Alex Cooper, host of “Call Her Daddy” (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss why the latest episode of Call Her Daddy is another reminder that this podcast is poison for women and marriages.

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I want to start this newsletter by saying something I think is obvious, but our society at large seems to have forgotten: Marriage is hard, but good. Divorce is easy, but bad.

Some of you might have seen the latest monstrosity from the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, hosted by Alex Cooper and featuring guest Sophia Bush. At one point, they talk about women who start questioning whether they should stay in their marriages. They aren’t discussing this in situations of abuse, which might make sense. Instead, it feels more like a rubber stamp on divorce, period. They claim that if a woman ever wonders whether she can do better, meaning find a better husband, the answer is always ‘yes.’ Sophia then claims any hesitation to stay in a marriage because of a woman’s age or whatever is because of the big, bad patriarchy.

The Call Her Daddy podcast has built an enormous audience of young women. I don’t personally understand the appeal. It seems like every bit of advice it offers is worse than the last. But to the uneducated — meaning their mothers aren’t their primary educators on love, or their mothers are just as broken — the podcast’s message lands because it tells women that no matter what, they deserve more, they can always find better, and anyone who suggests that suffering is an important part of growth is trying to control you.

It’s all so exhausting. I married my husband young. We had four girls in fairly quick succession. Some days, especially in the early years, were hard. I’d be lying if I told you it had always been easy, but I can promise you that every trial and tribulation brought us to a deeper level of love. If I had been listening to Call Her Daddy, I might have taken those feelings as proof I should leave. And I would have missed out on experiencing the greatest love I have ever felt.

This podcast has made me think about what I would tell one of my four daughters if she came to me during a hard season with her husband and asked what to do. Again, I’m not discussing abusive relationships. If you’ve been a longtime reader of this newsletter, you might remember my story about St. Olga and surmise that I wouldn’t be too kind to a man who treated my daughters with anything but love and protection. However, there are moments in marriage when the babies are little, the money is tight, or y’all are both stretched thin by work and feel more like roommates than spouses. These are the moments I’m talking about because they exist, but they don’t prove you picked wrong or that you should start shopping around for a better version. It’s actually the moment to double down on your love for each other.

I think the reason I am so put off by the Call Her Daddy world is that these women completely misunderstand the power that comes with female intuition. The gut feeling that “something is off” is an internal mechanism that helps guide you to fix the issues. Women should listen to this feeling and use it as a tool to prepare for the actual work of staying in their marriage. They are distorting it and telling women this gift they have only points in one direction, and they should only listen to it in order to leave their marriage. They’re saying that, because they feel disappointed in their current season, feeling alone is sufficient grounds for divorce. And they do this without any warning that divorce almost always leads to loneliness.

The women I know with durable marriages didn’t get there by constantly asking whether they could do better, which makes complete sense because this is a toxic cycle built on jealousy, not reality. They got there by deciding that the person they married was worth the effort. Then they reaffirmed that decision over and over, treating their marriage as something that required both of them. Sometimes one had to dig them out before the other joined in, but they always decided that sacrificing instant gratification paid off with a lifetime of deep, loyal love. They raised children together, which only furthered their love. They did this imperfectly, but earnestly.

My daughters will have to fight against the sea of voices like Call Her Daddy telling them their feelings are the highest authority on right and wrong, or that their immediate desires are enough reason to walk away. But I am determined to prepare them for this. I want them to know marriage is a serious undertaking, but still worth the cost.

I am teaching them that a good life is measured by more than whether every season feels exciting. I do this by loving their father well, even when life is difficult. I have never been disappointed with the result when I’ve dug in and done the hard work. I tell them all of the time how blessed I am to have met him. They see us have little spats because kids (no matter how hard you try to hide it) always know when there is a disagreement happening. But more importantly, they witness how we overcome those moments. We make sure they see the reconciliation.

Call Her Daddy will be seen as one of the most destructive voices of our generation. It’s led women down a path of personal devastation. I know I shouldn’t let it get me so irritated. I just wish more women understood that there is a better, happier way to live their lives.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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