Last Year of Single

There is a specific kind of freedom in doing something entirely alone: no one else's mood to manage, no one else's idea of you to perform for, total control over how the night goes. Bree talks to Dr. Kris Marsh and Tayler Wells about how to enjoy doing things alone and how our expectations of romantic relationships impact our ability to enjoy singledom.

Kris opens with the story that anchors the episode: going to 26 Kendrick Lamar and SZA tour shows alone, across multiple countries, and the overwhelmingly supportive, admiring reaction from everyone who found out. From there, the conversation digs into why solo concerts strip away other people's preconceived ideas of who you are, why being alone forces (and rewards) actually talking to strangers, and how to handle the comedown when a euphoric night ends and there's no one next to you to decompress with.

Then the research: why people with high intimacy expectations of romantic relationships tend to enjoy being single less, why negative relationship expectations don't carry nearly the same weight, and why people with negative relationship expectations are more likely to be single — without necessarily being any happier for it. Bree, Kris and Tayler make the case that once you learn to actually enjoy your own company, you become genuinely unstoppable — because you stop needing someone else there for the night to count.

Dr Kris Marsh - https://drkrismarsh.com/
Tayler Wells - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01461672261438616
Substack memoir — last year of single in real time: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3 @lastyearofsingle

Join the Last Year of Single Facebook community - https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1BthE53uod/?mibextid=wwXIfr

lastyearofsingle@gmail.com

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rom-coms, Disney princesses, and why we still expect love to look like the movies. I've always watched movies, TV shows, and read books as a way to understand myself and to work out what to expect from life, and this episode asks what happens when "what to expect" came from a childhood of Disney princesses and rom-coms.

Millennial women are the first generation raised with on-demand access to film and TV; meaning we absorbed the golden era of Disney princess movies and the golden age of the rom-com more completely than any generation before us.

Bree talks to Dr. Veronica Hefner, associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Dominican University of California, whose research examines exactly how romantic films and Disney princess movies shape real beliefs about love, dating, and relationships.

In this episode you'll learn:
What "happily ever after" actually trains us to expect from love and a partner
Why we keep attracting the wrong people, and how rom-com idealism can prime us for emotionally unavailable men
How childhood media exposure connects to anxious attachment and avoidant attachment patterns later in life
Whether it's still okay to watch these films, knowing what we now know
How to untangle what we actually want from what we were taught to want
Why we expect real life to imitate art in the first place
The genuine, researched benefits of rom-com watching, and how to actually be happy alone instead of waiting for a movie ending

We reference Sex and the City, Eat Pray Love, Bridget Jones's Diary, (500) Days of Summer, Serendipity, Notting Hill, and Sleepless in Seattle throughout.

If you've ever caught yourself measuring your single life against a movie you watched twenty years ago, this episode is for you.

Dr. Veronica Hefner: hefner.faculty.ucdavis.edu
Substack memoir — last year of single in real time: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @lastyearofsingle @breesteele.mp3
Join the Last Year of Single Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1BthE53uod/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Listen to the full series (best in order)

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chosen family isn't a backup plan — for queer and trans communities, it's been survival and a radical way to build love, care, and belonging outside blood and marriage. This episode asks why the rest of us haven't caught up.
Bree talks to Dr. Shanna Kattari, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and director of the [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] Research Collective, whose research includes the landmark study "We Just Take Care of Each Other," on chosen family among queer and transgender young adults.
In this episode you'll learn:

What chosen family actually means, and its roots in queer and trans history
Why queer and trans people are often better at deep, lasting friendship — and what the rest of us can learn from it
The real, researched benefits of chosen family
Why straight people, and single women especially, should be building chosen family too
How to actually create a chosen family — it's a practice, not something that just happens
The conversations needed with coupled-up friends and parents who've never had to prioritise friendship
What healthy expectations of a chosen family member look like, and why not everyone in your life needs to play the same role

If you've ever felt your friendships deserved to be taken as seriously as a romantic relationship, this episode is for you.

Best listened to as part of the full Last Year of Single series.

Dr. Shanna Kattari: shannakattari.wordpress.com
Follow Dr. Kattari: @DrShannaK
Substack memoir — last year of single in real time: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @lastyearofsingle @breesteele.mp3
Email: lastyearofsingle@gmail.com
Join the Last Year of Single Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1BthE53uod/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have been listening to Last Year of Single from the beginning, you know I have been talking about the Last Year of Single List since the very first episode. The idea is simple: if you knew in twelve months you would never be single again, how would you spend your time? What would you do that you have been waiting to do with someone else?

In this episode, I am finally revealing five of the things on my own list: what they are, why I chose them, and what success actually looks like to me for each one. I am keeping two items secret for now. But five is enough to be going on with.

Here is what made the list:
Writing a book.
Being in a Bollywood film.
Watching an entire Bollywood film without subtitles and actually understanding it.
Learning what a healthy and trustworthy romantic relationship is supposed to feel like and what that even means for someone who has never quite experienced it.
And becoming financially secure, not rich, not retired, just genuinely, solidly secure.

For the relationship goal, I play a clip from my episode with Ann Davidman, a counsellor and author who specialises in helping people understand what they actually want from love and relationships. For the financial security goal, I play a clip from my episode with Glen James, creator of the Money Money Money podcast, formerly My Millennial Money, and one of Australia's most trusted voices on personal finance.

I also want to hear what is on your list. Email me, DM me on Instagram, or come and talk about it in the Last Year of Single Facebook community. And if you have not written your list yet, Episode 10 is where I explain exactly how to do it.

The Last Year of Single List is not about being productive while you wait for life to start. It is about deciding what your life is and living it. Whatever happens next.

Substack memoir: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
Facebook community: Last Year of Single

Host, Executive Producer & Editor: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asian men are twice as likely as Asian women to be single. Black women face the same exclusion from the other direction. This is not a coincidence and it is not about attraction - it is about bias, and dating apps have made that bias faster, more efficient, and easier to never have to examine.

I wanted to make this episode because of two things I have noticed. The first: every time I post about dating in India, Indian men get flooded with racist comments - comments that would never be said about a white man doing the exact same thing. The second: I am a white woman dating in India, and I have had to sit with an uncomfortable truth: in a country still shaped by colonial history, my whiteness makes me more desirable to many people here than I would ever be considered at home.

That is a bias I benefit from.

Harry Au, psychologist and social worker whose practice focuses on the Asian experience in North America, joins me to talk about what it is actually like to be a single Asian man navigating dating apps built on a hierarchy he did not choose and cannot opt out of. We talk about the research, the stereotypes, where they come from, and - more importantly - what each of us can actually do to check our own dating biases instead of pretending we don't have any.

This episode is a departure from my usual single-women focus, and I am not sorry about that. Last Year of Single exists because nobody is having an honest conversation about what it is actually like to be single and that conversation has to include people who are not straight white women, because the rom-com version of single life was never the whole story.

In this episode:

The research on racial bias in dating apps. What the data actually shows, and why
Why Asian men are twice as likely as Asian women to remain unpartnered
What it is actually like to date as a single Asian man in North America
The specific stereotypes Asian men face and where they historically come from
Why Indian men get disproportionately racist comments when dating content goes viral
The uncomfortable truth about whiteness and desirability in post-colonial India
How to actually check your own dating biases. Practical steps, not just awareness
Why "I just have a type" is rarely as innocent as it sounds

Harry Au is a registered social worker and psychologist whose practice, Asian Therapy, focuses specifically on helping Asian clients navigate identity, family and relationships. He holds a Master's in Gender Studies and Feminist Research from McMaster University.
This is not a comfortable episode. It is an important one.

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Harry Au: https://www.therapywithharry.com/
Substack memoir: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.