Podbit · SOLVED with Mark Manson
42% of US adults are unpartnered — an all-time high. Weekly sex has fallen from 55% of adults in 1990 to 37% in 2024. And 31% of men aged 18-24 report zero sexual activity in the past year, more than double the rate from the early 2000s. This isn't a vibe — it's a measurable collapse in romantic connection.
Where this was said
At 1:44:09 · chapter starts 1:00:48
Drew takes the wheel for a data-heavy segment that makes the scale of the problem visceral. 42% of US adults are currently unpartnered — an all-time high. [1] — Drew "42% of US adults unpartnered: 42% of US adults are currently unpartnered, an all-time high, reflecting what researchers call a 'romantic re…" 1:44:09 Weekly sexual activity has fallen from 55% of adults in 1990 to 37% in 2024. 31% of men aged 18-24 report zero sexual activity in the past year, more than double the rate from the early 2000s. 25% of Americans reach 40 having never married. The average date costs $168, with Gen Z spending closer to $200 despite having less money. 71% of Democrats say they'd reject a Trump supporter as a date; 47% of Republicans say the same about Biden/Clinton voters. The causes are structural: dating apps designed to keep users addicted rather than matched, the erosion of third places, a culture of ghosting and breadcrumbing, and the 4B movement in South Korea where women are forgoing dating entirely. But Drew is cautiously optimistic: run clubs explicitly for singles, curated age-gated social events, and app innovations like Thursday (messaging only on Thursdays) suggest people are experimenting with solutions.
Life expectancy in 1840 was only about 35 years, meaning the modern expectation of a lifelong romantic partnership is a very recent invention.
42% of US adults are currently unpartnered, an all-time high, reflecting what researchers call a 'romantic recession.'
25% of Americans now reach age 40 having never been married — an all-time high, up 5 percentage points in less than 10 years.
Weekly sexual activity among US adults dropped from 55% in 1990 to 37% in 2024, a dramatic decline across all age groups.
About 31% of men aged 18-24 reported zero sexual activity in the past year as of 2024, more than double the ~15-16% recorded in the early 2000s.
Survey data shows the average date now costs $168, with Gen Z spending closer to $200 despite having less money.
Some people have calculated they save approximately $4,000 a year by opting out of dating entirely, given that the average annual spend on dating exceeds $2,000.
71% of Democrats say they would reject a Trump supporter as a potential date, versus 47% of Republicans who would reject a Biden/Clinton voter.
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.