The Real Embarrassment Isn’t a Boyfriend, It’s Being Seen Wanting One

When Vogue recently declared that “having a boyfriend is embarrassing,” the internet predictably split in two. On one side: celebration. On the other: confusion, backlash, irony-laced jokes. But buried beneath the hot takes was a quieter truth, one that says less about men, and more about how desire is perceived now.

Because the real embarrassment isn’t romance.It’s visibility. It’s being seen wanting something.It’s the social risk of trying. In a culture that rewards composure, self-sufficiency, and ironic detachment, desire has become a liability. Wanting love now reads as neediness. And neediness, especially for women, still reads as weakness. So we don’t avoid relationships. We avoid the reputational cost of being perceived as someone who wants one.

When Wanting Became a Status Risk

Modern dating isn’t short on interest, it’s short on permission. Permission to care openly. Permission to hope without cushioning it in irony. Permission to admit that connection still matters, and we want it.

Instead, we soft-launch relationships. We hide faces. We joke before anyone else can. We perform indifference as a form of self-defence. Not because we don’t want intimacy, but because wanting it openly feels like a social misstep.

The most revealing moments in dating today aren’t about who we choose. They’re about what we choose to conceal. That tension came up clearly in a recent conversation we had with the founders of Cercadating, a new dating app built around mutual connections and accountability. Mid-conversation, Sophia admitted something that many people feel but rarely say out loud:

“I don’t want coworkers or people I know career-wise to see me on a dating app. I feel like my reputation will go.”

The response was immediate, and telling.

“But it shouldn’t be like that,” one of the founders replied. “There’s a stigma.”

That exchange wasn’t about dating apps. It was about exposure. About how romance, once private, is now something we feel the need to manage publicly, carefully, selectively, strategically.

Romance in the Age of Reputation Management

Dating has quietly become a reputational activity. In professionalised, hyper-visible lives, especially for creators, founders, athletes, and ambitious professionals, intimacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists next to LinkedIn profiles, Instagram grids, group chats, and workplace proximity. The fear isn’t rejection. It’s perception. What will this say about me? How will I be read? Will this make me look unserious, messy, available? This is why independence has become not just a value, but a performance. Why detachment is framed as confidence. Why “I don’t care” is often mistaken for strength.

And why being in love, or even looking like you’re trying to be, can feel vaguely… embarrassing.

Designing Around the Fear of Being Seen

What’s fascinating is how this cultural discomfort shows up not just in conversation, but in product design. Cercadating’s founders described building their app around visibility control - allowing users to block certain contacts, filtering out people like family members or professional connections, and showing only friends-of-friends.

“When your reputation’s on the line,” one founder explained, “it’s a completely different experience.”

That sentence is bigger than dating apps. When platforms have to design features that help users hide their desire, it’s not a tech problem,  it’s a cultural one. We’re not ashamed of connection itself. We’re wary of who gets to witness it. The desire hasn’t disappeared. It’s just gone underground.

Why This Hits Women Harder

While the stigma around wanting love exists broadly, it lands unevenly. Women are still more harshly judged for visible desire, more likely to be labelled desperate, naive, or “settling.” Independence is praised, but only if it looks effortless. Wanting too clearly breaks the illusion.

This is where statements like “having a boyfriend is embarrassing” gain traction, not because women don’t value relationships, but because valuing them publicly still comes with social penalties.

Irony becomes armour. Detachment becomes safety. And sincerity starts to feel like a risk we’re not sure we can afford.

The Cost of Treating Desire as Cringe

But there’s a cost to all this emotional risk-management. When wanting is framed as embarrassing, we lose the language for sincerity. We lose optimism. We lose the ability to say, plainly and without apology, this matters to me.

We trade clarity for control. Earnestness for irony. And in doing so, we mistake emotional distance for empowerment. As the founders of Cercadating put it, they aren’t seeing users who reject love, they’re seeing users who reject being misunderstood. People aren’t pulling away from intimacy. They’re pulling away from exposure.

Reclaiming Wanting

So maybe the question isn’t whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing. Maybe the real question is why wanting, openly, sincerely, without irony - feels so risky in the first place? In a culture obsessed with leverage and self-containment, the most radical act might not be staying single. It might be admitting that you want something real, and letting people see it.

Because the bravest thing in modern dating isn’t detachment.

It’s sincerity. And the real embarrassment isn’t love. It’s pretending we don’t care.