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A good Pickup with Britt Hockley and Laura ben Bady. What our windows down? That's my world? Rison the dust only good labs all down. I don't much, but yeah I know I'll big get and what I want it don't matter where goes. This is the pickup.
Hi, guys, you're listening to the Pickup with Britt Hockley and Laura ben Laws.
I was just talking to my husband Ben on the way in here, and I always get a real insight into like the male mind when I talk to him because he plays football, so he's always surrounded by like thirty to forty guys. They spend all their time together locker room chat. Yeah, locker room chat, but it's always interesting. Sometimes it's not what you think the locker room chat would be. Anyway. I was like house today and so, yeah, we were having some interesting conversations today, so do please
do tell? And he said, oh, it came up, would you take a bullet for your partner? Like that's that's the good the question that they that they answered, And I said, oh, that's the strange thing to be talking about. He's like, yeah, I said, well, where though, where's the bullet going? Well? Is it? Is it lethal? Or is it just like it's in the leg. That is a woman's response. I think they mean like you'd probably die. I think I think the meaning like you're sacrificing yourself.
I know, and in my head, assuming that you know, the answer would be of course, I said what was what was the response? And he said only two people said that they would, fair. I don't think many people would actually, well, Ben said he would, but I'll never know the truth. I just think it's very.
Easy to say how you're going to behave in those situations, and then if push comes to shave, you'll either be the hero or.
You're going to run away like it's it's you're never going to know. It is our favorite time ask gunkut. We do this every single week on our podcast Life un Cut podcast. You guys writing or call up with your deepest, darkest problems predicaments. But today we have one we haven't really had before. We have Casey on the line, who is having a bit of a problem deciding what comes first, a baby or a dog. Casey, Welcome to the show talk us through the situation.
So basically, I would really love a dog, and my partner is super hesitant because they want to get pregnant.
I don't understand why you have to have a baby or a dog.
Is the dog a puppy and you're wanting to do it at the same time, because that would be.
A lot Well, no, it would be a puppy. We would have it like a year beforehand. But they're afraid that we're gonna stop loving the dog, or that it's going to be too hard for us. But I also see it as a bit of a test.
It will be a test, for sure. I don't think you're gonna stop. I mean, I don't have a kid. Laura has a multiple kids and a dog. But I don't think you're gonna stop loving the dog. But it is a lot to be taking on because a puppy is really hard work, and puppies aren't puppies for like two or three months.
Puppies can be Yeah, I mean it's interesting because no one wants to admit that. Like like when I had Buster so Busses, my dog. I had him for quite a few years before having children, and he was he came with me everywhere, Like everything I did, Buster just was in tow all the time. That became a little
bit trickier to manage when I had a baby. So you know, of course he still gets all the love, he gets all the attention, but he wasn't as much as in like if I was dragging around a pram and the baby and then having to get from one place to another, the pram was.
In the back.
There was no space for the dog to be in the back. Mind you, he's also enormous, And I want to be careful about saying this. I know there's gonna be so many people here and who are like, you should not treat your dog any different. Of course in a perfect world, but like there's less time for everyone because you're bringing in a whole human into the world.
So for a lot of people, it deprioritizes a little bit, but you don't love them any less, and it rebalances once you get a grip on the whole motherhood thing and you and you figure it out and you find your feet and then you know. And now in our situation, we've got two kids and our dog adapted.
He's eleven. He loves life and now he's got two kids terrorizing. I think that's the thing. Laws he's eleven, and so even when you started having kids, he was quite old six at the time. Is there a way you could maybe adopt a dog that's not a puppy, or get, you know, a dog that's a little bit older in life, that's not as needy and as energetic as you know.
I mean, that's not a bad idea, that's a good compromise. But I think the idea of having a puppy is seeing how he raised something together.
Different a baby dog and a baby human.
They're so different. They yes, yeah, they are, they really are. Controversially, I reckon.
A puppy is sometimes harder than a human.
I really do. They're harder to like just I know, you can kind of leave them at home and stuff like that.
You come home, they've eaten through your underwear, They've pissed on your laptop.
Like puppies are hard work. Yeah, I would agree.
Okay, so what's the decision here?
Advice? My advice is get a dog, for sure, because you know, my dog is the best thing in my life. Get a dog. I just don't think you should probably be having a baby and a dog at the exact same time. The way you train your puppy is like instrumental in for that dog's the rest of its life. Like the way how easy it is for you in your day to day, how well it's trained, how well it obeys you, Like the way you set up your dog.
And I hate saying set up, but it's so true that makes the rest of its life, you know, make or break. I'm confused. Is it you who wants the puppy?
So I want the puppy, but she thinks it's going to be too much work, and I think it's a good test.
It might be.
Who do you think is going to end up doing the majority share of the puppy load?
Me?
You reckon?
All right?
Well, maybe look it might work. Good luck, that's all I have to say. Good luck. A baby and a puppy is hard work.
Now we are asking the question is online dating dead? And the reason for this is because there has been some figures that's come out that said there has been a huge decline not just in the amount of people who are using online dating apps, but also I mean bumble has come out and said that they've had to lay off like massive amounts of their workforce because simply the apps are not as popular as what they used
to be, say, five, ten years ago. The interesting thing about this is that literally everyone in this room has met their partners via a dating app except for me. I met him on a reality TV show, which I would say is one step worse.
Yeah, definitely not the same. No, but don't get me wrong.
I exhausted all the dating apps, every single one, and then I went on a reality TV show to meet someone because I couldn't find them on the apps.
Yeah, three of us here online dating. My sister got married from Tinder. So many people I know are in relationships on actually more people than not that I know in my life are in relationships based off online dating. But just like you said, Laura, to give you a statistic match group who own Tinder and then Bumble is independent of that, but have laid off like two percent of their staff and CEOs in the last year to
eighteen months. That I think comes back to not only the fact that people are finding online dating hard and hopeless and unsuccessful, but they're starting to charge for online dating now like online dating used to be free, or maybe you would pay like two dollars to unlock an extra feature. It is so expensive now to online date. You need subscriptions or you're not going to be shown to people. Do you want to boost your profile to make sure the top people see you pay forty dollars a month.
I would have thought people would have paid for romance like you would have paid for love. But maybe it's because they're not having the success right, Like people are paying for a certain amount of time and then they're not getting any return on that investment because they're not going on dates. Yeah, people are maybe like sending a few messages and then you get left on red or like someone's hot then they're cold. I remember back in the day, you would only pay if you'd exhausted everyone
in your area and you needed more people. You could pay to like extend your area out. That's how like they would make more. I guess incidental revenue.
I mean I paid to meet my husband. That sounds weird. But the dating app that I was on, which was rare, was like a subscription service. You had to pay monthly to be on it. But I think what that did I mean? And maybe it was ahead of its time because you definitely did pay for that much earlier than I paid for Tinder or bumble, and I have paid for them all. I was online dating for like a decade, and I had every app besides like the og you know,
like plenty of fish and stuff like. I didn't have those, but I saw the creep of every app slowly start to bring in a monetary value. Yeah, and the problem is people now that they're paying it's a product, and you are not getting anything from your product. So people are paying x amount a month and seventy percent of people are not meeting people.
Well that's the thing, right, So seven and ten users report that their conversations rarely ever like actually turned into actual dates, which if you're then paying for that service and you're not getting a date out of it, like that would be so incredibly deflating. Also for the people who were swipes swiping, putting in so much energy not getting the matches or not getting any conversations, like what that does to your self esteem.
But there's also a second part of this.
I think on one hand, we can talk about people moving away from the abs and how people are trying to meet in real life and blah blah blah, But I also think that there is a massive push now of people who are choosing to be single and not out of loneliness, not because it's a last resort, but because they actually are very happy in being single. And I think for so long we looked at being single as like this purgatory between when your next relationship was
going to come around. But there's some really interesting information that's come out. The Culture Cut did a census and they predicted that by twenty thirty, nearly half of women age twenty five to forty four are expected to be.
Single and child free.
And that's not because they aren't able to find a.
Person to settle down with. That is by choice.
There's three main reasons women are prioritizing their personal growth, their own financial freedom. They're also choosing careers over relationships, and also that the divorce rates arising and a lot of people are not getting remarried after their first failed relationship.
This doesn't surprise me at all when you think of the reason a lot of people used to have to get married. And we're getting into a whole other conversation here, but a lot of women had to get married for financial security. You know, we didn't have the education that we have now, or the opportunities to progress in a career, or to focus on a career, or to choose a career. We're also told that like you got married and you
had kids. It's different now, like financial independence means everything, and so many more women are realizing that they don't have to rely on anyone, and in fact, they're happier. You can be far happier on your own. Some of the best years of my life, and like, obviously I'm married now. I loved being single, like not having the responsibility, not owing anything to anyone, doing whatever you wanted to do.
Yeah, but I think that that's such a hard thing for a lot of people to realize because for so long, and it's a lot of like undoing, right, Like for so long we've been told that you get into a relationship, you have children, you get married, Like that's kind of what that's the ultimate goal is like to be in a good, healthy relationship. And you know, I even see it in my in my mother in law, Ellie, she's
been single for a really long time. She's so content, she's so happy, and she still sometimes has to say, like, you know, people always assimilate being on your own with potentially being lonely or missing companionship, and she's like, my life has never been more stress free than what it has been since I've been single. And she embraced that after you know, her divorce. And I think a lot of people have realized that that actually, you know, you can be single and be completely content.
It doesn't equate to loneliness. Yeah, and people realize they don't have to have kids anymore, so they don't have to find the spouse to have this see twenty thirty.
Population decline is apparently incoming, Laura.
Last week I came across some pretty big information and I haven't been able to get out of my mind. Like I have not stopped thinking about it. It is living rent free. I am beside myself with happiness for this person. The problem is it's a person that I don't know, but I have this like weird parasocial relationship with them. So hear me out. The biggest crush of my life is Jennifer Aniston.
If I thought it was the guy from Outlander, Sam Hwan, Yeah, you've got to stop talking about him though now because it's a bit more accessible.
I think Brits let into his DMS. We were going to go on a date once. I can't actually talk about it, Jennifer Anison.
That wasn't Enny on my bingo cards for Annison to me, I don't know what it is.
She's the apple of my eye. I've just had a crush on her forever. If I could come back in this world and be someone, I feel like I'd want to be her. I loved her in everything that she's in. I think she seems like a really wonderful person from what she puts forward to the world.
I did not pick you as like, how have I known you for six years and didn't know that you were a closet Jennifer Addison Fairt.
I've definitely said it before. I think you've checked out. No, I love her. I knew you liked her. I didn't realize you with this far up rally. I also just think she's beautiful. I think she's so funny. She seems really nice. But I think a big part of it, to be honest, I think I connected with her a lot over the years because she's had a horrific dating life. Like I know, she has been through the Ringer and I went I don't like to pick sides, but when
it was Jen and Angelina, I was always tim Jen. Okay.
I always thought about this because, like, remember when Mister and Missus Smith was a thing, so cast your mind's back. That was when Brad went and he filmed the movie Mister and Missus Smith with Angelina Jolie, and that's when their affair started, allegedly. I'm sure neither of them are getting to come and sue me if I say the wrong bed.
I don't know they are suing each other.
But imagine your husband having an affair with who was quoted as the hottest woman in the world at the time.
I wouldn't let him film the movie.
And everyone saying that they ship that relationship like you're you're married in real life and the public are saying, oh, you should leave your wife and go be with Angelina Jolie, And.
He did, and I just thought yes, And I just thought she's always from not just that situation, but she was with John Mayer, she was with Vinceborn Thaughty Boys. But I've always thought she held herself with such class like in that breakup. I cannot imagine what it would be like for the world to have shipped Angelina and Brad when it was your literal husband, it was very obviously an affair.
She was always so quiet and just like, I don't know. She always took the high road, and I had a lot of respect for her. But she's just come out that she's in a new relationship, and she hasn't been in a relationship in ages, and she's been spotted with this new man, and I'm just like so happy for her. It was weird. I felt like I could have cried with her happiness, because she looks really happy. Hear me out. He's an author, speaker and coach. His name is Jim Curtis.
I know, I just I just here for it. Let me just talk about my happiness. Please tell me more about it. What else did he do? Well? Did you look at his Wikipedia page? This is why it's interesting. This is why I think it's funny, because I am slightly concerned for her. He's a hypnotherapist, a neuro linguistic programming practitioner. Well, has he hypnotized her into this? This is like somebody sent help to her. Is she truly happy? Or has he hypnotized her and trickter into relationship?
Britt I think your concern for Jennifer Aniston has territory where it's a little bit straight.
But in all seriousness, can I show you him. He's like a daddy, he's hot. Have a look.
Yeah, he's nice, he's a beautiful he can hypnotize me anytime.
Actually, that's not true. I've got a husband who I love, who you fall asleep, who I fall asleep next to. But I just think, like, I don't know. Parasocial relationships are weird, Like there's a few people that you get so invested with in life and then you have to remind yourself that you don't actually know them.
I don't think I have a parasocial relationship with anyone.
You had one with Jason Momola. You were in a relationship with him in your brain.
No, I just thought he was hot and said I would climb him like tree.
But apart from that, No, I didn't. I didn't have a relationship with you. I didn't know much about him. I just I didn't know him. No, I didn't. I clearly don't know him. I No, I don't think so.
I don't think that there's anyone that I've really But then again, you look at social media, for example, And I think sometimes we follow people online, like there's definitely other people who work in media or influencers who who I've never met in real life, but I've met them online, if that makes sense, Like, maybe that's my extent of a parasocial relationship.
Oh, you have full relationships with people online that you have to remind yourself of We've never seen each other in real life? Do you even know who I am? Have we actually met?
Like?
Oh, do I just follow you online and know everything about you?
Which I think is now quite a weird phenomena because back in the day, you'd have celebrities, you'd have movie stars, and they were so inaccessible. The only time that you got little bits of them was either through tabloid magazines and most of the stuff was made up, or it was because you've gone to see the movie that they're in.
Whereas now a lot of celebrities, and especially that middle tier celebrity, share so much of their lives online and they're also starring in films and everything else, and it's like the accessibility to their life is what I think makes people a bit obsessed with them.
I would go so far as to say it's not even the middle tier celebrities. Some of the biggest celebrities in the world are like instagramming on selfies and stuff.
Do you think that like a lot of them overshare. I think it like it's justin Bieber's now. But then a lot of massive celebrities don't need to be that public because they've already got everything they need. They don't need to share their entire lives because it's not a bargaining chip for them.
Yeah, you tell them, Laura. Anyway, that's it from us.