On Oct. 29, 2025, an opinion piece came out in Vogue Magazine that said having a boyfriend is now embarrassing. I couldn’t agree more.
The author, Chanté Joseph, essentially says that women have started hiding their boyfriends from their social media out of fear of being judged online. She argues that there has been a societal shift away from women relying on men.
We’ve all had that one friend that is constantly obsessed with whatever guy that she’s talking to, and it completely consumes her life. When he ghosts her, she becomes miserable and hates him forever, or when they do actually get together, she’s all about him.
I’ve had those friends and I’ve been that friend.
Now, I do have to preface this article with one thing: I have never been in a relationship. But because of that, I have learned that men are not essential to my existence. Don’t get me wrong, I want a relationship.
But people have always told me that my standards are too high, and that’s why I’ve never had that before, which I think is frankly ridiculous.
I am not going to lower my standards to get a relationship with someone that will not add value to my life. That is what’s embarrassing, not the concept of a boyfriend itself.
I’ve known and seen so many women waste their time on mediocre men who only drag them down. They spend all this time just trying to get their attention. And then the relationship, if it even gets to that point, is miserable. He doesn’t care about her, and she’s always wondering if she did something wrong. A lot of Joseph’s arguments behind boyfriends being embarrassing come from the idea that women should “decenter” men from their lives—don’t make your man your entire personality.
Before you get upset, no one is saying you can’t love your boyfriend. But there are some “male-centered” women who take it too far. Someone I used to be friends with — the most important part of that is “used to be” — got so entirely caught up in her relationship that she completely abandoned her friends.
We went from hanging out every day to going weeks without seeing each other because she would always choose her boyfriend over me and her other friends.
And whenever we would hang out, her boyfriend would always be there too, or she would exclusively talk about him. When something would go wrong in her relationship, she would be a complete wreck.
But two days later, she would go back to him like nothing happened.
She would lean on her friendships until she got over whatever fight they were in, then disappear again. It got exhausting. I haven’t talked to her in months, and I don’t plan to.
The point behind decentering men isn’t to cut them out of your life completely, unless that’s what you want it to be. But the main idea is to make sure they don’t consume your whole life and drag you down.
Don’t lower your standards for a man (or any partner) who doesn’t care about you. Unless they add value to your life, don’t bring them in.
And don’t sacrifice your friends for relationships. That would be truly embarrassing.
