A Valentine? In This Romantic Recession?
38:58 Share

I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three. Will that be cash or credit? Credit. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you. Get yours at Samsung.com. Compatible with select apps requires Google Gemini account results may vary based on input check responses for accuracy.

What percent of Americans say they are friends with all of their exes? All of them. All of them. That's crazy. Yeah, I like to talk to these people. Oh, well, I'm right here. I'm right here. I'm a yes. After we get off here, we'll have to schedule an in-depth interview, Galen. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to do it.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and happy Valentine's Day. All around the country, schoolchildren will rejoice as they nibble on heart-shaped candies and distribute handmade Valentine's cards.

Little do they know that true love is much harder to come by than cards and candy, and that the real world can be hard on the heart. These are not simply the jaded grumblings of someone who is currently single. There are actually mountains of data showing that love and romance are not alive and well in America.

According to Pew Data, in 1990, the share of Americans aged 25 to 54 who did not live with a spouse or partner was 29%. Today, that number is closer to 40%. And among that 40%, three quarters say it's difficult to find people they're interested in. My guests today call it a romantic romance.

recession. The causes of this recession and views on how concerned we should be about it are varied. Some of the possible causes listeners will be familiar with from how they play out in American politics, like the gender gap and the diploma divide. Others get at decades-long transformations in American culture, and others still are specific to this moment in time, like the rise in online dating and the trust in the strangers you meet there.

So, no, dear single listener, if you are, in fact, single, it's not just that your hinge prompts are bad. America is more single than ever. Here with me to talk about why is Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. Welcome to the podcast, Daniel.

Thanks. Great to be here. Also here with us is Kelsey Iyer-Hammond, researcher and program coordinator at the Survey Center on American Life as well. Welcome, Kelsey. Hi, happy to be here. I'll also say that a little later on, if you stick around, we are going to play a game of Guess What Americans Think Now.

about love. It'll be fun, I promise. But first, let's talk about the data. So help me set the table here. You two have written that we are in a, quote, romantic recession. That's your term. What data is leading you to say that?

I think if you look at relationship formation, if you look at the decline of marriage, and then if you look at the overall pessimism that we see in the data, it really seems to be that we're facing a novel and unique downturn when it comes to the way people are thinking about romance, how they're coming together in ways that play out across the demographic spectrum.

Kelsey, I'm curious, digging into the data a little further, you know, what kind of pessimism do we see? How do folks say, describe why they're single or, you know, if they see it as a problem? So a big part of, I think, the pessimism that we see has a lot to do with people not believing that they'll find a partner who meets their expectations. So they would rather remain single than be with someone who's not the right person for them.

And then who is the right person is more difficult to figure out, right? So we see a really significant education divide with college-educated women having many more red flags than those without. And so whether it's politics, you know, living with your parents, all these things matter in ways that I feel like for a previous generation, it was just sort of like, who's around me? Who's close by?

That's interesting to me because we're actually seeing more of a decline in the marriage rate amongst non-college educated women, right? You know, if you look back over the past 85 years, the percentage of women with a college degree who are married has remained steady at about 70%.

Meanwhile, over that same period of time, women without a college degree 85 years ago was also 70% marriage rate. Now it's 52%. So there's something going on here where people may think, oh, the stereotype of the single woman or the single man is college educated and the cat lady that JD Vance was talking about or whatever. But in fact, increasingly, when we think about single individuals, maybe we should be thinking about working class people.

Yeah, there's actually a new paper out that says exactly this, right? That college-educated women, if you look over the past few generations, despite the overall decline in marriage rates, that they're remaining about at the same rate as past generations.

And what's going on, because there are actually fewer college-educated men to marry, is that college-educated women are marrying financially stable men without degrees. And so it's the non-college-educated women who are the ones sort of losing out in the marriage market in that way.

Yeah, I'm curious what this all leads us to. You know, it goes without saying that you can be single and live a happy, healthy life and you can have close friendships. You can raise a child if you're single. You can love your job, be involved in the community. But is it a problem that we are seeing singledom rise in America and particularly singledom with a class divide component?

I think this is a good question. And I think, you know, a lot of people have different reasons, whether they're faith-based or not, for like believing that marriage and family is important. And all of that aside, I think one thing that we do notice is that single people, especially single men, tend to have fewer friends and are less connected to their communities than people who are married or people, especially people who have children. To say whether or not it's bad that single people are, there are more single people or people aren't getting married, there's a decline in marriage,

depending on what you believe, that's fine. But it does have implications for people's connectedness to their communities, you know, especially as people have fewer children and stuff like that. There need to be other ways for them to be connecting to their communities and the people around them. Yeah, I mean, Kelsey is exactly right that if you care about the health of

American community life, like, you gotta care about marriage and parenthood especially. We released a report not too long ago that dubbed mothers and fathers with school-age children civic superheroes because of all the stuff they do in their communities, from attending meetings to volunteering

donating, whether it's through the school or through other local institutions and organizations, they're just incredibly active. And I think we all benefit from that kind of local-based activism. And so if your people are getting married and having kids, what does that mean for all of us in terms of how active people are in their communities?

How do we figure out which comes first in this situation? Wealthy, better educated people are more inclined to get married and have children in America today. They're also more inclined to be involved in society.

civic life. If we control for, you know, getting married and having kids, are wealthy, better educated people, you know, just more inclined to participate in civic life period and have more friends? Like, if I remember correctly in talking about the epidemic of loneliness in America, there's sort of, family aside, a class divide. Yeah, no, I think we see that in the data. And it's, if anything, getting worse, right? So some of the institutions that

tended to encourage levels of civic activism and involvement that enjoyed high participation rates across the board were churches and places of worship. And now we've seen non-college folks drift away from those places at much faster rates. So it is absolutely across the board. And you still find, you know, for a large number of Americans, they tend to date within their class, right? So then...

all the benefits of marriage and the benefits of the sort of financial stability and the social benefits that that provides is accrued to people who need at least.

I want to get to the why part. We alluded at education being a piece, but you dig into a lot more. Let's start with education, though. Why has whether or not you have a college degree come to determine, you know, in America, it determines who you vote for, how much money you make, where you live. And now it determines maybe whether or not you even get married. Why is that?

So I think psychologists, sociologists and economists all have different answers to this. But for the economists, I think the most common explanation is the lack of, you know, quote unquote, marriageable men. Men without college degrees are struggling financially. And in the places where that happens, the marriage rate tends to suffer. Even though we've seen a lot of progress socially and culturally about gender roles,

there's still an expectation that men will be more marriageable material if they're able to bring a steady paycheck. And to the extent that a lot of non-college men are struggling, I think it's more difficult for them to be attractive marriage partners.

And is that new? Like, as in men without a college degree have become materially poorer over the past 50 years or that there are more of them? I know there's been something of a weird dynamic because overall Americans have become more educated. But now bachelor's degree, for example, 60% of bachelor's degrees go to women. Yeah.

That's undoubtedly true, right? That non-college men are certainly struggling more. It's much more difficult to get by without a college degree. The lack of job security is an important one.

The jobs that are available don't pay as well. And so I think that there's a way in which that that's a huge impediment. The other thing, too, is the sort of social support system, whether it's labor unions or churches, that was sort of something you built your life around and you connected with people in your community has also deteriorated. So you have both sort of this double whammy of the sort of economic decline and the social decline accompanying it.

which makes it difficult to connect with anyone and let alone find a partner. And in that environment, folks are increasingly turning to online dating. But from looking at your data, that comes with perils of its own. Kelsey, what did you find in terms of Americans' attitudes towards online dating and whether it's working?

Generally, there's a sense of pessimism toward online dating. I know we mentioned in addition to the survey that report that we put out, we've been doing a lot of in-depth interviews with young people about their experiences. And like a shared sentiment is that a lot of people just don't really take the app seriously. So I've heard a number of people say is like, oh, yeah, I like download the apps and I swipe. It's kind of like a game. Would

Which is interesting because there are lots of people who are finding partners on apps, but it just doesn't seem like people are set on, okay, this app is going to help me find my person.

Yeah, and it may sound trivial to folks that I'm focusing on this, but today, dating online is the most common way for couples to meet, according to the research that's out there. And so we should take the trials and tribulations of online dating seriously. Were there any other impediments that you all found?

Another piece of data that we found that was interesting was just that people were less likely to go on a second date with someone who they met on an online dating app. So like when we asked people, would you give a second date to someone after a bad first date? If they were introduced by a friend or a mutual acquaintance, they were much, much more likely to just kind of give someone a second chance if the first date wasn't that great. Whereas if it was someone they met on an app, they were like not willing to go on a second date, which I think is understandable. But it's interesting to see that that plays out in the data as well.

Yeah, and I think the issue of trust that Kelsey alluded to here looms large in online dating. And something that we found in this new study was that single women in particular, but both single women and single men are less trusting of dating apps. They believe that they're less safe.

than they once did. So if you go back to as recently as 2019, the majority of single women and single men said, yep, these are pretty safe ways to meet someone. And then fast forward to 2024, and it's now like about a third of single women saying that. So that's a really significant decline. And we see this in general, how mistrusting a lot of people were of dating people that they just didn't really know.

There was another topic that came up in your reporting, which was politics and that men and women decreasingly see eye to eye in their political worldview. And maybe that also means their sort of social moral worldview. Do y'all really believe that people are too partisan to date each other anymore?

We certainly heard a bit of this when we talked to students at the University of Chicago over the past few days. And in our data, we have roughly three in four college-educated single women saying that they'd be less likely to date a Trump supporter. On the other side, we have about four in ten single men saying they would not date or be less likely to date a feminist. So there's a way in which politics is kind of unavoidable, and Trump is...

you know, someone who looms large in all of this. He's, you know, from the very beginning been an incredibly polarizing figure, and women and men have had very different views about him. And in fact, when I would talk about Trump in terms of dating, and I would hear men describe him and women describe him, it was like they were talking about two different people. They just had incredibly different conceptions of who he was and what his presidency means.

Yeah, I think that's definitely true. And I think for women, it is a lot more of a feeling of not being respected. A lot of women sort of share the sentiment, and this kind of came through in interviews we did and also in just open-ended responses to our most recent survey. People feel like I wouldn't date a Trump supporter because I would assume that they didn't respect me, that I would assume that they don't care about my human rights and bodily autonomy, etc.,

And it's actually kind of interesting. We got a number of responses from young men who had said they would not date a feminist that shared similar sentiments.

Some of them said things like, oh, you know, she would be annoying or, you know, things that were slightly less deep. But a number of people also said, like, I wouldn't date a feminist because she wouldn't have my best interest at heart or she wouldn't value me as a person if she were a feminist. And this is coming from young men. So it is interesting how there's a bit of a mirror effect among people on the ends of the spectrum when it comes to their kind of political beliefs, I think. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, we've also seen research that suggests that

that when people answer this way, oh, I wouldn't date somebody who voted for Trump, or I wouldn't date somebody who voted for Clinton or Kamala or whatever. I think the research that I've most recently seen is from 2016, that they don't really mean that. Like when you dig deeper, what they really mean is they don't want to date somebody who is the stereotype of a liberal or the stereotype of a Republican. And it turns out that the vast majority of Americans don't.

aren't stereotypes and have somewhat complicated mixed views. And probably for every total lib stereotype, there's like a woman, there's like a total lib stereotype man, and they can marry each other if they want to. And there's like a total sort of like conservative man and conservative women, and they can also sort of date each other if they want to. But that like most Americans aren't so motivated by partisanship that it actually shapes society.

who they're willing to date. But if that has changed over the past eight years, that would kind of be huge. I mean, do you get the sense that there's sort of like that literally because there are so many liberal women and so many sort of more conservative men that there's a mismatch to the point where this is is driving people apart in the dating market?

I do think that there's something unique about Trump. Like, so many of these women that we would talk to who say, you know, being a Trump supporter is a deal breaker. And by the way, there's a difference between voting for him and being a Trump supporter, sort of like endorsing sort of all who he is, his sort of combative approach, you know, his sort of personal life.

But when we would hear them, the same women would say, "I could date a Republican, but I just couldn't date someone who's a full-throated mega guy." And I think that that is a difference. 'Cause in 2024, you had six and 10 young moderate men vote for Trump, and more than one in five liberal young men vote for Trump as well. So you had a significant amount of ideological diversity

in support of Trump. And something that surprises young people when I talk to them, there's not a ton of evidence that young men have moved way to the right on all these issues, whether you think about same-sex marriage or...

abortion and reproductive health rights. They're not suddenly conservative Republicans. They have moved away from the Democratic Party in an important way, and that has significant political implications. But I think there's more common ground than sometimes appears in a poll.

Yeah, I think that's important to keep in mind. There's another piece of this where, you know, a lot of the research that gets at relationships and singledom and the like are focusing also on birth rates and, you know, why are folks not settling down together and then also therefore not having children. And...

And one of the overwhelming conclusions is that it's just cultural. We no longer live in a culture where everyone is expected to get married and settle down and have kids. And once that expectation goes away, people just don't do it as much because...

we're social animals. We want to fit in. We want to be valued and we want to be seen positively by the people in our community. And if our community only sees us positively, if we do these things, then we'll do them. And if all of a sudden they'll still see us positively, if we don't, there's not as much pressure. So in the face of online dating and loneliness and our political divides and education, how much of this is just a changing culture? I mean, maybe you can't separate it out that much, but culturally,

you kind of can't legislate your way out of. Yeah, I think that's right. Like, we ask questions about the extent to which people face social pressure or feel that they face social pressure to get married, either, you know, from society at large or from their family, and very few people do. And so I think that's incredibly important. I think there's another important element to all this, and that is social media and how that portrays

marriage and dating. And like so many things, social media tends to give you extremes. So it shows you the most amazing, blissfully happy couple with the boyfriend or spouse doing incredibly generous things and is so thoughtful. And in the other extreme, you'll hear these horrific stories about spouses who ignore their pregnant wives and don't pitch in around the house or these awful dates that

And so you have a lot of young women consuming this. We've actually asked questions about what kind of stuff you're seeing online, and a lot of people are hearing negative stuff. So if I'm not facing a lot of social pressure to get married, if it's increasingly okay to be alone, I'm not going to be stigmatized, and I'm seeing a lot of negative information about what it means to be married and how that'll impact my life and maybe my career,

That makes a lot of sense. People don't behave irrationally. They're just getting a lot of different information that I think previous generations of young people got.

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that especially when we look at data, Pew actually released a report about this as well that talked about having children, too. And for the first time in ever, women are less likely to say that they want to have children than men are, young men and young women. And so I think that that is likely reflective of kind of what you're talking about with sexism.

societal pressure and things like that, and just women having opportunities that they didn't have before. But I also think that there's a sentiment among a lot of young women that like, why would I do this really hard thing if I'm going to have to be largely alone? Because I'm not going to be able to find a partner who can truly be my partner. Right. And my career will be adversely affected too. We heard that a lot. And granted, we were at the University of Chicago, but a number of the women said that they were really hesitant to leading towards not having kids because of

of how it would negatively impact their career and their professional accomplishments. And so, I think that is an incredibly important and a relatively new phenomenon. It struck me that in your research that increasingly, single women, when asked, say that they think their lives would be worse off if they were married, whereas it's the reverse for single men. Single men think their lives are gonna be, like, much better if they're married.

What's going on there? Kelsey, you're laughing. It sounds like you have some thoughts. I just, like, I think that Dan's point about social media is honestly a big part of that. I think that there is a good amount of...

I don't know if this is the right word, but like anxiety about finding and being partnered with the wrong person. I think also young women, you know, were raised by people who are a generation older than them who had different social norms in their like their parents likely had a different dynamic than what they want. I think that's a big part of it, too, is like the the models that they've had for the majority of their lives might not be the

the thing that they want in their partnership. And so there's just, I think, I think there's, there seems to be just, and the women I've talked to in the, what I've looked at a sense of anxiety that like, they don't want to be a housewife and they also don't want to be expected to take care of an adult man. And so I do think that that's a piece of it as well as just thinking like the boys, their age don't really measure up. And that's a question I've asked a number of young women. Like, do you feel like the men at your college who you interact with are

can keep up with you, you know, emotionally and also academically and professionally. And every single young woman I've spoken to has said, no, the men are behind. They're behind where I where I am. And so they're like, I either I'm going to date someone older than me or find some unicorn young man my age who gets it. Kelsey is right to point this out, but I just want to like underline it. It's not just that they're doing worse in their classes and they're not scoring quite as high on tests.

I think there's a real deficit in social skills that we're hearing. We're talking with women about going on dates and the guy for an hour and a half will sit across from them and never ask them a question. That's just not something we're hearing from the men when it comes to these early date experiences that are being shared. And I think...

Not everyone, but I think a large number of young people have, particularly young women, have negative dating experiences. Whereas in society, dating longer, we're dating more people than previous generations. And even people who really want to get married sometimes are not able to find someone who, we're coming back again to this idea of not finding someone who can meet their expectations. And I think that the lack of social skills, and it's not exclusively among the men, but I think you see more evidence of it there than among women.

We are about to get to exactly that topic in a game that I have prepared for you. But before we do...

If we accept that this is a problem, and people will accept that it's a problem for many different reasons. One, you know, you don't want to live in a society where people are increasingly lonely or atomized, and this is, you know, relationships and marriage and children are a way to increase connectivity. Or, you know, there are folks who are genuinely concerned about the birth rate and what that means for society and the economy and the like. I think in America, that's more of like a

sort of conservative coded thing. But in Europe, it's not really. It's not necessarily partisan thing or maybe even more of a liberal thing, because a lot of the policies that would try to increase the fertility rate are the kinds of programs that progressives tend to like in America. All that taken under consideration. What is your romantic stimulus plan? How would you fix this recession?

There's a great article in The Atlantic that I think the title is something like, we should be partying more. And I think the article is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think if you look at changes in socializing among young adults...

Some of this stuff goes back to that. We're so hyper-focused on individual priorities. So you want to develop skills and experiences that will allow you to become a well-rounded adult and have a successful career or get into the right college. But we're emphasizing things for kids now that...

are really different. So it's all this sort of achievement-oriented activities as opposed to letting kids go out and play and have fun and, yes, party and maybe drink a little bit. And I think that's important in all of this, right? How you interact, how you learn to interact in group settings, your level of comfort with...

uh you know something i call this sort of help the healthy friction of human interaction which is inevitable um i think this generation's much more anxious about that and some of it you could say is the culture you know concerned about saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing both there's this heightened sensitivity to language but also i certainly hear from some of the men i talk to they don't want to be dubbed as creepy

And what does that mean? That's kind of hard to know where the line is. And I feel like there's not as much grace. So I think giving people experience and then allowing people to make mistakes and to be awkward. And that's okay. Yeah, it's funny. I saw an article in, I think it was The Guardian, actually, that said,

suggested that Gen Z has a lot of app fatigue and is not that interested in being on the apps, but finds the prospect of being asked out in person as cringe or awkward. So like both spaces are no longer comfortable to be in and you're left, I don't know, according to the data, in many cases, just single. Yeah.

But I want to talk about some of the data behind what actually happens when people go on a date or, you know, try to try out a relationship. And so for this, we are going to play a game of guess what Americans think about love.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Shopify. So it's a new year 2025. And you're thinking, how am I going to make this year different? How am I going to build something for myself? I'm dying to be my own boss or see if I can turn this business idea I've been kicking around into a reality, but I don't know how to make it happen.

Shopify is how you're going to make it happen. And let me tell you how. The best time to start your new business is right now. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business, and get your first sale. Get your store up and running easily with thousands of customizable templates, no coding or design skills required. All you need to do is drag and drop. They're powerful social media tools that you connect all your channels and create shoppable posts and help you sell everywhere people scroll. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think.

established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash 538. That's the numbers, not the letters. Go to shopify.com slash 538 to start selling with Shopify today. shopify.com slash 538.

Still getting around to that fix on your car? You got this. On eBay you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit. Doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair or your first time swapping your windshield wipers.

eBay has that part you need, ready to click perfectly into place. For changes big and small, loud or quiet, find all the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. But you already know that. eBay. Things. People. Love. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.

If you can please get a pen and paper. We have a few questions for you, and I'll note these all come from various YouGov polls, so thank you, YouGov. Are you guys ready to play Guess What Americans Think About Love? Ready. Yes. All right. Here we go. First question. What percent of Americans say that they have been on a, quote, terrible date?

All right, three, two, one, reveal. I said 70. 89%. Oh, okay, up there. Well, I think that your recent experiences have biased you a little bit.

50% of Americans say that they have been on a terrible date. 80% of Americans say they have been on a wonderful date. So wonderful dates still beating out terrible dates. That's great. That's what maybe the same phenomenon is more people believe in heaven than hell. Exactly. There we go.

Jumping off of that terrible date idea, out of these four examples of bad dating etiquette, which one do Americans disapprove of the most? I got four examples for you. The first, frequently looking at your phone. The second, getting drunk.

The third, refusing to answer questions about themselves. And the fourth, talking about recent dates with other people. A really who's who of great dating situations. I know mine. Yeah, I...

Yeah, I think I have an idea, yeah. Okay, all right. Three, two, one. Reveal. You're both saying four, talking about recent dates with other people. It is actually number one. What? Really? Frequently looking at your phone.

Which I endorse. This truly, I mean, even with friends, truly, like, the... No, it's bad. ...struggle of our time. But I feel like talking about an ex is, like, the number one, like, faux pas when you're on a date. Or talking about, like, other relationships is just... Yeah, maybe the... I think the younger generations are maybe into being more vulnerable, you know, opening up, sharing. I also feel like there's a world where you could be like, oh, yeah, I was on a date last night and the guy was so rude to me. Like, you know, and it's, like, kind of...

Not like that. You're not talking about it a lot, you know? Yeah. In fact, frequently looking at your phone was 87% disapproved of this while only 63% disapproved of talking about recent dates with other people. So Americans open-minded, even if they're spending too much time on their phones, moving on. So that's zero points allotted there. Moving on. What percent of Americans said they have been in love? Three. Yeah.

one reveal. 75% for me. Oh, really? I said 50%. That's, I think I was trying to be more, more optimistic. It is 89%. So Dan, you got the point there. That's a lot. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah. I mean,

I mean, you know, it doesn't always work out, but, you know, we're just happy that it happened, you know? That's right. Yeah. Okay. What percent of Americans believe that the portrayal of romance in romantic comedies is either very realistic or somewhat realistic? For the record, the other options were not sure, somewhat unrealistic or very unrealistic. So the percentage of Americans who roughly believe that rom-coms portray realistic romance...

This should be very low, but I don't think that it is. I feel like the inclusion of "somewhat realistic" is going to make it high, because obviously there are going to be things that are reflective, you know? Yeah. The five-point scale in survey design is always tricky.

Three, two, one, reveal. I wrote 60. 20%. 20%. Dan, you get it, but it's like pretty in the middle between you two. It was 37% said that rom-coms portray a realistic romance, at least somewhat. Next one, this is a fun one.

Of the five love languages, words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service, and gift giving, which is the one that a plurality of Americans prefer? Three, two, one, reveal. Quality time. Oh, I said physical touch. Okay. Y'all clearly have experience with talking to people about romance. Dan, you won. It is quality time. But number two is physical touch.

So quality time, 38% of Americans say they prefer that as the love language that they prefer to receive. Next, 24% say physical touch. Words of affirmation, 19%. Acts of service, 13%. And gift giving, only 7%. I am curious if there is some...

social desirability bias going on there because there's a lot of... I feel like people really enjoy getting gifts. I think, too, if you said flowers, like...

My wife loves getting flowers, but I don't know if she would say it's like a gift. Yeah, or if you said like Rolexes. I mean, right? Come on. Hawaiian vacations. Sure, give me a Rolex. I mean, yeah, I can skip out on the words of affirmation if I'm getting a Rolex. Next one. The score is Dan 3, Kelsey 1. Kelsey...

I got faith in you for this one. What percent of Americans say they are friends with all of their exes? Such a weird quote. I guess also I want to know, I don't know. I want to know how friend is defined in this context as well. Because, yeah. Okay. Three, two, one. Reveal. I'm saying 50%. Three. 3%.

Okay, neither of you were anywhere close, but it's 17%. So, Dan, you get it, but you were still pretty far off. That's true. Maybe no points allotted for that one. Yeah, Kelsey, 50% of Americans say they're friends with all of their exes? Well, I'm just thinking about, like, the term friend seems so loose to me, you know? Like, I'm like, friend, like, okay, I follow them on Instagram. Does that count? Like, you know what I mean? I don't know. I feel like people...

are loose with the word friend. Think of, you know, Olivia Rodrigo-like songs. Taylor Swift songs. Like, I mean, there's so much, like, positive reinforcement of hating your ex. Yeah, that's true. That you would think would be like, no one. That's a good point. Kelsey was at a disadvantage because she's an incredibly nice person. And so... So nice of you. Okay.

We are rounding this out with our final question. It's another you have to pick out of four. Of these four relationship adages, which did Americans agree with most? They are, one, never go to bed angry. Two, actions speak louder than words. Three, love is blind. And four, the best relationships start as friendships. Hmm.

Three, two, one, reveal. You both picked two and you are both correct. Actions speak louder than words. 92% of Americans agreed with that adage. And the rank from there is next. Never go to bed angry. That suggests to me that Americans are doing a lot of fighting. Yes.

The next is the best relationships start as friendships. And then the last is love is blind. Americans are not convinced that love is blind. I don't know if that's fortunate or unfortunate, but looks matter to Americans. So Daniel, you won this. Your, your prize is in the mail. It's, um, uh, a, how about, how about words of affirmation? Words of affirmation. It's words of affirmations. Good job, Daniel. Good job. Uh,

So after all the research you've done on dating and romance in American life, did you learn anything from that exercise? Well, I think there's always new things to learn about where the public is because man, there's a couple of those that were shocking to me. I'd love to see some crosstabs by Pardee on some of those. Yeah, totally. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you, Daniel and Kelsey. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tretavian. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments if you're a fan of the show. Leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.