8/25 Six Feet, Zero Standards: The Monday After Hunts for True Love

This wasn’t supposed to be the episode. It started as a Tuesday leftovers show, the stuff Ryan, Ashton, and guest Sarah Mueller didn’t get to the day before, the gossip that didn’t make the cut. But somewhere between the ex-wife jokes and the vodka metaphors, the conversation turned into something realer: three people, three very different dating histories, trying to answer the question nobody on a dating app actually wants to sit with. What does it take to find true love when everyone’s lying about their height, their intentions, or both?Ashton opens with the story that sets the tone for the whole hour: a Bumble date who claimed six feet and delivered something closer to five-nine, best case. Ryan, a former basketball player who’s spent his whole life around measuring tape and rosters that round up, doesn’t let it go — if a guy lies about something that obvious on date one, he says, that’s not vanity, that’s a preview. “What else is he lying about?” And that question becomes the spine of the episode. Because the stories that follow aren’t really about height, or bad matches, or ghosting. They’re about the gap between what people say they want and what they’re actually willing to give.That gap gets a name about twenty minutes in — Ashton calls it out first, Sarah backs her up — the guy who wants the girlfriend treatment without being the boyfriend. Ryan pushes back, then doesn’t, then tells on himself a little: dinner at Coquette, a hundred-dollar plate of lamb chops, a date he called a friend hangout right up until she mentioned an ex-boyfriend, and suddenly it wasn’t a friend hangout at all. Ashton doesn’t let him off easy. “You’re describing a date and then calling her a friend. That’s a mixed signal you’re sending.” It’s the funniest exchange in the episode and also the most honest — because Ryan actually sits in it instead of laughing it off.From there it spirals in every direction a real conversation does: the three-page questionnaire a guy sent Ashton trying to sort her into wife, girlfriend, or hookup before so much as saying hello. The Reddit thread about a man weighing whether to break up with his girlfriend over something she couldn’t control in her sleep. The stat about a third of twenty-five-to-thirty-two-year-olds not having sex at all, and whether that’s about attraction, exhaustion, or something else entirely. A story involving a parking lot, a police officer, and a location choice bad enough that even the room agreed it shouldn’t have been said on air. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Sarah says the line that might be the real thesis of the episode: she doesn’t want the first thing about her to be judged on appearance, and that’s exactly why dating apps don’t work for her — not because she’s picky, but because the format itself asks the wrong question first.Nobody lands on an answer. That’s the point. What you get instead is three people who’ve each been burned differently, laughing about it because the alternative is bitterness, and occasionally landing on something that sounds less like a joke and more like the truth: that most people aren’t looking for perfect, they’re looking for someone who doesn’t lie about the little things — because the little things are never actually little. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themondayafter2025.substack.com/subscribe