In a recent episode of the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy,” host Alex Cooper interviews Sophia Bush, an actress who is now married to a woman after divorcing her husband in the summer of 2023. Bush and Cooper offered some pretty terrible advice to female audience members who are having second thoughts about ending their marriage.

“We can get really, really in our heads about … maybe I shouldn’t leave this marriage because can I even get [someone] better?” Cooper said.

“Yes! The answer is always yes,” Bush responded. “This idea that it’s too late, or you’re too old, or who are you to want more, that’s patriarchy. That is crazy.”

It’s sad to think that a podcast as popular as “Call Her Daddy” has undoubtedly influenced many women to make regrettable decisions in their dating and married lives. This episode may have finally convinced a woman whose marriage has lost its “spark” that she needs to leave her husband, raise her children in a broken home, and throw herself at the dating market afresh in her 30s or 40s. Under very limited circumstances, this is a terrible idea, yet Bush insists with ill-gotten confidence that the question of whether to divorce one’s husband is “always yes.”

Bush’s previous marriage lasted barely over a year. She met her now “wife” at a support group for divorcees. Cooper, who is vocal about her past sexual exploits, married just over two years ago, but with such a low view of the bonds of marriage, the odds are high that she will decide that divorce is the better option. After all, the answer is always yes.

It’s not new for celebrities to have terrible marriage success rates. Actresses as classic as Elizabeth Taylor were serial adulterers, divorcing as quickly as they married. The difference here is that podcasts like “Call Her Daddy” are specifically cast as advice platforms. Cooper and Bush are not just saying that Bush’s own divorce was a good idea, they are telling their female listeners that their divorces, no matter the individual circumstances, are a good idea.

Cooper’s listeners risk thinking this is actual, legitimate advice. But in following it, they will find that they are not in fact famous celebrities, that their dating pool after marriage is abysmal and limited, that their children truly suffer being raised in a broken home, and that even their marriage was perhaps not as hopeless as they thought it was.

Celebrities can paint a glamorous picture of the life of a divorcee because the public only sees the highlight reel of their lives. We don’t see the effects of the broken trust of either party in the failed marriage. We don’t see the tearful dropoffs at either parent’s house for weekends or holidays. We don’t see the bad breakups and dating failures of either party as they attempt to redo their romantic lives. We don’t see how the children are affected as their parents bring home a string of boyfriends or girlfriends with no certainty of when they’ll leave or if they’ll stay.

A recent study found that two-thirds of couples in a rough marriage patch will be happy again 10 years later. The popularity of podcasts like “Call Her Daddy” means many of these couples will never even stand a chance to see if they are among the group that will reap the rewards of remaining faithful to their marriage vows despite current discomforts.

The bottom line is that few celebrity dating lives are worth emulating. As glamorous as they seem, their advice is inapplicable to a normal person’s life or marriage. Women who hang on the words of celebrities like Cooper or Bush will discover too late that these women’s romantic lives are anything but the model for happiness.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: YouTube/Call Her Daddy