10 Ways Life May Change When Trump Becomes President — 'Lavender Marriages, 4B, And Radicalization Leading To Loneliness'
Your social life and dating life will change soon. Here’s how it might be impacted under Trump.
dimaberlinphotos | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Did anyone else notice that America’s political climate has a pretty big impact on how people socialize? I noticed. Under Obama, we saw a major rise in hookup culture and anti-racism, while the “blowback” came with a bigger dose of white nationalism.
Every single president seems to bring about a change in society. This also changes how we socialize, date, marry, and structure our families. Every GOP president brings back a quick turn to “traditional” values — as well as a blowback against LGBT and minority rights.
A lot of the rights we took for granted, including trans rights and gay rights, are on the chopping block. People are increasingly leery of one another. It’s becoming normal for people to only meet up in small, select groups of people.
Here are ten ways life may change under a Trump presidency:
1. Radicalization leading to loneliness
Andrew Neel / Pexels
It’s no secret that you may see a lot of radicalized MAGA and red-pill men suffering from loneliness in the upcoming years. As it turns out, being a ball of rage and hate doesn’t make for good company.
Mass media and troll farms realized that hate propaganda works — and it sells. Unfortunately, it’s addictive and changes who the users are as people. And right now, we’re seeing a lot of people realizing that they’re alone because of their actions.
Even if you’re not a red pill swallower, you’re going to suffer from the radicalization of others because it’s so hard to tell who’s been radicalized. This means that normal (read: unhateful) people will treat others with suspicion in public places. If you’ve noticed a spike in people playing “guilty until proven innocent,” you’re not alone.
This is the new status quo — and it makes finding new friends harder than before. Oddly enough, this tends to turn into a cycle where the loneliness makes you more awkward and desperate, which makes you more prone to radicalization.
My remedy for this is simple: be aggressively friendly. You’ll be surprised at how many people will match your energy. The rejection hurts, but eventually, you will find your tribe.
2. The rise of ‘lavender marriages’ and civil unions
Lavender Marriages are heterosexual marriages between two homosexual people — often to hide the spouses’ sexuality. If you’ve ever heard of someone being called a “beard,” you have seen a Lavender Marriage.
The truth is that traditional, romantic marriage has become a major risk, especially for women. After seeing GOP operatives chant, “Your body, my choice!” it became clear that women would suffer under many seemingly nice cishet men.
It often makes more sense to have a marriage of convenience with a man who you know won’t hurt you. Straight men have grown increasingly hateful toward women in recent years.
Unfortunately for women, they can’t count on a heterosexual marriage to be safe for them. The downfall of no-fault divorce means that women have to wonder whether they can leave a marriage safely. In many cases, they won’t be able to.
If you’re going to combine forces, it may as well be with a guy who you know won’t abuse you. Gay men are generally safer for women. This protects the gay man from persecution and puts a ring on a woman’s finger.
If gay rights stay intact, you might just see two best friends marry each other as a way to get that partnership without all the reality of a romantic relationship.
3. Minos AKA 'married in name only'
Marriage has become a massive risk for women: one that women increasingly don’t want to bother with. There are few things as risky as marrying someone you can’t leave or giving serious power to someone who has more rights than you, to begin with.
With divorce becoming more expensive and more difficult to obtain, fewer women are going to want to make that leap. So in the future, it might be women, not men, who end up refusing marriage proposals.
A lot of women will want to have relationships with men, but they won’t want to make it legal. In other words, they may choose to join a civil union or become MINOs — Married in name only.
4. Invite-only social media + private dating apps
Considering the dumpster fire that X — formerly Twitter — has become, it’s not surprising that more and more people are questioning their social media use. It’s becoming common knowledge that social media is pretty poisonous in its current form.
This is particularly true when it comes to major social media sites that are open to the public. A lot of us, particularly left-leaning people, don’t want to deal with trolls and bots. We want actual people and we want to have a pleasant time online.
What will most likely happen is that there will be new social media sites that require an ID to join — and that will be almost entirely invite-only. Raya, an invite-only dating app for celebrities, is a good example of this.
Now-defunct Giggle is another. Giggle was a social media platform entirely for women, with IDs required to ensure no men were allowed. It was sued for discrimination. With Title IX and gender protections gone, sites like Giggle will continue to flourish.
5. The 4B movement
Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels
For those who haven’t quite heard the term 4B yet, this movement is all about women staying single and child-free. 4B involves no marriage, no children, no dating, no intimacy.
Whether women openly admit to being 4B or not doesn’t matter. It’s still going to be a common choice to make. Dating has become too much of a risk to be worth it — especially for women who have a lot of good things in their lives.
The rollback of women’s rights will lead more and more women to eschew relationships with men altogether. That means the biggest status symbol for men will likely be a wedding ring on their finger.
6. Smaller, close-knit circles of friends
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed a very shocking change in the way people have been treating me lately. People who I genuinely trusted and cared for started to treat both me and my husband poorly.
Last night, I had someone blame me for trusting them. I looked at him incredulously, unable to recognize the man I was speaking to. I can’t believe this person was a friend of ours!
It seems like Trump has a weird way of making people turn on one another, even as friends. A Trump world is a world where everyone is out for themselves.
Most of my close friends have started to cut people out of their lives for one reason or another. Sometimes, it’s who they voted for. Other times, they got radicalized against them. Even more times, they just…changed.
Because people are getting to be so dodgy, greedy, and two-faced, social circles are going to shrink. We’re going to see friend groups that are way more tight-knit, almost like family.
Your close friends are going to be worth their weight in gold when things get rough. If you can’t find a friend group like that, you might find yourself in a very lonely spot for the next four years or more.
One thing that will become exceptionally common will be living together with your best friends as couples and blended families. It’s an offshoot of both the Trump election and the reliance on closer friendship circles.
Rising prices mean that you’ll likely pool resources together. Since many families broke apart due to Trump, you’re going to see “adoptions” of best friends and what I call “compound living.”
7. Private social clubs and lounges
It’s becoming clear that a lot of people are nervous about approaching people the old-fashioned way. We’re all worried that the next date we go on or the next “friend” we meet is going to be a morally repugnant, unstable weirdo.
And yet, humans are social creatures. We need to have a social scene to feel happy and healthy. That’s why I’ve started to notice an uptick in private clubs opening with the sole purpose of offering high-quality connections.
In my area, private clubs have started to see a major spike in demand for the past eight years. These social clubs often require you to pay a fee and get approved by a board before you can join them.
I’ve seen private invite-only workspaces, private nightclubs, as well as private dinner clubs pop up in the strangest of places. Most of these clubs have a no-photography rule, not to mention other rules that ensure privacy.
The reason for this is simple: a lot of us don’t want to be seen acting a fool on some random TikTokker’s account. Privacy is a major selling point because we want to be just “human” without having to worry about who’s watching.
While private clubs offer networking and the like, the true purpose of these clubs is to give people a place where they can feel safe socializing. That, in and of itself, is an increasingly rare experience these days.
8. Monetized interactions
With dating becoming an increasingly risky endeavor, you’re going to see a lot more people paying for human interaction. I don’t mean that as a “dinner and a movie” thing, either. I mean that both men and women will increasingly be willing to pay for:
- AI chatbots they can text all day long
- Chat services from adult entertainers and models
- Parasocial relationships
- Paid dates and escorts
- Paid cuddle sessions
- Monetized scheduled outings where people dine together as a way to meet new people
- Paid friends
Humans are social creatures. Unfortunately, it’s harder than ever before to get people to link up the way they once did. Socializing is a need, not a want. So, don’t be surprised when people pay for the feeling of being connected.
Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels
9. Fewer in-person outings
We never truly recovered from the social isolation of 2020’s COVID-19 lockdown, and it shows. Even extroverted people like me have become more akin to shut-ins.
Even I get overwhelmed or even bored at clubs these days. I’m just not the social butterfly I used to be. I’d rather go out with a handful of friends or just have them visit me.
Nightclubs with music scenes have been ailing in a way that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. The young people who used to frequent them either can’t afford them, don’t want to attend the parties, or both.
This is a major tragedy because those clubs used to be the way to make friends outside of work and school. They used to be an open forum where anyone could enter and become someone. That’s a dying concept.
While community meetups are seeing a bit of a renaissance, the truth is that it’s not quite the same as actually scheduling a night out with people you already know or just walking the town to see people.
10. The decline in social skills
If you’re getting more socially awkward, you’re not alone. It’s a major issue. Trump's society has made me more withdrawn and less sociable than before. Over a long period, this can and will grate on your social skills.
It’s hard to trust, reach out, or even talk to people when you’re so worried about people blowing up at you over a sideways comment. Phones are easier to work with, so more people than ever are choosing the black mirror over personal interaction.
Unfortunately, it’s going to take a while to heal from this — if we as a collective ever do.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.