a skin mask. If this is being run by the SoulCycle people, what, they're going to shout you the new conversation topic while they play increasingly loud techno music in the background. Which is a great situation for cultivating intimacy with strangers, right? Just lights flashing, techno thumping, and you're just like, I just don't feel like you listen. You're like, yeah, I can't f***ing hear you. Dancing with you in the summer rain i think i'm in love yeah is that what you did with her

it's um they've said that they don't have need any qualifications so you know it's just going to be people who it will just be influencers so this is just going to be like a you know an instagram live where you get you get bad advice from people who are good looking which is what we all want what they're describing right loud music you know like soul the soul cycle environment without exercise is either the loudest worst aa meeting of all time or the soberest bar you've ever been to i mean it's not even a like even if they are if they have said we're doing a debate club i could almost like see the kind of you know the i guess the attraction to that for people who want to kind of have conversational discourse and kind of take it offline a little bit and go, this is a bit too short and snappy.

Why don't we have a ideas panel or a discussion and you can pay to come to that and you'll definitely get to be involved if you're, you know, and, and sort of have your say like a kind of like a speaker's corner, but because it's in New York it's bound to be in some you know classy members only joint you know so it's like an upmarket speaker's corner scream your opinions not into the wind into a room full of canapes like I can almost get it like if it was that but this this sounds like it's just i mean what's a what is a gather what is the other that's a great question i mean it truly sounds like what they're they're having some kind of support group uh that that's just with the least supportive environment possible what was the app where

everyone was just audio only and everyone came on clubhouse clubhouse this sounds like an in-person version of clubhouse which like tried to be like very like in like you need an invitation to get into clubhouse and then when you get in there it's supposed to be like these conversations are like you know just for free conversation flowing conversation that then everything that was said on clubhouse here's going to be the problem with peoplehood, I can tell you right now, then ended up on Twitter and being reported everywhere else. It was like, so-and-so said this on Clubhouse last night. So the idea that you could just kind of pop on, say a thing and then go, oh, this is like when you have a conversation and you're in a room and then that just becomes a conversation that, you know, and it's now everywhere. that you know um and it's now everywhere it's going to be the peoplehood meetings or the personhood meetings will be national headlines probably all these new like disruptors and

founders and you know these aren't tech people but like they're they're in that space of like founding these new companies that always just invent things that we have already. And so they're just like, this is just a party, right? What if social media, but in real life? Yeah, you're like, we had that before and we still have that. And that brings us to our Agony Aunt section. In a regular episode of The Gargle, we would have our review section here, but because this is our special relationships episode, we're going to talk to our people.

We've received a few questions for our relationship experts here. One from Lockie, who says, I am just building my first dating site profile after a long- term relationship breakup. What is the current number of puns to smuggle in for maximum impact? I would say zero. Wow. I have a low tolerance unless they come from people who are exceptionally good at puns.

So that tends to be like other comics, but like, if they're going to, if you're going to dad pun in there, like, I'm not going to be like, you know, I feel like it depends on if you're representing yourself, if you are somebody who cannot resist a pun in everyday life, I feel like you should be open about that because that's not a thing you want to, you want to reveal later on and find is a deal breaker because it's the kind of thing that could be a deal breaker i'm really kind of fixated on

uh excuse me the idea of maximum impact right that was what the question was how many puns should i include for maximum impact and they didn't specify like a positive impact a negative so i think if you're trying to go just fully undateable, you got to hit 10 at least. 10 puns. Unmissable. Because the thing about a subtle pun is that people might miss it, right? Because the wordplay might go over their head. So you want to really hammer it home so they know that you know that you're doing it on purpose.

That you're a pun guy. Mm-hmm. If you're looking. Yes, that you're a pun guy if you're looking yes that you're a pun guy right exactly so maximum impact for if negative impact 10 maximum positive impact i think one that's personal to you you can't be spraying out puns that could come from any uh any dweeb on the street you want a pun that feels like it's relevant to your life so that they get to know you a little better you want to get andy to write your pun run so they have to be they do i i i'd say the opposite i'd go you gotta go you gotta go top notch for them because that's but that's just my personal

taste like i can take puns from a limited amount of people and they have to be very good puns. And occasionally I pun and then I hate myself a little when I pun. I feel like the nature of puns is that they, on one hand, they're like a fun little game you're playing with words. And on the other hand, they reveal a deep chasm between our idea that there can be any meaning in reality and the possibility

that all meaning is undermined. So every pun is a glimpse into the void because you think it means one thing but it could mean another and what does anything mean after all. I think Josh has really put his finger on this here with the maximum impact part of this question, which I think so much of the rhetoric directed particularly at men about dating is this like, you've got to be looks maxed. like incredibly aggressive dudes for the attention of a select group of women when in fact all you need to do is be better than dying alone and so few men are cultivating like just can i be better than an evening alone like really if she's got jack reacher and a can of fizzy drink what can i add to this scenario that's a good question

base point that's a good starting point and what what i'm realizing now is that jack reacher is a pretty good name for a vibrator yeah this jack reaches the spots. All the relevant parts. Well, it's a gentler version of Jackhammer, I guess. I'm rethinking my pun thing because I'm thinking there are some, it really depends because there are some puns that, and I think it's because I can't get away with doing them. When I look like I'm doing a pun, it's so obvious. I feel like it heads towards a groan.

Like that's part of my thing of it it's like I'm not very skilled around the puns but some are better written and some can only live in the misinterpretation because as soon as you spell the word you know then that kind of messes up the pun so you've really a lot of thought has got to go into this well accents as well yeah i do sincerely think that between like a hybrid of what alice and tiff are saying is like legitimately great advice right like tiff what you're saying is like put your best foot forward don't just be spraying puns around like like dandelion seeds right like that's not that's not effective and And then, Alice, you're saying be yourself. Right. And I think that is the dating advice. Right. It's like be yourself, but like not like you're like Wednesday self. Be your like Saturday morning self where you're like, ah, I'm well rested. I have the whole day ahead of me. Right.

Be the best the best you that you think you can replicate indefinitely until death and this is a question from jimmy no grok uh my girlfriend had to leave her apartment i said she could stay at my duplex uh for a bit and 16 months later she hates my kids and basically everything i do but won't leave until she finds a house should I build her a house I think you should start charging her rent because she doesn't sound like she wants to go out with you but you are a useful living situation sounds like you've got a lodger yeah you don't sound like a boyfriend you're a landlord now she's like the butternut squash that I have in my kitchen that I buy with a full intent to use and then just end up with an unpaid lodger for six to nine months because I can never cook the butternut squash or work out what to do with

it so I think start charging a rent don't build a house the danger of the modern world in which housing is increasingly unaffordable you might just end up to married to someone purely because they live in the right neighborhood for you to get to work. It's a commute-based marriage, which is not usually, when people say marriage of convenience, they don't usually mean of subway lines or bus lines, but that's a new way to think about it. Here's, look, I think- It's close to the only bodega that has the cheese I like. Look, I think- It's close to the only bodega that has the cheese I like. Absolutely. Jimmy Nogrok, I think you've got to, in this situation, you've got to put yourself first, right? Think about your needs.

You think about building her a house. Build you a house. Leave her with this old one. Should you build her a house? You're building her a new house to get her out of your house? No, build yourself the good new house and let her stay in the old one that she's spoiled with her bad vibes but also pay rent yeah be the hermit grab you've always wanted to be yes oh yeah yeah you don't just give her the old house yeah yeah i don't know i mean maybe this is a lesson i need to learn all of us in relationships just be shitty

with someone and their entire family and they'll build you a house just to get rid of you if you're listening and you're wondering how to get someone to build you a house, apparently it turns out all you've got to just do is move in and be disagreeable. Well, I feel also this is leaving out questions like, does he know how to build a house? Is this more efficient than just finding her a new house? Well, I tell you what, it is pretty sexy if a man knows how to build a house. I have found this at gigs.

Like there was an engineer and a guy who built houses. And honestly, the way the women in the audience responded, it was like, oh, my God, man with real job. Like a man that can build it. I think there are certain type of men i've said this before my husband is one of them so i'm quite lucky with that is there a certain type of men who look at a lump of wood and go what could i make out of that so that they have that kind of sort of mindset that that there was want to build or craft or make i don't know whether it's like a prehistoric urge when see a lump of wood but i

but i kind of like that i do like you know if you can build houses jimmy i would say get out there because there's probably quite a few women oh yeah interested in a man who can build houses and honestly you build this house for this woman one she's out of your house two it's a real proof of concept to show the other women what kind of guy you are. It's the bird of paradise mating dance of modern life. I have the opposite thing. I see a lump of wood. I'm like, ah, that's a great place to leave my mail for six months until I decide to open it. Just right on top of that. I am, not to brag, I am marginally handier than my wife, and that's how I try to stay. As long as I can open the stuck Talenti gelato container, then I'm useful in my marriage. As long as I can reach the light bulb that needs changing, I'm truly 12% handier than my wife and and i'm just ahead that's far ahead

of curve like i used to teach i was i used to be a spanish teacher and i was not fluent in spanish but i did know 12 more than my students and that kept me at that job for just aim for that 12 that's the josh gondelman advice be a 12 percenter that's like a like a turbocharged new islam i think also i mean he's my husband is better than a lot of stuff than me like he's a an amazing cook so you know there's just stuff that he but i have not really i'm artsy but i'm not really crafty yeah people lump arts and crafts together too much. Those are not the same. Yeah, so he can do the crafty bits.

I may have mentioned this before on this very podcast, but I come back to it because where I've moved to now, there is a crystal shop just around the corner, and it is the location of some of the best dialogue I've ever heard. One time passing by, a guy was like, this crystal is a thousand times more powerful than the other crystal. of some of the best dialogue I've ever heard. One time passing by, a guy was like, this crystal is a thousand times more powerful than the other crystal. You can just say that.

And the other one, which is more relevant to this example, was a lady talking to another lady outside the crystal shop. And she said, you know, witchcraft is more of an art than a science. And I had to resist so hard the urge to say, it's a craft, ladies. It's in the name. Yeah, they don't call it witch science. But you get to have a fair either way.

Science or craft, you can have a fair. And that brings us to our next story, which is actually relevant to Jimmy Nogrok. This is three reasons why people enter into sugar relationships, just to say relationships where one person is the sugar mama or the sugar dada or the sugar non-binary parent, I assume. Josh Gondelman, you like a little sugar in your tea. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, so this is really a deep dive into why people would enter into a relationship where one person gets sex and the other person gets money and commodities. And it says there's three reasons right and the first two kind of right off rip sex and money um those feel like pretty compelling reasons and

then i guess the third one is duh um and this is kind of the only genre of romantic relationship where we don't need to study why people do it. It is right there in the premise, right? This is my question that's not answered in the article. I've never known if the sugar part is the sex or the money, right? Like, are you the sugar daddy because you're providing sugar or receiving the sugar? And if a guy were like a Splenda daddy, does that mean he pays his companion by taking on debt because he doesn't actually have the money or he only receives hand jobs through several layers of fabric?

But this article, I mean, they just must have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel to put this one together. You've uncovered the raw shack is it raw shack i can't tell you the raw shack test of what a sugar daddy is it just it depends on what you see when someone says sugar daddy or sugar mama what what what do you think it is i like to i prefer to call those um sugar daddy i use the um i prefer to use the term marry an 85 year old grease the stairs and shout fire. That's my version of that.

I like to I like to think of the possibility of a stevia baby who will take money, but they'll like really obviously fake every orgasm. A stevia a stevia partner who's 100 more carcinogenic than the sugar-based variety then of course there's a there's a honey baby and that's like uh you know people uh acknowledge sex work is valid work but vegans some have a problem with the honey baby and also if you don't if you if you don't do the honey baby properly you end up covered in bees i had a friend i'm not gonna name the name but um she sort of had a string of these guys she called them her her minions and uh would just get them to send her money and stuff and would then kind of reply going thanks minion they were three feet tall with one eye and more overalls, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so obviously, because it's kind of like, why do people do this? We go, well, people out there are lonely and have a lot of money or enough money to do it. So they find it to be a mutually, you know, I think a lot of hers were like married middle-aged men though which made me feel get the ick i think if both parties are aware of what they're entering into

then i think you know that's uh it's kind of like a it's the the kind of it was interesting about it i suppose is that these kind of um i don't want to say points or relationships but these kind of these things exist in relationships anyway but they're just kind of slightly more unspoken oh sure like not that you expect i like not that i expect one thing to get another thing but you know you do kind of the idea that you haven't like not had sex with someone because you're pissed off and in an argument with them like the idea that there's not like a exchange or a power dynamic or uh or something like that in a relationship that these are kind of things that you sort of are constantly negotiating this just seems like a more very upfront way of doing it right i mean it just feels like this is such a

clear and this is not no insult to anyone in an arrangement like this, but it's almost like going like, hmm, why did why? What's the what's the basis of a restaurant diner relationship? You're like, well, you you're hungry. So you go into the diner and you pay money and then the restaurant gives you the food. And then you're like, great. That then you're but well i guess we're done here yeah i feel like people uh sort of who disapprove of uh sugar parent relationships um either disapprove of them because of the power dynamic or they disapprove of them because they prefer to have mystery in their relationship i for example quite like uh every morning's search for affection to be in the form of a treasure hunt with a series of

buried clues and increasingly cryptic people hidden around corners like where in the world is Carmen Sandiego telling me where to find my partner for breakfast well it's like making coffee in the morning right you know like that let's make it a non-sexual exchange like if my husband makes me coffee in the morning if I don't say thanks or kiss him chances are I'm probably not going to get a coffee the next morning because it's quite rude if someone's done something for you like make a coffee and bring it to you for you not to even say thank you or for you to reciprocate so it's like kind of like an exchange like that just a more you know I don't want to have to draw up a contract for that shit

our final top story for today is that one third of japan's unmarried adults under 50 have never dated this is a study that's come out of a staffing service group that's been doing surveys on people's views on marriage since 2017. Apparently, more than a third of unmarried adults in their 20s to 40s have never been in a relationship in Japan. Josh Gondelman, you've been in a relationship. Can you unpack this story for us? So 34% of Japan's adults in their 20s to 40s have never dated, which I think that's romantic. They're saving it for marriage. But it goes beyond this, right? 26% of those surveyed were not even seeking marriage. They don't want to get married at all, even in the face of a slow birth rate and a labor shortage. And I think there's a simple solution, right? Rather than putting these national issues

on people who aren't dating. Old people, you got to start f***ing again. You want grandkids? Make them yourself. That's not my problem. You get on it. The top reason that men gave for not wanting to get married was the financial strain of being in a long-term relationship. And the top reason that men gave for not wanting to get married was the financial strain of being in a long-term relationship. And the top reason that women gave was not wanting to give up their freedom. So honestly, this study is also an explanation for why sugar relationships are so popular. Yeah, well, there's a lot of critiques. Apparently, it's culturally very normal for women to give up their jobs when they get married in Japan. And so if you had to choose between your job and a relationship, maybe you would avoid the relationship.

But look, I don't know. I think everyone should just be randomly assigned someone to marry. And then you just deal with the consequences this is you're just okay you have to acknowledge if you're speaking on behalf of your sponsor arranged otherwise this is some kind of violation of consumer i think it should be like a lottery you just put your name in and then you roll the dice. Well, that already happens with your parents. So I think you've got to have one that feels like it's with some kind of vague free will. And that brings us to the end of our show this week.

I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. Tiff, have you got anything to plug this fine February? Oh, this fine February, what will I plug? I will plug my show at Leicester Comedy Festival. That's coming up. My new show called Brave New Tiffany. It's kind of like Brave New World, where I try and solve all the world's problems and ask,

is it moving to Mars? You can probably guess what my answer to that would be. So that's, I think that's at the Firebug in Leicester. But if you go onto my Twitter and Instagram, all the dates and everything are on there. And if you want to listen to any episodes of Catharsis, they are all available. So go have a listen.

Everyone who's on this podcast has been a guest. So enjoy. And Josh, what have you got for our people? I write a newsletter called That's Marvel marvelous full of pep talks every monday um currently let's say you can find it at joshgondelman.substack.com or my website joshgondelman.com that'll be a link there um and i'm on the road a bunch coming up i think by the time that this publishes, I can say I will be in St. Paul, Minnesota, March 1st and 2nd. I will be in Bloomington, Indiana, March 29th and 30th. And then New Orleans, Louisiana, the following April 5th and 6th. And then I'm

taping a comedy special in New York in June, I think I can say by now, June 21st at the Bell House. Exciting. So come out, see that, and then subscribe to my newsletter that whenever I go anywhere, I'll tell you about it there first. Excellent. You can find

me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop all of my stand-up specials which you get for free now including chronos and twist available on go faster stripe for the low low price of 10 pounds or via my patreon for free we also do weekly salons and weekly writers meetings though not this month because i am not here i will be in baby dimension for the whole of February. But after that, I'm back online at patreon.com slash alisfraser. This is a Bugle podcast and alisfraser production.

Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from the Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories stories and the gargle wherever you find your podcasts