RILEY GAINES: Call Her Daddy’s advice is a dangerous recipe for lifelong regret

In a viral exchange this week, Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper and actress Sophia Bush offered young women a familiar piece of relationship advice: If you’re questioning whether to leave your marriage because you fear you won’t find someone better, the answer is always yes.

Bush went further, suggesting that the fear of being too old or unreasonable for wanting more is a product of the patriarchy.

Cooper built her brand largely by celebrating sexual experimentation, including encouraging young women to engage in highly explicit sexual experimentation early in dating. This is the same podcast Kamala Harris joined prior to the 2024 election, but I digress.

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Bush is now on her third marriage, with the first one lasting 5 months, the second lasting about a year, and the third to a woman.

These are the voices our culture elevates as influential guides for young women. But enough about the who. Let’s examine the what.

The exchange reveals a worldview in which something better is always waiting. That personal and fleeting dissatisfaction is sufficient reason to abandon a commitment, and that the pursuit of more is interchangeable with empowerment.

More what, exactly?

More excitement? More affirmation? More freedom? Another relationship that will inevitably encounter the same imperfections as the last?

At what point do we consider whether the relentless pursuit of more is precisely what leaves us feeling we have less?

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For decades, women have been sold a particular vision of liberation. Prioritize your career. Maximize your independence. Explore your sexuality without consequence. Reject marriage, delay motherhood, and never compromise your ambitions for someone else’s needs. Above all, put yourself first.

We were assured that freedom from traditional obligations would produce unprecedented happiness.

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If that were true, we would certainly see it in society. But instead, what was promised as empowerment has delivered emptiness.

Despite constant technological connectivity, loneliness and social isolation remain pervasive. Anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation are serious concerns, particularly among younger generations. These problems have many causes, and attributing them all to feminism would be intellectually dishonest. But ignoring the possibility that our prevailing philosophy has failed to deliver its promised fulfillment would be equally foolish.

We’ve spent decades dismantling the institutions that tether individuals to one another, only to discover that autonomy is a poor substitute for belonging.

Perhaps most tragically, we’ve taught women to regard sacrifice as oppression rather than an indispensable part of love.

Consider the contradiction.

A woman who sacrifices her time, energy, and health to climb the corporate ladder is celebrated as ambitious. A woman making comparable sacrifices for her husband and children is too often regarded as having surrendered her potential to the patriarchy. Why?

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I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities women have today. I’ve competed as a collegiate athlete, traveled the country, built a career, and achieved things my younger self could never have imagined. But no professional accolade, public recognition, or personal achievement has given me the satisfaction and purpose I’ve found in marriage and motherhood.

They require more of me than anything I’ve ever done (even a 200-yard butterfly). It’s hard. But “hard” and “bad” are not synonymous.

Motherhood fundamentally changed my understanding of success. There’s something remarkably clarifying about being needed by someone who has nothing to offer you in return except themselves.

I don’t view it as a limitation on my freedom, but instead a revelation of what my freedom is for.

Which brings me back to Cooper, who just welcomed her first child with her husband.

I genuinely congratulate her. But there’s irony in continuing to promote perpetual self-prioritization through meaningless hookups and “girl-bossing” while building a life rooted in the very institutions modern feminism so often characterizes as oppressive.

Perhaps motherhood will offer her the same perspective it offered me: that the deepest fulfillment isn’t found in putting yourself first, but in loving someone enough to put them first.

Of course, marriage and motherhood aren’t the only paths to meaning. Women who are single, childless, or unable to have children are no less valuable. Purpose takes countless forms, but lasting meaning generally requires looking beyond ourselves.

This is hardly a novel insight. Christianity has taught for centuries that a life centered exclusively on the self is ultimately impoverished. Love is not merely a feeling to be pursued while convenient. It is a commitment expressed through action, fidelity, humility, and sacrifice.

Our culture treats these virtues as antiquated burdens, then wonders why so many feel unmoored.

Cooper and Bush’s advice is troubling because it reduces marriage to personal optimization. Marriage becomes less a covenant to honor than an arrangement to continually reassess against hypothetical alternatives.

There are legitimate reasons marriages end, including abuse and betrayal. But reflexively encouraging people to search for something better without acknowledging the responsibilities of commitment isn’t teaching empowerment like the self-proclaimed feminists like to claim. It teaches disposability.

A generation encouraged to keep every option open may eventually discover that life’s most meaningful commitments require closing certain doors.

Choosing a spouse. Raising children. Building a family. Practicing faith. Serving a community. Creating something that will endure long after your own ambitions have faded.

Like everything associated with risk, these commitments impose limits, but I’ve found they also give life its depth.

Women deserve more than the hollow assurance that happiness is perpetually waiting in the next relationship, promotion, or reinvention of themselves. They deserve to know that fulfillment isn’t always found in acquiring more and finding someone that validates your every desire. Often, it’s found in giving more.

The great lie of modern empowerment isn’t that women are capable of extraordinary things. It’s that a life devoted primarily to ourselves is the most extraordinary thing we can aspire to.

We should stop telling women that the ultimate goal is to have everything and start reminding them of the beauty of having something worth giving everything for.

And perhaps the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

It’s greener where you water it.

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