His Loss Hotline
His Loss Hotline is the podcast for anyone who’s been ghosted, gaslit, blindsided, or just finally stopped shrinking to stay in something small. Whether you left a marriage, an almost-marriage, or a situationship that had no business lasting that long, this is where the real talk lives.
Come for the unhinged voicemails, stay for the stories, the advice, the “wtf” moments, and the group chat-level honesty about what it really means to walk away and start over.
Call in. Sound off. Hang up. It's his loss.
His Loss Hotline
Why Single Is No Longer a Dirty Word
It started as a headline, but it hit like a mirror: “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?”
When British Vogue writer Chanté Joseph asked that question, it sounded like a joke until it didn’t. Because maybe it’s not love that’s embarrassing. Maybe it’s the way we were taught to treat being loved like proof of worth.
This episode looks past the memes and soft-launch jokes to the quiet revolution underneath. The one where women stop performing “chosen” and start living free.
The old script said partnership was the prize. I believed it once too. I built a marriage that looked perfect online but felt like constant performance offline. And when it fell apart, I thought I had failed. Turns out, it was a promotion into peace, clarity, and finally hearing my own voice again.
We talk about what Vogue captured so sharply: how women are reclaiming privacy, rejecting performative couple culture, and realizing that single is not a dirty word. It is a declaration.
Because the goal is no longer to be chosen. It is to be aligned.
It is to be at peace.
The most radical thing you can do in a world that profits off your insecurity is to be okay on your own.
Being single is not a pause. It is the plot.
And peace is the new flex.
If this one hits home, share it with the friend who is tired of explaining why she is single.
She does not owe the world a reason. She just owes herself peace.
The number cannot be reached now. Please hang up and try again later. Hey! Welcome back to the His Loss Hotline, where we turn emotional breakdowns into think pieces and ex's into character studies. I'm Kelly, obviously. Um, your favorite divorced friend, and the woman who finally realized being chosen isn't the same as being happy. Took me a long time to get there though. Um, but today we're gonna like spiral in style. Um apparently it's embarrassing to have a boyfriend now. Um, yes, I am talking about the actual headline from British Vogue, and honestly, it sent me. It sent me so hard. It literally, the internet lost their their fucking minds last week, and uh we're here to talk about it. Um because truly I read the piece, and if you haven't, please go check it out. It's by um Chanté. I'm so sorry if I'm saying that wrong, uh Joseph from British Vogue. Um, because like the piece wasn't just talking about like, oh ha ha ha ha, boyfriends are cringe. It like really talked about societal issues and like something very much bigger. Um, of like that being single isn't sad anymore. And like being partnered isn't the ultimate achievement we were raised to believe it was. Um, so like this episode is about why that shift matters, why singlehood was ever treated like failure. Um, I'm still working through that mentally, but you know, we're getting their girlie pops. And uh how that shame is finally cracking and why decentering men might be the like quiet revolution us girlies have been waiting for. Um, so let's get into it. So the article. The article written by Chanté Joseph um for British Vogue is titled, Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? And she really like digs into the fascinating new like energy online of like women posting their partners less or like not at all. They're cropping them out. Well, we're cropping them out. Um, kind of like the soft launching that we were talking about way back in like I don't even know, episode three, episode four. Girl, I can't even keep any of this shit straight. But um, they're soft launching them with like elbows or beer glasses or like hiding them like classified documents, truly. But the point like isn't secrecy, it's like kind of self-preservation in a way. So Joseph writes, um, being partnered doesn't affirm your womanhood anymore. It is no longer considered an achievement. And I think that line is sickening and so amazing because, like, for decades, us women, we were taught that being chosen was like the win. That woman with a boyfriend is like a woman who's figured it out or a woman who's married is has it all going for her? And like, meanwhile, single women were treated like we were just waiting for the main story to start. And now there's like this generational shift, which I think there should have been all along, um, where everyone's like, wait, you know, maybe the story has never been about being chosen. And as cliche and stupid as it sounds, but like maybe it's about choosing ourselves. Um, with like the viralness of this uh article, Vogue India also had um like women write in and say things about themselves and what they've been doing. And one woman wrote, I was in a relationship for 12 years and never once posted him. We broke up recently, and I don't think I'll ever post a man. And I love that for her. But because it's not like bitterness for her, it's boundaries. Um, I remember being married and posting, you know, per perfect couple photos. Um, that was like pure performance. Behind the scenes, it was, you know, gaslighting, silence, confusion at some point, therapy twice a week, all of that. But online we looked fine. So when Vogue calls out that we're collectively done performing love, I truly felt that in like my divorced bones. Um, because it's like not about, oh, I have a man anymore. It's I have my peace. And I think that's like a very interesting energy shift. And like women are finally opening their eyes a bit and saying, like, I want peace over validation. But like, I really want to sit with the question that I think skews it a little bit deeper is why was being single ever shameful? Like, I don't know if it was just me or my world, but like I almost felt like society was saying, like, being single was shameful. Like, who taught us that alone means less than? I feel like for so long, single was like a temporary status. We you weren't living, you were like waiting, like waiting to be picked, waiting to be introduced to someone something. But like this idea that Vogue points out now, and I quote, it's become more of a f flex to pronounce yourself single. That made me laugh and exhale, exhale at the same time, truly. Because like 10 years ago, saying I'm single almost sounded like an apology. But now it's a boundary, almost like a declaration, a little bit of a power move. Even divorce, as I've said, like divorce, even in the past 10 years, has changes changed to cunty. Not because you're failing, but because you're choosing yourself in something you couldn't like didn't work. But like being single isn't a failure, it's freedom. Um, and it's choosing alignment over attachment or codependency. But our culture still hasn't fully caught up. That's always gonna be the truth. Um, because we still treat marriage and coupling as like the final exam of womanhood almost. And if you're like 30-something and single, people always ask, why? Why are you single? How are you single? You should not be single. Like, it's not embarrassing to be single. It's embarrassing that we were ever taught to be ashamed of it. Um, when I was married, married, people treated me like I had made it. Then I got divorced, and it was like I had been demoted to work in progress, or like even worse, you know. But like, truthfully, divorce was the promotion. Singlehood was where I actually started living. And that sounds fucking crazy, but it's the truth. Where I remembered like what peace felt like, where I stopped measuring my worth by how much I was loved and started measuring it by how much I was at peace. And like, single isn't a punishment, it's a reset, in my opinion. And no one should feel ashamed of like reclaiming their own space. And this episode isn't about hating men or hating relationships or hating marriage. This whole idea of girl hangup isn't as well, or the his loss hotline. It's just truly about owning yourself and like recentering you. Speaking of like re-centering, let's um, let's talk about something also really important in this in this whole idea. And it's like after what happens after you drop the shame, it's all about you know, like the decentering of men. Like, this isn't anti-lov in a way, it's anti-performance. Vogue touches on this too, that straight women are finally confronting what other communities, non non-straight communities, we love, we love the the gays and the they's, um, but have already knew our value can't be defined by who wants us. When I was married, everything I did was filtered through him. What would keep him happy? What would keep the peace? And by the end, I didn't even know what I liked anymore. And like discentering men was the only way to find myself again. Which at first it was weird, it was super weird and like kind of quiet and like uncomfortable, but like in that quiet, that's like your life coming back in a way. Like, decentering men doesn't mean hating them, it means finally being the main character in your own life. It's almost like that idea of like dropping codependency. Um I could get into a whole episode about codependency, and maybe I will because my therapist has literally said I am so codependent and I'm working on it. I'm reading a book uh called Um, oh fuck, what's the book called? Um, hold on, let me look it up. It's called Codependent No More. Let me look who it's by. You can tell I haven't um read it in a hot sec. By Melody Beattie, it's really fucking good. Apparently, she's fantastic. But we can get into codependency, it is also a huge issue, but like that's also about like finally becoming the main character of your own life in a way. But back to decentering men, because that's what we're talking about. Um, I think decentering men is such an important aspect of society now, and it's really not just a feminist thing that's like so radical, it shouldn't be. But for real, like this whole conversation is about redefining what fulfillment means. And it's not I'm in love, it's I'm at peace. And like what really I think is really interesting, and like the Vogue article has really like put a preview or like a like a think piece on it, is like why is this shift happening now? And I think it has a lot to do with like social media has turned love into like this PR almost, and we're finally like unsubscribing from it, or at least some are, some are definitely still not because you know that's society, but like women are financially and emotionally independent in ways that that make being chosen feel irrelevant and has never happened before because like women are realizing we don't need to post a relationship to prove that we're worthy of one. Something really interesting in the Vogue article um that Joseph writes was women are posting their partners less, less, opting for subtler signs. The soft launch is now two pints in a pub, a hand on a table, or the back of someone's head. And I think it's like funny because it's also like we're reclaiming privacy in a way. We're reclaiming the parts of ourselves that that don't need public validation. And like maybe that's the future of relationships, quiet and private and mutually grounded. Maybe the new goal is peaceful connection over performative coupling. I don't know. But like your life, the whole idea for me is like your life doesn't start when someone chooses you, it starts when you choose yourself. And I know that's cliche, and I know everyone's gonna be like, of course it does, of course it does, yay. No, like we're actually having real conversations of what being in a relationship is like for women and decentering men. And that doesn't mean you hate men, that just means you are choosing yourself, you are choosing yourself first, and then you can get into a relationship with a man if you want, or a woman, or whoever you want to get in a relationship with, or don't be in a relationship at all, and that's completely fine. I just think it's nice to finally be having that tough conversation and like women are finally waking up to it. But like whether you're like single or divorced or in a situation ship, or like accidentally soft launching a guy who doesn't even know he's being launched, just remember like your worth is not in a relationship status. And like being single isn't a dirty word. I truly think it is a declaration that you refuse to settle for less than peace or like settle for for just you know mediocre. We don't need mediocre in our lives, babies, okay? We we have enough of that. We have enough of that in this horrible world, but um yeah, that is kind of like my spiral for this episode. I know it was a lot in I don't even know how long I've been rambling for. But like my biggest takeaway um for this like episode is if like being single has ever felt shameful, that's only because like someone taught you to be like taught you to measure your life by a man. And you don't owe anyone a love story to be valid or to be a person. And I know that sounds very drastic, but it's it's the truth, it's how we have been conditioned to be because we live in a patriarchy. Um, and then like another takeaway that I think is like part of this episode is like decenter him and center you. Like the most magnetic thing you can be isn't taken, it's whole, you know? Um, and then like really like this week, if I can like challenge you in a way, do one thing that this week is solely for you. No we, no romantic context. If you're in a relationship, it's just for you. And just something that makes you feel alive in your own skin. And I don't know what that is. Go take a pottery class or go get your nails done. I just ripped I know this is such a bad um what is it? Side take tangent. There it is. Um but yeah, I just ripped off like half of my toenail by ramming my toe into my bed frame. It was really, really good. So yeah, now in my big toe I have half a toenail. That's super amazing. Um, but like maybe for me this this week, I will go get my nails done because that's choosing me, that's making me feel alive in my own skin. Um, I don't know, go for a walk. Do do what makes you happy and is not about romantic like context or or love. And um yeah, go out there, do shit. Be be your own person. And um like thanks for maybe uh you're what you're doing is choosing to listen to His Loss Hotline, you know, like to make you feel alive in your own skin. That is always an option, babe. But you can also um listen to all our episodes, maybe if you want. I'm just yeah, just throwing it out there. Um but if you like this episode episode, share with your friend who's tired of explaining why she's single. And uh tell her she doesn't owe a world a reason. She just owes herself some peace. But uh follow us on uh Instagram and TikTok and Facebook at girlhangup. Just remember, it it's his loss. I'm sorry, but the person you called has a voice mailbox that has not been set up yet. Goodbye.